By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Late Fall 1975, I was sitting in my living room that we never sat in with my father’s tie on. A coach from some nondescript college was talking to my Dad about me coming to play for him. “Never saw a missed block all night,” he crooned. “Your son can play.” My Dad, obviously flattered, asked the coach about academics and was edified that “Look, the books are the same wherever he goes, but we can do more for him. We can make him a man … you know, build his character.” “That’s our job,” Dad replied. Dad ushered him politely out of the house.
South Beach Bully
The nation’s been riveted by the revelations coming out of the Miami Dolphins locker room. Stanford educated right tackle Jonathan Martin abruptly left the team before a big game and checked into a local hospital claiming emotional exhaustion. The fatigue was not caused by the grinding NFL schedule but, according to Martin, from constant bullying by fellow offensive lineman Richie Incognito and others over a two-year period. Martin’s lawyers filed a complaint with the league for denying their client the right to earn a living by promoting or permitting a hostile work environment. Proven league bad-boy Incognito was suspended indefinitely.
A victim of bullying himself (according to his dad who makes Jim Piersall’s father look positively Howard Cunningham-ish by comparison-just read his message board comments sometimes), Incognito claims the coaches asked him to “toughen up” Martin. The Dolphins refuse to admit or deny any role in the hazing despite some persistent questioning from the press on the topic. Nicknamed “Big Weirdo” by Incognito and other NFL millionaires, Martin played left tackle for tough guy coach Jim Harbaugh during his college career and anchored one of the meanest o-lines in the country at Stanford. No matter, in today’s thuggish NFL because second round pick Martin didn’t drink, carouse, use racial epithets, get into fights with waiters, and generally behave the fool (like allegedly harassing women with a golf club to their private parts) like Incognito, Martin was not of the right stuff. Didn’t have the right character, you know.
Once the guffaws died down in the locker room, Martin’s teammates were quick to come to Incognito’s defense. Incognito, they said was Martin’s “best friend” and protector. Despite a grotesque voice mail message where Incognito called the mixed race Martin a “half-ni**er” and threatened to defecate in places too obscene to mention, the gridiron pros from South Beach decided breaking the Code of Silence so prevalent in all all-male institutions was worse than threatening to assault someone’s mother or vowing to kill a teammate or wishing to take part in a gang rape of your sister.”If I’m not mistaken,” one teammate said, Martin played the voice mail before members of the locker room fraternity laughing all the way. “If I’m not mistaken”? You’d think you’d recall with certainty the biggest story in the country’s key piece of damning evidence, but group think does have the tendency to make your forget facts and perhaps even morals, it seems.
Heartfelt From the Heartland
Change the scene from sin-city Miami to America’s heartland in Ypsilanti, Michigan: Former hot college coach Ron English, once defensive coordinator at football factory Michigan and other lesser members of the football cabal which dominates our consciousness on Saturday afternoons — and Tuesday nights, and Thursday nights, takes a new job and vows to “change the culture” at hapless Eastern Michigan University. That was 2008 and four plus years later all the Eagles have to show for that culture change is a 1-8 record this season losing eight straight games by an average score of 48-18. The previous years under English weren’t much better. He’s gone 11-46 since his arrival. Now frustrated at his players lack of “character,” English lashes out at the 18-22 years olds who beat themselves silly every day risking real injury as football’s concussion scandal has now shown, trying to please the man in the green golf shirt with the whistle around his neck:
* “You’ll always be (bleeped) up.”
* “How did so many young guys go bad?”
* “This is (bleep) football, as bad as I’ve ever been around.”
* “You have no respect for yourself.”
* “I respect football players … you ain’t no football players.”
You can listen to the “character building” yourself. Warning: Poor audio containing harsh but common football language including the seemingly obligatory homophobic slur:
Recorded by a player, the rant forced English out as coach even before his winning (or lack thereof) percentage did. The mavens of academe (who obviously have a wolf by the ears) issued a statement that reads like an epistle from St. Paul:
“We hold our coaches and staff to high standards of professionalism and conduct and there is no place, particularly in a student environment, where the language is appropriate. The statements made by Coach English are absolutely unacceptable. My decision to make a change in leadership of our football program was the culmination of a lot of factors including the comprehensive review of our program, the competitive performance and this tape.
“Our primary interest is in the well-being and success of our student-athletes and this will continue to be our priority in every decision we make and every action we take. My focus moving forward is on the quality of our student-athletes’ experience as well as the search process for the next leader of our football program.”
Well, maybe it reads more like an episode from Lassie: “What’s that girl? You say there’s bullying going on by adults over teenagers and 20-year olds who come to our school? Quick, Lassie get to the university legal affairs office for help! We need a statement now.”
What kind of character?
Maybe, if I was more savvy back in 1975 I would have the presence of mind to ask the coach in my living room just what kind of character he had in mind for me. Judging by the two recent debacles I think I’m getting the idea. I was to be machismo incarnate — tough, hostile to gays, intolerant of “weakness” real or imagined. A carouser, a harasser of women, respecting only those in the game and no one not associated with its savage charms, in short I was to be a football player in today’s NFL.
The sad and ironic thing is that the game really can build character. Time and scores of kids I’ve coached have showed me that. It can take shy kids like I was and, when it’s done right, allow them to earn confidence and acquire leadership skills. My high school coaches, as imperfect as they were, showed me that but I was too immature to see it. At 18, all I could understand was that Dad had just dismissed one of the few coaches in the world who thought I was good enough to put on a jersey for their team. How could Dad take away my dreams and forgo whatever financial scholarship bone the coach was willing to throw my way? Boy in 1975, I was mad.
Thanks, Dad.
Sources: USA Today; NY Daily News
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
“Hazing serves a purpose, it may not build character but it is certainly an indication of how much stress you can handle.”
———————-
bullshit
this was testosterone poisoning plain and simple. You speak about hazing as if it was some kind of intentional predictor of future performance like test driving a car. Here’s a thought (that happens above the waist….;) a car doesn’t run when the engine is blown. And threatening lives and to rape somebodies sister has less to do with testing than a raving inadequacy complex driving someone to attempt to hurt and threaten someone that they feel threatened by. And last I heard Hazing was no longer acceptable in society….so why the excuses?
And if someone feels the need to threaten and harrass someone else just so they can feel like they are on a ‘team’….maybe they shouldn’t be there…where ever that is.
Sorry, click the wrong key. I wanted to add:
They wanted this ‘snobby-little-rich-kid-mentality’ (or I’m better than you mindset, or I don’t really need this job mentality) out of the locker room and eventually the NFL, per se.
What MikeP & Bron stated.
You have to admit that Mr. Martin does not fit the NFL profile. He had similar issues, according to a few of his Stanford U teammates, reported by FoxSports-Indianapolis. Mr. Martin even admit that he needed to learn to have that ‘killer instinct’ mentality and learn how to ‘drive his opponent into the ground.’
How do you expect someone like this to survive the NFL?
Mr. Martin went on to tell his Miami Dolphins teammates and coaches that he wanted to attend ‘Harvard Law when his NFL career ended.’
Why would you make this comment around a group of guys who either never completed college (and never will) or who came from poor, low-income or working class backgrounds? Both of Mr. Martin parents graduated from Harvard Law.
Mr. Martin wasn’t NFL material, and the players, coaches, and management knew it. They w
I cannot adequately relate the amazing similarities between what I’ve heard regarding the football bullying scandal and how I was treated and what I had to go through in the courts regarding a non-criminal obligation….the treatment to human beings (myself included) by the goons of the court was horrendous, un-necessary, and completely ignored by those who had an obligation to not allow the animalistic behaviours. I am still recovering my health (what’s left of it) and the situation I was left in by greedy, self serving lunks who called themselves professionals will probably never be adequately resolved or corrected.
Hypocrisy
I used to work as a roughneck and roustabout, when I first started they hazed you. I was hazed in a fraternity which I quit because I didnt like the hazing and being in a fraternity didnt have enough benefit to suffer the humiliation. The job was worth taking the hazing.
On one rig my boss used to bully me unmercifully, I just let it run off my back until one day I had had enough and was ready to fight. He backed down and I never had another problem. He told me the next day he was doing a spine check. Fair enough.
Martin had 2 choices, well 3. He could take the hazing, quit the team or tell Incognito to stuff it or he was going to. Martin is a big man, why didnt he bust Incognito in the mouth? Maybe he really doesnt have the temperament to play professional football?
When you play football at the professional level, you know what is expected of you and you know, or should know, the down side to that sport; which is severe injury and possibly death. But since we, as a culture, idolize athletes they are willing to pay the price for adulation, fame, money and sex.
I dont think hazing is off limits in certain jobs, it might even be necessary. If we stop hazing in professional football or on oil rigs, what is next? The service academies? Hazing serves a purpose, it may not build character but it is certainly an indication of how much stress you can handle. The ability to handle stress and function well is a necessary component of a military officers temperament and maybe in some work situations as well.
There is a good deal that can be said for and against football. In the end it is up to the individual to decide for himself if he wants to play. Many people would put up with the hazing to make the sort of money professional footbal players make and others would not.
sharon: “to the tune of billions of dollars in tax exemptions?
You answered your own question.
Based on what Jay Glazer is now reporting, the Incognito-Martin story may not be as clearcut as the rest of the media would have us believe.
