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| Jonathan Martin's Stanford Univ media photo |
The bottom line is this case has much more to do with the behavioral issues and troubled past of Richie Incognito, the suspended offensive lineman with an extremely troubled past accused of bullying Martin, than they do with Martin himself.
The facts in this still evolving case have been clouded by a range of stereotypical assumptions about body type, demeanor, intelligence and race; and they offer a rare glimpse of the difficulties faced by large African-American males who play football at the Division-I and professional level.
I was fortunate enough to have earned a full athletic scholarship to play Division-I college football at Penn State University from 1987 - 1992 and I went on to play for two and a half years in the National Football League; so my perspective on this story differs from much of what has already been reported in the media.
According to NPR sports correspondent Mike Pesca, who spoke about the shifting media coverage of the Martin story earlier this evening with host Brooke Gladstone on NPR's ''On The Media" program, a lot of the confusion about the story stems from the Miami Sun Sentinel initially reporting that Martin's October 28th departure from the team had to do with his own "emotional" issues. It was only days ago that media reports about Martin being unable to cope with the routine hazing of rookies which is a normal part of the NFL culture, was part of the cause of his leaving the team.
A couple days ago I heard a television commentator on ESPN News and more than one sports radio analyst recycling the oft-repeated reports of Martin being too "soft" a player who was in need of some "toughening up" by fellow Miami Dolphin teammate Richie Incognito; and who was allegedly ordered to do so by Dolphins head coach Joe Philbin. Before we get into Incognito let's look at that accusation of being too "soft" for a moment.
First off, what does that even mean?
What's unfortunate here is that widely held myths and assumptions about black athletic prowess and aggressiveness still tend to permeate the media and the broader American culture. Many fans, casual observers of the game and members of the media who've never actually played football on the college or professional level (or spent any significant time with the players who do) tend to confuse the intense physical nature of this full contact sport, the body type and appearance of players who train much of the year to prepare for it, and the calculated, carefully packaged media product broadcast on ESPN, NBC, CBS or ABC with WHO the players actually are as people.
The game of football is replete with 'experts' who analyze the game for a living and really don't know all that much more than any average person who takes the time to sit down and read up on the players, statistics, strategies, rules and tendencies of the game. A lot of football analysis is opinionated speculation meant to fill air time that's often rendered meaningless at the first snap of the ball. So when these experts and media pundits sniffing after the story repeated the idea that Martin somehow washed out or caved to the pressure because he was "soft", did they really know what they were talking about? Consider the stats.
According to Pro Football Weekly, Jonathan Martin was a standout offensive lineman who started 11 of 13 games as a sophomore in 2009 at left tackle (one of the most complex and difficult positions to play in football) and successfully protected the blind side of eventual first-round NFL draft choice quarterback Andrew Luck on an offensive line that helped rack up a school-record 2,837 rushing yards and allowed a conference low of seven total sacks all season.
Over the next two seasons in 2010-2011 Martin started all 26 games at left tackle; in 2010 the team compiled a 12-1 record and went 8-1 in PAC 12 Conference play and finished the season ranked 4th in the nation. In his senior year at Standford in 2011 (where he studied classics) the team compiled an 11-2 record (8-1 PAC 12) - he stood 6 foot 5 & 3/8 inches and weighed 307 pounds.
As Martin's lawyer, noted attorney David Cornwell observed in a statement dismissing accusations questioning Martin's toughness; Martin was a standout starter on two of former Standford head coach Jim Harbaugh's teams known for their brand of "smash mouth" football. He was selected as the 42nd overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft by the Miami Dolphins; where he started 12 games at right tackle.
Now, what part of that sounds "soft" to you? You simply don't start that many games on a team that good without being tough. Too often, where black players are concerned, the medias focus on larger than life standout NFL players who are as quotable as they are skilled on the field tends to skew the image the public has of the demeanor of all NFL players.
Take recently retired Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, or Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor. The endless video clips and reels of players like that pacing the sidelines yelling at people, firing up teammates or talking smack to opponents are like a marketer's wet dream for the NFL, the networks that pay billions of dollars for the right to broadcast professional football and the companies that pay millions to associate their brands with the League.
Their off-field incidents and dramas only increase their fascination factor with the media and the public. As I've repeated so often in this blog, there are so many different socio-economic backgrounds, beliefs, opinions and family histories within the wider spectrum of the African-American community. Different skin shades, hair styles, religious or political beliefs, food, dating, car or music preferences; but the media still holds a certain fascination with black male athletes who fit comfortably into the mold of an ideal stereotype that fits the preconceived notions many Americans seem comfortable with.
The media loves a popular black athlete who's "street" enough to be "authentic", who can communicate well with just the right mix of Ebonics in his accent. Part of the complexity of the Jonathan Martin story is that the media really doesn't know what box to put him in. Look at his college media photo above.
