After getting through the Super Bowl just before the latest blizzard hit the New York area, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is hoping to thread the needle twice in a few days when his office releases a much-anticipated report on charges of bullying inside the Miami Dolphins’ locker room.
Goodell’s favorite line as commissioner is “protect the shield” — the game’s integrity. That requires swift action, such as suspensions of players and coaches over poor conduct.
Which brings us to Dolphins offensive lineman Richie Incognito, and Goodell’s dilemma. New information about this scandal could knock down the neat, politically correct narrative offered up by the national media when the story first broke, presenting Goodell with a huge PR problem.
Recall: Jonathan Martin, a black second-year player who’d studied classics at Stanford University, left the Dophins in mid-season claiming that Incognito had targeted him for nasty and at times racist taunts.
The evidence against Incognito, an eight-year veteran and an All-Pro reputedly among the most vicious linemen in the league, seemed compelling. In one noxious voicemail message, he called Martin a “half n- - - - - piece of s- - - ,” and told him, “I want to kill you.”
More horrors emerged (in one tale, Incognito forced offensive linemen such as Martin to attend meetings at strip clubs), and Incognito became the poster child for all that’s wrong with the NFL’s ultra-macho locker-room culture, where only the strong survive and gentle souls like Jonathan Martin must toughen up or face constant abuse.
Case closed? Not quite.
Amid the media firestorm, Goodell hired super-attorney Ted Wells to conduct his probe into the matter. According to people with direct knowledge of the matter, Wells has been sitting on his evidence for more than two months, and at least once has conceded that the real story is far more complex than what the press reported.
Some of the evidence Wells is grappling with includes Martin’s own disturbing rants (he texted Incognito he would lock another player in his house “with a tranquilizer gun & a box of sandpaper condoms”) as well apparent text messages to Incognito describing his drug use and love for the strip club Tooties, where he brought some of his high-school friends.
Incognito did in fact use the n-word in a voicemail to Martin, but his lawyers are said to have presented evidence that the rest of the conversation shows the two talking as friends. Most of all, Incognito’s attorneys have told Wells that Martin may have created the “bullying” charge because he was afraid of losing his job. They point to the fact that his mother is a prominent attorney who specializes in labor law, and what better way to demonstrate a “hostile work environment” than with Richie Incognito’s own noxious language?
For the record, I’ve read nearly two years’ worth of text messages between Martin and Incognito. When you get through the coarse and at times disgusting banter on both sides, they spent most of their time discussing what you would expect any 20-something jocks to talk about: hooking up with women and eating.
I broke the story about Martin’s own disturbing diatribes last week on Foxnews.com. Then, over Super Bowl weekend, I had a chance to interview NFL owners, players and executives. A few echoed the explanation given to me by Ann Marchant, Martin’s spokeswoman, that all he was doing was trying to fit in and deal with a twisted situation. (She denied any further comment until the report is made public.)
Many more offered this common-sense explanation of the entire sordid affair: Jonathan Martin wasn’t living up to his on-the-field expectations and left the team in mid-season, blaming “bullying” to cover up his own poor play. One Dolphins executive told me that Martin was a “good prospect but still hadn’t developed,” which is a nice way of saying that after almost two years in the league, he was considered nearly a bust.
Meanwhile, if Richie Incognito was such a racist, you’d expect that other black players on the team would’ve put an end to it immediately. None did — in fact, not one of those black players has publicly sided with Martin since the story broke.
Incognito’s best friends on the team were said to be Martin and Mike Pouncey, another lineman who is also black. Marchant told me Martin was trying to “be a friend to Richie,” whatever that means, but I can tell you that Pouncey and Martin remain close. They recently hung out together in Hawaii, where Pouncey was playing in the Pro Bowl.
I don’t know all the information Wells has for his report, but I can tell you that common sense suggests that football is a rough sport that isn’t made for everyone, and maybe Martin should have stayed at Stanford.
Oh, and that Roger Goodell still has a snow storm on his hands.
Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.