[Incognito’s drunken] assault [on a woman] at an annual team event happened in view of sponsors. [Head coach Joe] Philbin knew it happened yet continued to preach about the quality of the men in his locker room. He got rid of Chad Johnson after a domestic violence incident but kept Incognito after a sexual abuse incident.
The National Football Post on Friday reported Incognito called offensive line meetings at a strip club and fined players if they didn’t show up…
But the Dolphins allowed Incognito to be a member of the leadership council, which empowered him as a leader.
A coach, aware of the sexual assault and Incognito’s penchant for drinking and past drug use, overrides the player vote for leadership council. Philbin this week instead hid behind that vote, saying it was players, not him who made Incognito a team leader.
Look, the people within the Dolphins’ organization claiming complete ignorance of the apparent tension in Martin’s mind over Incognito and others are either lying – which makes them complicit – or out of touch, which makes them incompetent.
Either way, it is grounds for dismissal.
Some fans see what’s going on. And they’ve had enough. Fans have been writing to me and telling me they’re through with the franchise. Others say they’ll never buy a ticket again until major changes in leadership are enacted.
Consider that the Dolphins had 70,660 people at Sun Life Stadium for the season home opener. Then 68,342 for the second home game. Then 60,592 for the third home game. And 52,388 for the fourth home game.
Notice the trend?
Fans were abandoning this team in droves before the current scandal. You think any part of the last week is going to convince them to return?
The Dolphins failed to get public funding for upgrades to their stadium before this happened. Who’s going to vote to give them public money now, and what brilliant politician is going to champion the cause?
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Though college and professional football detests – to the point of seeking and destroying it – any form of thinking, it might be time for the sport to do some reading in the extensive literature on disgust. (The New York Times provides a reading list of some recent works here.) If American football fails to understand the nature and effects of the stupendous revulsion it generates even in its fan base, it might not be able to save itself.
November 11th, 2013 at 11:47AM
The final paragraph of the linked Miami Herald article is the actual reason why the NFL/Miami Dolphins are going into overdrive to mitigate Richie Icognito’s vulgarity and criminality. The league and individual teams are reliant on massive amounts of public subsidies and taxpayer money in order to stay in business. The fact that players are drunken, violent criminals, is going to blow a hole in the PR spin of these guys being anything but. The entire institution is based on lies, not just of the character of the players, but how the pro football is an economic benefit to communities. That’s proven to be a lie as well, the massive public undergirding of pro sports drains those cities of revenue.
The public seems to be catching on. Empty Stadium Syndrome isn’t exclusive to university football, as the above article points out. NFL tv ratings have been stagnant for several years, that’s why the NFL has been trying to push the game into Europe and Asia, in order to backfill the declining American interest. Team owners, networks and their advertisers don’t care if psychopaths such as Icognito, Aaron Hernandez or Ray Lewis are criminals, what they want is for you not to know that, and keep the feeding trough full…