Boytalk

Rogers - Pittsburgh Post Gazette

One of the most riveting stories of late is the drama going down in Miami with the Dolphins, the Incognito/Martin saga. For any of you that don't keep up with such things, Jonathan Martin was a biracial offensive lineman on the Fins and  has alleged that team mates have both bullied and extorted money from him. Things got too strange for him and he either had enough and left or thought the time was ripe to cash in, depending who and what you believe. But he apparently couldn't take it anymore.

The Dolphins portray Martin, who left the team and sought counseling and a high priced attorney, as a somewhat soft human being, who was both strange and aloof and never quite fit in with the boys and the frat house atmosphere that apparently is the NFL locker room. A beta male in a world of alpha gladiators.

Management is alleged to have asked one piece of human excrement named Richie Incognito to toughen Martin, a Stanford grad born of Harvard grad parents, up. Incognito has long been known as an asshole, a dirty player and now even worse, with hushed up sexual molestation allegations coming to the fore.

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I don't know what the dealio is down in Miami. The NFL's upcoming review should be illuminating. Jonathan Martin had the foresight to tape some quite damning messages he received, including racial epithets and one suggesting that his mother get slapped and that a bunch of teammates were going to have unprotected sex with his sister. Now boys will be boys, especially when they are the coddled neanderthals that make up the National Football League. People in combat like to play rough. Martin couldn't handle it. The average NFL player, or at least the majority that I have seen interviewed, dismiss the banter as normal sophomoric hijinx.

Be that as it may, Martin, a cerebral type who may have been a loner, couldn't hang with it. And subsequently  blew the doors off the locker room, landing another blow on a league that has already had another player arrested for murder this year.

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In a way I think that Martin resembles Edward Snowden, they both joined an old boys club but never really fit in and both ultimately lifted the inviolate institutional veil of secrecy in a very calculating way and now no one can ever put poor humpty dumpty together again.

Real hard to keep anything secret these days. Watch out for those intellectual dudes that can't seem to get along. They might be taking notes. You can bet we will have more Snowdens and Martins coming down the pike real soon. Some people just have no respect for tradition.