Bully League

When I woke up this morning and shimmied on my trousers and started to prepare for the daily toil like the rest of the waking world a single thought crept up on my brain: Man, wouldn't it be great not to be a Miami Dolphins fan right now?

I feel like anything associated with the Miami Dolphins right now is one giant piss stain and for once my ire isn't directed at X's and O's and wins and losses.  I'm pissed at Richie Incognito, I'm pissed at Miami's coaches, and I'm so pissed with the 'NFL Powers That Be' that it's starting to stain!

First off, is something I've already covered, and that's the NFL is archaic.  They're running a young man's game in a modern world and they're friggin' dinosaurs!  To put things short and simple it's 2013 and the NFL is just now investigating a possible link between a sport where people get their heads bashed in and long-term concussion symptoms.  They're not exactly 'with it' these days.

The NFL likes to use words like 'fraternity' and 'old school' and 'brotherhood' and it's all bullshit rhetoric for "we're a bunch of cavemen that refuse to change".  And those roots are so deep that people today are AFRAID to change those ways until something like the Dolphins story breaks.

There's room for hazing in the NFL.  Christ, most of today's rookies are getting paid more than ten-year veterans.  Give them a bad haircut, make them carry your pads, and give them cold showers.  That's all clean and good.  But when a veritable psychopath is leaving you threatening voicemails and extorting you for $15K I think it's time to pull the plug on the whole ordeal.

And that's exactly what Richie Incognito did to Jonathan Martin.  He threatened him, he extorted him, and he took away his feeling of safety at his own clubhouse.  Where's your brotherhood now?

Martin is a Stanford grad, a smart young man, playing a position on the offensive line where most smart young men thrive in the NFL.  He's a thinker.  Incognito is both an explosive and implosive atomic bomb.  He has no regard for safety, including his own, and probably doesn't fear anything except for maybe having to read a few books.  He is a thug and a bruiser and a perfect offensive lineman and that's why the Dolphins had him on their team.  Sometimes you want to win so bad that you sacrifice little things like ethics and human decency and maybe just maybe this psychopath will learn how to bottle it up and harness his energy protecting Ryan Tannehill.  And the path to Hell is paved with good intentions.

And wouldn't you know it, Martin eventually had enough and reached his breaking point and decided that he didn't want to go to work anymore.  Who knows what the final straw was but if you threaten to slap my momma in the face I'm going to have a few issues with you.  Plus, that's how you determine how tough you are, right?  Slapping people's moms?  Makes sense to me.

Now the Dolphins are in crisis mode.  Incognito has been "suspended" and the team is reaching out to Martin and blah blah blah.  It doesn't matter.  This didn't start with Incognito and it won't end with him.  This is a much bigger problem than one guy and it's not going to get any better until some clear thinking individuals take charge of the NFL and make them realize that we no longer do business in the stone age.

I feel for Martin.  He doesn't deserve any of this and he's thrust right in the middle by one crazy guy and a long line of brutality.

The good thing about dinosaurs though is that they eventually die out and we put their bones in museums and tell our children, "Look Johnny, this is a stegosaurus...they had walnut-sized brains."