Jonathan Martin and the Miami Dolphins

It's a little strange, because football is by far the sport with the most educated players, on average.

 

If you have a degree from Harvard or Stanford, chances are you can find better ways to make a living than playing football. I wouldn't be surprised to see Martin do that.

 

Yeah, the American people aren't at all beleaguered by Ivy League eggheads 'leading' us, in Washington and on Wall Street.

 

No politics.

 

Let's say Martin decided to take matters into his own hands and ended up getting shot by
Incognito in self defense. Would sure make an interesting Stand Your Ground case in Fla.

 

Wasn't it Drip who said George Zimmerman should have just taken his beating from Trayvon Martin?

 

This may sound overwrought, but Roger Goodell may go down in history as the man who accomplished what once was considered unthinkable: killing the golden goose that is the NFL.

The more the curtain gets pulled back on this shitshow, the more difficult it's going to be for major corporations to justify shelling out billions to finance it.

If the implications of head trauma/CTE/suicide weren't bad enough for "the shield," now we're going to have a nice long discussion about the culture of a sport that doesn't just encourage, but requires men who enjoy committing violence against each other on a regular basis.

Murderers? Rapists? Wife-beaters? Even bullies??????? Fuck me, I'm shocked.

The simple truth -- as noted in Trotter's tweets -- is that, if not for the negative PR, all 30 NFL teams would take a sociopath like Incognito in a heartbeat over a soft, seemingly thoughtful guy like Martin. Sociopaths, who by their very nature don't give a whit about hurting another individual, thrive in a sport that's built on hurting your opponent.

As far as the league is concerned, sociopaths make for great television. Sociopaths sell out stadiums and sell beer by the truckload. If you want thoughtful, turn on Masterpiece Theater, you fucking pussy.

Still, I wonder how much longer America is going to continue to look the other way, when the more we learn about the "real" NFL, the less there is to like. Do we really want to see how the sausage is made?

I love football. Between August and February, I probably devote more time to the sport than my church. And I highly doubt that I'm unusual in that respect.

But many years ago, polite society eventually lost its stomach for blood and the gladiators went away.

In the NFL's case, death by a thousand cuts no longer seems an unreasonable outcome.

 

Dude, they wore pink all October. Did you miss that?

 

FWIW, I heard Bill Polian vehemently disagreeing with this point on Mike and Mike today.

 

The Steelers used to ask for college transcripts of players, back in the early 1970s, to see if the players had any real motivation outside of football.

And I spent months in an NFL locker room back in the early 1990s, and I cannot dream of players like Luis Sharpe, Aeneas Williams, Mark May, Chris Chandler, Steve Beuerlein, Ken Harvey, Gary Clark or others allowing it to reach this point.

Look at the roster of the Dolphins, and see if you can find 2-3 guys who you would think have enough locker room cred to stand up to this goon.