Is There Life After Football? (33 page)

It's easy to see NFL players experiencing culture shock at the end of their playing days. They're not just out of the game; they're out of the bubble. But culture shock is generally short-lived, a passing phase. Why might it persist for NFL players where others seem to adapt more quickly? Again, we've heard the answer before: “When that bubble breaks, you just don't know what to do. It's all you know.” Is this overly dramatic? People from other walks of life manage major life transitions without as much lingering trauma. But very few individuals exist in an environment so completely captivating as the NFL bubble. The bubble establishes patterns of acting and interacting that are deeply engrained. Its way of life is all encompassing. It provides players with a cultural toolkit that they
habitually
use to craft the everyday features of their lives. At the same time, however, the bubble also insulates players from other ways of seeing and doing everyday life. Players are short-handed when it comes to adapting to other circumstances. We've seen how undisciplined spending, “livin' large,” uncertain job prospects, flagging social support, and injury pose serious challenges as players move out of the NFL. These can certainly be daunting problems. But not all players succumb to them. Nor are these challenges the source of many former players' disenchantment with life without football. And it's not just losing jobs or changing roles. These can be radical changes, to be sure, but viewed simply, they are parts—not the totality—of players' lives. Something more radical is going on. Perhaps the scenario resembles the circumstances where military personnel are discharged from active duty, or even when prisoners
are freed from incarceration. When they leave the bubble, NFL players change worlds. They literally swap realities, often against their will and frequently not to their liking. The cultural imperatives inside the bubble are so pervasive and enduring that, as a practical matter, they've become the very structures of a player's consciousness.
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Some players are lost without them.

This may seem exaggerated. Is the bubble, with its player ethos and locker room culture, so unique and powerful that players can't adjust to other circumstances? A recent locker room controversy offers a unique window into the cultural milieu that dominates NFL players' lives. In November 2013, offensive tackle Jonathan Martin—an African American—walked away from the Miami Dolphins' training complex to seek treatment for emotional distress. Through his agent, he said that he could no longer tolerate the emotional abuse he was taking from Dolphins teammates. Debate immediately erupted on several fronts, often centering on whether Martin was simply unwilling or unable to put up with the typical “hazing” to which younger NFL players have traditionally been subjected. Some argued that he was being maliciously “bullied” by veteran teammates. The conversation took a serious turn when Martin released an incendiary transcript of a voicemail message left on his phone a few months earlier by teammate and fellow offensive lineman Ritchie Incognito, who is white.

Hey, wassup, you half-nigger piece of shit. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. I'll shit in your fuckin' mouth. I'm gonna slap your fuckin' mouth. I'm gonna slap your real mother across the face [laughter]. Fuck you, you're still a rookie. I'll kill you.
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Incognito has a longstanding reputation as an NFL “badass.” A key member of the Dolphins offensive line, he was voted into the 2012 Pro Bowl. But he is also known as one of the NFL's dirtiest players and most outrageous characters. Throughout the controversy, no one challenged this depiction, nor did Incognito deny his actions or words. For his part,
Martin was known as a “soft” player who seemed strangely out of place in the tough-man's world of the NFL, even though he had been a two-time college All-American and second round draft choice. Initially, the bullying accusations seemed entirely plausible, given Incognito's background and the damning voicemail, and he was quickly suspended by the Dolphins.
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As time passed, however, new pieces of the puzzling story began to emerge. Fellow Dolphins reported that Martin and Incognito had been close friends. Black and white players alike denied that Incognito was a racist. Alternate explanations recast acts of intimidation in terms of practical joking and solidarity-building rites of initiation. Moreover, Martin himself was portrayed as willingly going along with the jokes. Indeed, teammates said Martin had played the incriminating voicemail for them, and they laughed along with him. To them it was one more instance of Incognito's outrageous “macho man” persona. Evidently, no one at the time—including Martin—took Incognito's rant seriously. Indeed, text messages were ultimately released in which Martin exchanged seemingly light-hearted, vulgar insults with Incognito that approximated the tone and content of those sent by Incognito.
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Eventually, teammates began to explain the entire mess within the context of everyday locker room banter and a request by the Dolphins organization for Incognito to bring Martin out of his shell and toughen him up.
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Regardless of what develops out of this scenario, the terms of the discussion provide telling insights into the culture of the NFL and its inner sanctums. This cultural environment—the NFL bubble—provides players with a field of consciousness that is so different from other everyday social worlds that former players are lost and disoriented when they have to fend for themselves. If the worst impressions prevail, they would underscore a racist strain that runs through the league. But that's certainly not a version to which most players subscribe. Indeed, players, black and white, commonly say that there's less racism in the NFL than in any other setting they've experienced.
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Fellow players dismissed Incognito's racial slurs as familiar, good-humored banter—almost terms
of endearment—between teammates that demonstrated a genuine lack of racial animus rather than racially motivated contempt. Nevertheless, Incognito's words still stand, “nigger” prominently among them. Racist or not, they inscribe a crude vulgarity upon the NFL scene.

