Last week a sensational story involving the alleged bullying of an NFL player emerged, and the incident proceeded to shoot to the top of national headlines. On November 1, second year Miami Dolphins tackle Jonathan Martin reportedly left his team and drove “straight to a hospital” when he could no longer deal with the supposed bullying from his teammates. On Sunday, the Dolphins, who had initially denied knowing anything about the situation, suspended starting guard Richie Incognito indefinitely for his involvement in the situation.
While Incognito has denied all allegations, he is accused of using a racial slur to describe Martin and also sending him threatening text messages and leaving him threatening voice mails. In April 2013, Incognito reportedly called Martin a “half-n***er piece of (expletive).”
Glenn had so far not commented on the story, but on radio this morning, Pat and Stu (both huge NFL fans) pleaded with Glenn to spend some time on the issue.
“We can talk about the NFL Dolphin bullying story,” Pat said to Glenn. “How can you not be into this? How can you not be into a bullying story in the NFL – the National Football League?”
“Because here's why: We know about the hazing and everything else that happens [in the NFL],” Glenn said. “We encourage it. We condone it… So, the first thing, I'm not interested really. I mean I was interested because I think this guy is sad and think there's something else to this story. There's something going on in the story that we don't know because it doesn't make sense.”
“And here's my take on the possibilities. The guy who is being bullied is mentally unstable, but everybody likes him pretty much. Or they feel guilty about what they did. And you know what, let's just say he was bullied and let's make this go away,” Glenn hypothesized. “[Or] it could be as simple as the guy is bullied his whole life and wants to take a peaceful path and is trying to get along, not causing any problems… Maybe he was just hoping it would all go away. And here he is in his second year, and it continues… If that's the deal, I think he did man up. I think he did man up… He didn't go violent on people… He just walked [out].”
While many analysts and players have come out to question the authenticity of the bullying claims given Martin’s size and the fact that he had apparently never let on that he was bothered by the way he was being treated, Glenn took a slightly different approach to the story. For starters, he argued that Martin’s size and profession is completely irrelevant to the situation because anyone can be bullied. Perhaps more importantly, given the supposed racial slurs involved and the ethnicities of the players, why is no one in the media calling Incognito a racist?
“Tell me why this story is not a racist thing,” Glenn said. “White guy calling black guy N-word. Why is this bullying and not racism? This is why I'm not into this story per se. There's something wrong with the story. And I don't know enough about the ins and outs of sports, but I'm telling you something is wrong… He went to Stanford. His parents are both attorneys. A white guy calling the black guy the N-word and the story is bullying? Something is not right.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP