Ted Wells Report on Incognito/Martin situation released

[WoodysGirl]

Commentary
Don't lose crucial parts of 'the code'
Leaders should set right tone for NFL teams to thrive as men, players
Updated: February 15, 2014, 10:52 AM ET
By Mark Schlereth | ESPN

Among the many things that I loved about playing football was sitting around the locker room with teammates and poking fun at each other with sophomoric slams, each one more ridiculous than the next.

But let me make this perfectly clear: I despise the stories of bullying that came out of Miami.

It breaks my heart that the good-natured ribbing that is a part of every locker room could get to a point that a young man felt his only option was to walk away from the game that he's worked his entire life to play.

The Code
I've heard a lot of current and former football players evoke "the code" in regard to Martin's departure from his team.

• Handle your business like a man
• Don't air the team's dirty laundry to the public
• Stand up for yourself
• Punch him in the nose
• Don't run out on your teammates

Many have said Martin has broken "the code" and will never be welcomed back in the locker room. What about "the code" that says we love one another? We play hard for one another? We set aside our differences and bond together as one?

What about that fraternity, that code?

Read the rest: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10458607/lose-crucial-parts-code-nfl-locker-rooms

 

[arglebargle]

http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2014...ami-dolphins-richie-incognito-jonathan-martin

a very good article on this mess

That's a very good article, really drives the point home well. Thanks for the linkage!

 

[Tabascocat]

Let me get this straight.......cutting through all of the hyperbole, this comes down to:

1. Incognito is a horrible person, a bully with no moral regards

2. Martin has no self esteem and is a pushover who won't stand up for himself

3. Neither are outstanding football players at this level, decent but not game changers

4. Miami still has their heads buried in the sand pleading the 5th

Fast forward to August, who has a job? My money is on Martin in JAX

 

[WV Cowboy]

so if Incognito was drunk driving and KILLED Martin that would be more acceptable than this?

Actually one is an accident, .. one is very deliberate. So difficult to compare.

But if they were gay lovers it would be more acceptable.

 

[WoodysGirl]

Peter King spin:

What the NFL needs to do now.

It’s time for Roger Goodell to earn his $44 million—if that absurd sum is possible for anyone running any sports venture. It’s time for him to professionalize professional football.

“Commissioner,’’ highly respected Philadelphia wide receiver Jason Avant told Goodell in a recent meeting, “we need you to set standards. We need you to make it black and white. We need standards, and if we don’t meet them, we shouldn’t be here.”
In the past 60 days, Goodell, I’m told, has met with more than 30 players, asking them how to make the locker room a more tolerant, more professional place. Players like Avant have told Goodell what he needs to hear. (He confirmed to me Sunday night that he asked Goodell to set standards for the players in the league, so publicly they’re not all painted with the Incognito brush.) Vice president of player engagement Troy Vincent and the czar of human resources for the NFL, Robert Gulliver, have also been involved in the meetings. They knew bad things were coming in the Ted Wells report, and the bad things came … worse than many people in the league thought. In the end, Richie Incognito and his perverse and persistent bullying and sister-raping jokes and goonishness gone mad will do a favor for the league. All the gone-too-far frat boys in locker rooms around the league can thank Incognito now, because when the NFL adopts a locker-room and meeting-room behavior policy, it’s going to be for adults. Will veterans be able to make rookies sing their college fight songs? Yes. Will vets be able to run kangaroo courts and fine peers $100 for especially stinky farts? Yes. Beyond that, vets won’t be allowed to shame young players the way it happened in Miami.

A shame! The corporatization of the NFL!

I say good. And good riddance to the bad-cop stuff Incognito and John Jerry and Mike Pouncey or whatever disgusting crap they were advocating in the past couple of years.

And while they’re at it, the NFL is going to put in a seminar for players and coaches and staff on sexual-orientation training. Call it the Michael Sam Seminar. It’s coming, and it should. Homosexuality is not going away, and there’s no reason why any gay player in any NFL locker room should be subject to one-tenth of what Jonathan Martin had to endure over the past two years.

Vincent shared with me Sunday his ideas for professionalism in the NFL workplace. Players should have a code of conduct perhaps not identical but certainly in the same league with other members of a football organization—scouts, marketers, administrative help, executives, coaches. “I think you’ll see workplace training conducted for the football side,’’ Vincent said. “The kind of respect-at-work training that happens on the second floor, in the business offices, needs to happen on the first floor, with the players.’’ Vincent said he hopes the league can establish a working group of coaches, players, club officials and league executives—men and women—to discuss issues and solutions. Vincent wants to teams to begin workshop training for players and other club employees. Those workshops should included sexual orientation, diversity, domestic violence, and professionalism in the workplace, among other things.

Get ready for several weeks (months?) of internal and external debate around the NFL over how to professionalize the players’ workplace. You’re going to hear a lot of that, and you should, after Sam announced he is gay and the scathing Ted Wells report told the world what a soulless place an NFL locker room can be. “Can’’ being the operative word, because I do not believe there are many, if any, other locker rooms or portions of locker rooms that go so over the top as the Incognito-led Miami offensive-line group went.

More from King: http://mmqb.si.com/2014/02/17/jonathan-martin-michael-sam-monday-morning-quarterback/

 

[BoysFan4ever]

They definitely need standards & guidelines but these are supposedly grown men. Do you really need to tell a grown man it's not right to tell sister raping jokes to another person? Idiots.

 

[burmafrd]

Commentary
Don't lose crucial parts of 'the code'
Leaders should set right tone for NFL teams to thrive as men, players
Updated: February 15, 2014, 10:52 AM ET
By Mark Schlereth | ESPN

Among the many things that I loved about playing football was sitting around the locker room with teammates and poking fun at each other with sophomoric slams, each one more ridiculous than the next.

But let me make this perfectly clear: I despise the stories of bullying that came out of Miami.

It breaks my heart that the good-natured ribbing that is a part of every locker room could get to a point that a young man felt his only option was to walk away from the game that he's worked his entire life to play.

The Code
I've heard a lot of current and former football players evoke "the code" in regard to Martin's departure from his team.

• Handle your business like a man
• Don't air the team's dirty laundry to the public
• Stand up for yourself
• Punch him in the nose
• Don't run out on your teammates

Many have said Martin has broken "the code" and will never be welcomed back in the locker room. What about "the code" that says we love one another? We play hard for one another? We set aside our differences and bond together as one?

What about that fraternity, that code?

Read the rest: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10458607/lose-crucial-parts-code-nfl-locker-rooms

condense it down to this: boys will be boys and this was over blown.

 

[WoodysGirl]

More King Tidbit in the 10 Things I think I Think:

4. I think many of you have rightfully asked me, and others who work in NFL locker rooms, how surprised we are about what was in the Wells report, and might think it’s disingenuous for me to say, “I’m surprised.” I am—because, and you need to understand this, the Incognitos and Pounceys aren’t going to show us the truly real world when the doors are open and we walk in the door to the locker room. If they’re not going to show coaches the sometimes vile stuff they do, why would you think they’d be open to be truly real around the media? Now, I know lots of untoward stuff goes on, because it always has, and there’s an Animal House element to every locker room. But I just don’t believe what happened in Miami is common to every NFL locker room.

5. I think Dan LeBatard of the Miami Herald had a great take on why the Dolphins unconditionally supported Incognito and not Martin: “We can all moralize about this now from the outside, choosing sides, but this wasn’t about morality and immorality to the people on the inside. It was about strength and weakness. The players in that locker room think Martin is a soft, whining quitter who caused all this because he wasn’t tough enough for their survival-of-the-fittest workplace.’’

http://mmqb.si.com/2014/02/17/jonathan-martin-michael-sam-monday-morning-quarterback/5/

 

[WoodysGirl]

Where's support for Jonathan Martin?
Teammates inexplicably defend bully Incognito while blaming Martin, the victim
Updated: February 15, 2014, 8:29 PM ET
By Dan Le Batard | ESPN The Magazine

The Dolphins -- the guys who actually wear the uniforms and bleed and break for this cause -- sided with the bad guys.

Have you heard one Dolphin say one bad thing about Richie Incognito?

One?

When the locker room doors finally opened and the players could be heard, there was only one voice -- and it was united. Those players supported the bully, who was being banished for his behavior, and crushed the victim, who had fled. The people who work in that workplace, the ones who know it better than we do and better than the lawyer who spent a few hours there talking to them, all sided with the disgraced, and they did so loudly and angrily and with the harmony of a choir, even as the entire organization sank deeper into the scandalized sewage with every syllable. There wasn't a single dissenter, in fact. Even after this mess was media-mushroom-clouding on TV, the stink shaming the owner, the general manager, the coaches and every crevice of the organization, but you couldn't find a single Dolphins football player supporting the victim here.

What, exactly, are we to make of that?

There are a lot of clarity-of-hindsight gasbags on TV denouncing the lack of leadership in the Dolphins' locker room now. But maybe it wasn't a lack of leadership. Maybe it was an acceptance and understanding of that particular jungle. They didn't support Martin because they don't support him. We can all moralize about this now from the outside, choosing sides, but this wasn't about morality and immorality to the people on the inside. It was about strength and weakness. The players in that locker room think Martin is a soft, whining quitter who caused all this because he wasn't tough enough for their survival-of-the-fittest workplace.

Read the rest: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/1...g-richie-incognito-not-jonathan-martin-victim

 

[BoysFan4ever]

Sometimes it's laughable how immature people can be. I suppose Incognito thought he was a hard *** tough guy in that locker room.

To me he's just a creep. An immature whacked out guy. Get some help dude!