America is a nation of bullies. Our police forces are brutal thugs. Our military members commit war crimes with impunity. Our political pundits are bombastic name-calling bullies. Our fancy envoys of the state department are bullies. The rent-seeking corporate fascists that bankroll our lying and bullying politicians are bullies. It is everywhere we turn.
Yet the media seems to only see bullying a problem in NFL locker rooms and on the Facebook pages of the emotionally crippled teens our culture of violence and abuse produce.
Apparently, even having a football team named the “Redskins” is a hate crime of grave importance directed at native Americans. But, the government ripping off Indian Trusts for billions over many years and then refusing to resolve the issue is not even worth mentioning by the enlightened media.
So, Americans are OK with pepper spraying their own kids, sending their kids off to foreign nations to kill and come home maimed (both physically and mentally) for life, conducting 12-hour anal probes on persons the police deem to have tightly clenched buttocks, or road-side vaginal probes where cops claim to smell pot in the car. Americans are fine with destabilizing entire regions of the planet for the interests of a small fraction of the 1%, assassinating civilians with drones, hillbilly cops with military gear patrolling their streets and kicking in doors, and watching cops club homeless people to death.
But, God forbid that the idiots we pay million of dollars to for the pleasure of watching them engage in a violent sport also engage in locker room bullying. This is the issue that Americans care deeply about after much prodding by the enlightened and caring media.
Mike S:
“Gee Mark from your avatar I imagined you as thin and ethereal looking who knew?”
******************
We all want what we can’t have. 😀
Gee Mark from your avatar I imagined you as thin and ethereal looking who knew? 🙂
Your Dad was a smart man who knew what was best for his son. I’ve been following the Incognito case with fascination especially because I live near Miami. The entire team has come out for Incognito and against Martin. One might say that if you never played football, you can’t understand the culture or what it is like. As a tall, heavy teen, slow of foot my football skills were minimal. The coach of my high school team disliked me and since he was my gym teacher for four years I spent my time being harassed in gym and being harassed by some of the members of his team following his lead. So I’ve never played the game at any level except for pickup games where my size put me on the line.
However, I “know” the football culture because as a lifelong fan I have been inculcated into it by the numerous broadcasters, many ex football stars, who have described the game and expressed their sentiments. The admiration for rough hits. The macho attitudes. The “tough it out” mentality. The worship of the players who bully on the field. It is all there to see and one needs no great insight to extrapolate those descriptions into what takes place in the locker rooms and to the exhortations of the numerous tough guy coaches.
These revelations are not new. Pete Gent was a wide receiver, later tight end, who played for the Dallas Cowboys as they were on their way toward becoming “America’s Team”. In 1973, after his career had ended he wrote a roman a clef called “North Dallas Forty”, later made into a movie. The two main characters were and end and a quarterback, both resembling himself and Don Meredith who was his closest friend on the team. The legendary Dallas coach Tom Landry was painted as a falsely pious, cold, manipulator, who would shame players into playing when hurt, even if it was destructive to their careers. The locker room was not a place that “made” men, it was a place that in essence destroyed them as normal human beings.
We see now how destructive football is both mentally and physically to those who play the game. Being a man is so much more than being a macho, tough guy. Being tough is more nuanced than being able to physically punish anyone in the room. Yet culturally this is portrayed in that manner and propagandized by football telecasts that are classic extolling’s of the game and its violence. what amazed me as this story broke and continued was how many of the callers to Sports Talk Radio were contemptuous of Martin for not standing up to Incognito, who has been described as insane and frightening.
Mark, thanks for this story which needed to be addressed.
I used to play contact sports. I played football (defensive tackle) and boxed. I am pretty big, and when in college I was exactly the same size as two familiar figures, Dick Butkus and Alex (Mongo) Karras. I am still 6’3″ tall and weigh about the same, but it is distributed a bit differently these days. I had dreams of going on to bigger and better things as a player. However, I tackled a 225 pound fullback head on after he had time to get up a full head of steam. His knee nailed me in the shoulder. Despite the shoulder pads, the impact was like getting hit by a pickup truck. That ended my playing days. I was not happy about it at the time, especially during the six weeks I spent in a cast covering much of my upper body. However, looking back, it may have been a favor.
I used to watch boxing but the more neuropsychological examinations I did, I could no longer bring myself to watch, or even talk about boxing. I don’t consider it a sport. Not sure what it is, but it’s not a sport. Not unless you also consider dog and cockfighting sports.
Last Friday night about midnight, I got a call from my son. He is the medical director of a regional hospital’s Emergency Department. His emergency room was full of football players and they were swamped. I asked him what was going on. His two-word response spoke volumes: “The playoffs.” It is high school playoff season, and the players are absolutely pushed to the limit both physically and mentally. He had to airlift a couple of the injured players to Level I trauma centers.