Amidst all the protestations, players tacitly acknowledge that the NFL locker room tolerates virtually any form of aggression as long as it contributes to a winning edge. There's a “take no prisoners” attitude that's demanded in the NFL. As players interpretively packaged the Incognito–Martin rift as an instance of normal locker room behavior being misunderstood or gone awry, the powerful contours of the NFL player ethos became obvious. Toughness is the foundation of the ethos, so, from players' perspectives, Incognito wasn't culturally out of line. As the discussion evolved, it quickly became apparent that no one thought it was OK for one player to bully or seriously harm a teammate. But it was just as clear that crude language and rough treatment—especially cloaked in humor—aggression, and intimidation are bywords of the NFL locker room. It's a world where it's
normal
for veterans to use intimidation to toughen up the new guys. While many players initially thought that Incognito may have gone too far—perhaps lost perspective on how much “razzing” Martin could take—the practice of “toughening up” itself was never fundamentally questioned. It's OK to use threats and humiliation to further team ends. “Winning's the only thing.”
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There were several other culturally revealing twists to this scenario as well. Many players and observers asked why Martin didn't fight back. Why didn't he just punch Incognito in the face? Said teammate Tyson Clabo: “If Martin had a problem, he didn't show it. . . . I think that if you have a problem with somebody . . . [you should] stand up and be a man.”
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Others point out that the NFL is full of bullies. That's how they got there and that's how they keep their jobs, through aggression and intimidation. Those are supreme virtues when directed on the field, and if they spill off the field, well that's part of the package. Every player in the NFL is a little crazy, they all admit, and sociopaths are often vital to winning. Backing down, on the other hand, is a sign of fatal weakness. “You can't let [a
bully] see that it [hazing and intimidation] got to you,” comments Mike Golic. “If you let this be known [that there was hazing or bullying going on], if you go public, you won't be able to go back into the locker room.”
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In the NFL scheme of things, being soft is a greater sin than being crazy, crude, or barbaric. From this perspective, it's Martin who is culturally out of step. Former Dolphins teammate Lydon Murtha virtually damned Martin when he characterized him as shy and standoffish, with “a tendency to tank when things would get difficult in practice.”
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Martin came off as the antithesis of Incognito's “badass.” After all he'd majored in classical studies at Stanford and came from a long line of Harvard graduates. Coy Wire, a former Stanford and NFL player, knows what that might mean: “If you don't fit into the mold, and the culture in the locker room, you won't last. Sometimes, in a gladiator sport like football, intelligence can be perceived as being soft.”
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And perception matters. As Mike Greenberg, Golic's media sidekick, notes, “The NFL is probably the only place where having parents who went to Harvard, and you went to Stanford, is something you have to ‘overcome.'”
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In the warrior culture of the NFL, one can't even
appear
to be soft. “This is a game of high testosterone, with men hammering their bodies on a daily basis,” says Lydon Murtha. “You are taught to be an aggressive person, and you typically do not make it to the NFL if you are a passive person. There are a few, but it's very hard. Playing football is a man's job, and if there's any weak link, it gets weeded out.”
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If toughness is the coin of the NFL realm, loyalty also carries considerable currency. Not surprisingly, after initial outrage from a few players not associated with the Dolphins, Incognito's teammates—black and white—rallied to his support.
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To a man, they said that Martin should never have taken his complaints outside the locker room. Players stick together like a “band of brothers, like a fraternity” says former coach Brian Billick.
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“It's a brotherhood, a pure brotherhood,” adds Ray Lewis.
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Airing dirty laundry in public is a cardinal sin. “Keep it in the house,” says Martin's teammate Bryant McKinney.
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Remember, the code of the NFL is “What happens in the locker room stays in the locker room.”
When Martin sought outside help, he was not only admitting to weakness, he became a traitor to the cause.

Some compare the NFL code of loyalty to the code of silence and allegiance of gangs, prisoners, the military, or the police.
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By exposing the situation to the media, says Murtha, Martin broke that code. “It shows that he's not there for his teammates and he's not standing up for himself. There might be a team that gives him a chance [to play again in the NFL] because he's a good person, but the players will reject him. They'll think,
if I say one thing he's going to the press
. He'll never earn the respect of teammates and personnel in the NFL because he didn't take care of business the right way.”
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According to Murtha and others, the Dolphins aren't unique. Conflict breaks out routinely, but there are routine ways to handle it. “This racial slur would be a blip on the radar if everything that happens in the locker room went public,” claims Murtha. “All over the league, problems are hashed out in-house. Either you talk about it or you get physical. But at the end of the day, you handle it indoors.”
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This is the culture of the NFL: the world of the tough guy, the loyal teammate, the gladiator. Commentators often dismiss locker room culture as an immature, ephemeral anomaly into which otherwise respectable men sometimes slip for good fellowship and light-hearted respite from adult responsibilities. But in the case of the NFL, it's much more. It's the quintessence of “team,” and its ethos is the heart and soul of its inhabitants. The local culture is fully embodied in players' attitudes and lifestyle, which they carry with them wherever they go. It's not that they are compelled to act this way. Rather, they opt to hold themselves accountable to the ethos, using it to justify a very distinctive set of behavioral habits.

Of course, all this might easily be dismissed as the outlandish behavior of a rogue ball player—an aberration. Richie Incognito could be the exception to the NFL rule. Indeed, it's this sort of extreme case—the deviant or outlier—that actually helps society identify the boundaries of what's normal and acceptable.
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It would be easy to characterize Incognito as such a boundary setting renegade, an anomaly. Tellingly, however,
his behavior is
not
beyond the pale—at least not in the NFL. Incognito has been voted the league's dirtiest player. He was dismissed from two college teams for inappropriately aggressive behavior. He's appeared on national TV ranting vile obscenities and racial slurs in a bar.
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He was investigated in 2012 for sexually harassing a woman at a Dolphins golf tournament. According to police reports, a 34-year-old female volunteer told police that Incognito had been intoxicated and molested her with a golf club.
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Incognito routinely uses the term “nigger.” Despite all this, he was still a teammate in good standing. He wasn't considered a deplorable anomaly, one who stood beyond the boundary. In fact, teammates considered Incognito
more
than acceptable as a member of the locker room brigade. He was a leader, an exemplar of the player ethos. In 2013, before the controversy broke, he was a member of the Dolphins' leadership council.