He's a bright, well adjusted kid who attended a prestigious prep school in Los Angeles, scored a 1,400 on his SAT's and boasts an impressive family pedigree by any standard. According to Martin's Wikipedia entry, his father Gus is a professor of criminal justice who graduated from Harvard, his mother Jane is a corporate lawyer for Toyota who also graduated from Harvard. No less than NINE of his relatives graduated from Harvard including his grandfather and maternal great grandfather.
That kind of intelligence, demeanor and upbringing packaged into the 6'5" 317 pound frame of a professional football player leaves some people confused; depending on the kind of atmosphere created by the coaching staff and the players in the locker room, Jonathan Martin could in fact be intimidating to some players. I believe it is this cultural difference which is at the root of this most unusual story; there were certainly few if any other players with his kind of background in that Miami Dolphins locker room.
As a 6'7" former professional football player, I can say from my own personal experience that many people, teammates, coaches, strangers could be very confused when they met me. The football part made sense to them as an African-American guy my physical size, but when I spoke very often I could detect a sense of confusion.
Both my parents were college-educated professionals (unlike many of my teammates in college) and I was raised in the middle-upper class suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland. There was never any Ebonics being used in my house growing up, I enunciate each word, have a substantial vocabulary and speak clearly and without any traceable accent; that certainly doesn't make me better than anyone else, it's just the way I was raised and who I am. When I told some of my college teammates that I liked to read in my spare time or argue about politics; I often got funny looks.
My point is, I understand Jonathan Martin better than most of the media pundits and experts talking about him do. People tend to project all these internally held perceptions onto large black athletes in America and when they see or hear things from them that doesn't fit into what they PERCEIVE, they sometimes get confused.
Take Rosey Grier for instance. He graduated from my Alma Mater Penn State in 1955 years before I was even born, and he played college and professional football as well; and much better than I did too by the way. At the height of his fame in the late 60's early 70's when he publicly talked about being really into knitting and macrame as hobbies; that totally baffled a lot of people. Some even thought it made him "soft" despite his being a member of the Ram's "Fearsome Foursome" or being recognized as one of the top college student-athletes of all time. Knitting didn't fit in with the way many people perceived him.
It's this perception problem that's at the heart of this debacle in Miami; and it has everything to do with race and how African-Americans are perceived in this country. That's why Jonathan Martin left the Dolphins on October 28th. Not because he was scared, but because the man is far too intelligent to simply remain in an abusive work environment where his own teammates treated him like that.
Many of the media pundits have it wrong. This isn't an NFL problem (but it will be spun that way), it's a symptom or rather a result of a much deeper problem rooted in American society. That's why most of the media got this wrong, the real reason is too much for them to take on; it's much easier to just say that Jonathan Martin was"soft" than to acknowledge that race has clouded this distorted coverage from the beginning.
Really confronting the racial angle in this case would have required some of these sports reporters and pundits to roll up their sleeves and stare something ugly and uncomfortable in the eye, but as we all know no one succeeds like Americans in squirming away from engaging in genuine dialog about topics that make us uncomfortable - especially race.
I want to conclude by saying it's been very insightful to observe the strange arc of the media coverage surrounding this case. For days, members of the media and even some his own teammates were casting blame on the victim Jonathan Martin. But as more details about his ex-teammate Richie Incognito's violent and troubled past begins to emerge; it begs the question, why weren't the Miami Dolphins and the media focusing their attention and speculation on him in the first place?
Richie Incognito is a like a walking time bomb that keeps going off wherever he ends up; but he keeps showing up somewhere on another team. Passed around like a Catholic priest who can't stop molesting children; so rather than really deal with his behavior, they blame the victims and ship him off to another parish. Incognito has been kicked off at least five different college and pro football teams for ostensibly the exact same behavior; how did the Miami media miss that?
It really doesn't matter now, Jonathan Martin has left Miami and retained expert counsel in the form of David Cornwell, one of the most highly regarded sports attorneys in the country. If the media was reluctant to get to the real cause in this case, this man will. The NFL has hired top defense lawyer Ted Wells to head an investigation into the Dolphins role in this case. Expect to see head coach Joe Philbin of the Dolphins resign or be fired very soon. I watched a clip of him in a press conference talking about this case the other day and he seemed woefully uninformed and didn't seem to really grasp the seriousness of the case. Plus it's clear he has absolutely no control over his own locker room if he even jokingly suggested sticking a maniac like Richie Incognito on Martin to "toughen him up" as alleged.
As for Richie you judge for yourself, earlier this evening Bill Pennington of the New York Times penned the most revealing and disturbing portrait of this disturbed borderline psychopath I've yet to see. Read it for yourself, the real truth of this story is in the facts. Facts much of the Miami media seemed to miss.
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