I sit in bewilderment when I hear people and pundits on radio and television say - along with fellow NFL players - that there is an attitude one has to bring to the game of football. I heard something akin to this: To play football professionally, you really have to have an attitude that other people or athletes just don't have or understand. Well quite frankly, I couldn't disagree more on two separate fronts.
On the sport front, it really is a ridiculous statement. Football players are no grittier than rugby or ice hockey players or race car drivers who dash from death weekly on the Nascar or Grand Prix tours. Having played both rugby and football myself, I found rugby ten times more grueling without having any stoppage in play, having to play offense and defense, and hitting just as hard all without any padding or head protection. Rugby players rarely question the referee - they play a mean game with tact, sportsmanship and brutality. I am sure hockey players would say their game is brutal too. To sail around the world solo is grittier than I can imagine.To play 162 games in one season, as major league baseball professionals do, is unrivaled. Night after night, traveling and playing and then traveling again. Brutal on the mind and body. The NFL, folks, is just another game and sport.
But more importantly, we are all football players. We, as Americans, work to provide for our family and maintain an economy in a moral-based environment and country. And there is never an excuse to racially slur or humiliate a fellow worker. It's a sad day to see a team effort debased by offensive behavior.
Football is one of America's biggest exports in reality with games now watched across the globe. It's big business. And this "attitude" that one has to bring is brought into a significant workplace - the locker room and on the field. NFL players are employees and are paid to perform. They cannot make the workplace hostile to fellow colleagues, players or coaches. If they do, they should be dismissed like any other employee. NFL players are just like the rest of us workers: working hard in a stressful environment. No different. No one should ever use the "N" word, as a person or an employee. Nor should any football player at any time for any reason. Neither can Richard Incognito. To even start defending him is callous and wrong.
This is a human resources issue which could lead to criminal charges, and the NFL needs to get on board and stamp on this harder than they are stamping down on helmet to helmet hits. How can we improve our own workplaces here in our cubicles or are classrooms when our "idols" in the NFL are using the "N" word? We can't. We have to show the world how wrong this is and in order to do that Incognito must become incognito - terminated by the Dolphins and banned from the NFL without severance or benefits and without a glowing reference. Anyone in any other office environment or workplace would be treated, hopefully, in the same way. The NFL is no different and they had better understand that point sooner rather than later.