Marc Buoniconti, son of NFL Hall of Fame player Nick Buoniconti, suffered a spinal cord injury while playing college football in 1985. Marc is now a quadriplegic. Ole Miss football player Chuckie Mullins suffered a similar injury while making a tackle. Chuckie died later. There is a courage award in his name, as well as a statue of him on campus. Awards and statues don’t make them walk again, and don’t bring them back from the grave.
I read the autobiography of former NFL player Jack Tatum. Jack was proud of his bone crushing hard hits, and ranked his hits by whether the other player was able to walk off or be carried off the field. In Tatum’s view, if he tackled the ball carrier so hard they were confused and didn’t know where they were afterward, it was a “good” hit. Then Jack hit Darryl Stingley so hard that Darryl later died of complication from his injuries. Wonder how Jack rated that hit.
My son could not tell me the details of the player’s injuries due to HIPAA confidentiality rules, but if a kid has to be airlifted to a major big city Level I Trauma Center, it is serious. For the sake of those kids and their parents, I wish the best for them. I no longer watch either boxing or football.
Thanks, mespo. I was surprised when I read and heard on the news about other players siding with Incognito. I think what a terrible example the support of this type of bullying sends to our youth.
I listened to an interesting interview on this subject on NPR the other day. I was happy to hear a number of callers to the program supporting Martin’s actions.
*****
Did Coaches Encourage Incognito’s Bullying?
November 06, 2013
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=243476278
Excerpt:
Hazing and bullying are commonly found in schoolyards and fraternities. But pro sports? The NFL is investigating possible harassment within the Miami Dolphins between veteran guard Richie Incognito and offensive tackle Jonathan Martin. Host Michel Martin speaks with sportswriter Kevin Blackistone about the culture of bullying and hazing within the NFL.
BLACKISTONE: This is – no, this is an aberration. Now, I have never seen one player attack another player quite like this. In fact, I’ve never seen it like that. Usually, it’s a team thing. Usually, it’s something that happens and you move on after, it’s considered to be a rite of passage of sorts. But this is personal. This is beyond the locker room. It’s beyond the field and it’s troubling in a lot of ways.
What is really – what really struck me in the beginning was how the players on this team and the coaching staff could’ve elevated the player – Richie Incognito – into a leadership role in this team, given that he has a rap sheet longer than he is tall that goes back to high school. He’s been kicked off of two teams, one in college, one in the pros. He’s been a pariah just about everywhere he’s been. He should not be a leader of your team, and I cannot believe that the coaching staff did not know that this was going on and they should have not been tacit supporters of it, but they should’ve squashed it immediately.
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=243476278&m=243476280
“… group think does have the tendency to make your forget facts and perhaps even morals, it seems…
I was to be machismo incarnate — tough, hostile to gays, intolerant of ‘weakness’ real or imagined. A carouser, a harasser of women, respecting only those in the game and no one not associated with its savage charms, in short I was to be a football player in today’s NFL …” – mespo727272
This good post today reminds me of a T-shirt I saw in a local grocery store: “Pain is weakness leaving your body.” – Marine Corp
The military culture is permeating spying, police work, and the entire macho realm.
There are more people in military marching bands than there are in the State Department diplomacy corps.
davidbluefish:
A superb article on that very topic by Jason Whitlock:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9941696/jonathan-martin-walked-twisted-world-led-incognito
We do what we do with the information we have at the time to do what we do…… I am sure folks benefit from your experiences…..
It is good to open the door on ugly. I am hearing words in the media that try to throw a rose colored perfumed veil over this opened door to ugly. The rationalizations, and convoluted explanations are fascinating.
Manhood has nothing to do with being Men”Hoods”. To the younger ones here, in the 60s hoods meant thugs.
Why do cities continue to subsidize this barbaric sport to the tune of billions of dollars in tax exemptions? And the brutality doesn’t just start in the pro leagues. Every year we get stories about high school football players who get away with rape because they are the “star” players. Cutting football from the education budget would let many schools restore the academic programs that were sacrificed for football, and cutting subsidies for football and other pro sports would allow cities to restore cuts in infrastructure that everyone uses, not just pro athletes. Let the “free market” take care of football.
AY:
I don’t know. I still throw a mean trap block. 😀
Thank you mespo….. I think your character is best suited in the academic world….. You’ve always been honorable and professional…..
They’re not just creating a hostile work environment, they’re creating a culture of violence in society. We’ve seen it in the news, over and over. Women, children, fans and players have all been victims of this kind of Neanderthal thinking.