Much has been made about the Miami Dolphins locker room fiasco surrounding veteran offensive linemen Richie Incognito and second year player Jonathan Martin in the media this week after Martin left the team leading up to this Monday's game against Tampa Bay due to harassment and hazing that went too far in the pro game. Allegations of $30, 000 meals in South Beach being tabbed to rookies and trips to Vegas being paid at the expense of Martin and other players came to light, acts of "bullying" that brought light to our problem as a sports society surrounding locker room culture.
According to several reliable sources around the NFL Incognito (who is white, but which really doesn't matter except for this sentence) referred to Martin as a "Half N*****" and threatened to defecate in Martin's mouth along with murdering his family over voicemail. Martin has filed a complaint to the league and the Dolphins over the situation and has taken a leave of absence from football for at least this season while Incognito has been indefinitely suspended by the Dolphins.
While some have shockingly taken the other route and defended Incognito behind the fabled "Code of the Locker Room" and have blasted Martin for leaving the team instead of "Manning Up" and confronting Incognito for bullying him. I am here to take the rational and logical lesson from this and make a stand on something that I have yet to take in these pages.
Hazing should be completely removed from sports as it serves absolutely zero purpose to any game or team concept.
Think about it. How is creating a tradition in which veteran players ridicule and outcast new talent supposed to result in building a winning team? How is focusing on how you are going to stay ahead of the new guy and derail his chances of contributing to your team practical? How is outright condoning emotional abuse within your locker rooms a smart idea?
This issue has been a problem locally as well. In 2011 the Neepawa Natives Manitoba Junior Hockey League season became derailed when a rookie leaked to his girlfriend that he was forced to tie a water bottle to his genitals and walk around the room. The player who leaked the story was sent home, but not after a player reportedly shot a puck at the player after he apologized to the team for leaking the story. The MJHL suspended the coaches, and the veterans on the team and as expected the Natives didn't go on to win the MJHL Title. All that hazing caused in that situation was a borderline sexual assault, a destroyed team, and some bad memories of what are supposed to last a teenager forever if we believe what we tell everyone is so great about sports.
I played on teams with hazing. I grabbed the water bottles and the pads after football practice when I was a rookie, thankfully things never got to the type of level that we see when these stories go nationwide, I never would have personally allowed a veteran on any sports team to treat me like a piece of garbage personally, but it never happened. Those teams also never won anything and I eventually ended up finding myself not wanting to go the extra mile to help people who seemed to be more focused on ridiculing me because it was their right as veteran players on the team. It was quite simple for me, I didn't want to be apart of a toxic situation where I knew exactly what my teammates thought of me.
On the other hand the teams I played for that had strict no rookie parties, and no locker room hierarchy's were hands down the most successful and memorable teams I played for. Many of my teammates for those teams are friends of mine to this day. Some of them were in Grade Nine when I was a senior and some of them even played more than I did. I sucked it up and accepted them as equals, even though I had to endure being treated as a rookie before them. I did so because I wanted to win more than I wanted to bully somebody for being younger than me or a threat to my playing time. I did so because that is what builds a team.
The Miami Dolphins learned that the hard way on Monday Night Football in front of a national television audience. Missing their two starting offensive linemen, the Dolphins gave up two sacks on the final drive of the game to lose to winless Tampa Bay, ending the playoff hopes of a team that had their hopes high this season. All because a veteran felt the need to "push" a rookie.
Miami's situation should serve as a final wake up call that should have been realized years ago as it seems that once every sports season we here one of these stories coming out of high schools, colleges, and minor sports clubs each year ending what was supposed to be a year of playing the game they love and building friendships along the way. It is time to stamp out hazing once and for all.
