The culture of the NFL locker room is emergent, Russ Roberts argues:
Yes, the coach has some control over it. But the control is limited. These are large men who once a week make a living in a violent often unpleasant way. To be outraged over bullying in this environment is to misunderstand the world these people live in. It’s a tough world. It’s not like my world or your world. It’s a painful world. It’s a world where every player plays hurt. Linemen in particular play with broken bones. There is plenty of ego at the New York Times and ESPN and I’m sure newcomers there can be intimidated and even treated cruelly. But probably not like the NFL. It’s probably worse in the NFL for lots of people. But there’s a reason for it. And it’s not something you can “fix” with some new rules or regulations or an investigation.
The culture of an NFL locker room emerges from the bottom up and not the top down. It emerges because of what’s at stake every Sunday — the money and the pride and the glory — and it emerges from the people who are able to play through pain knowing that they may have trouble walking when they’re forty. They’re not normal. They are surely not physically normal. But they are probably not emotionally normal either. They cope with the challenges of their work environment by creating a very tight knit camaraderie of social interaction that you and I can’t begin to understand. How can you judge those men? If you don’t like the heat, you don’t have to work in the kitchen. Jonathan Martin has left the kitchen. I don’t blame in. I would, too.
The other part that’s strange about the outrage is that if you’re going to be outraged about the NFL, be outraged by the violence and the pain and the concussions and the possible brain damage and the shame and humiliation of failure that is witnessed by millions ever week. But bullying is the thing that has to stop? Because it’s a workplace? Ashley Fox is probably right — the laws of the workplace probably do apply to the NFL. But I can’t imagine how you enforce those rules. And what she misses and what Rhoden misses is that most of the men who work in that workplace like it the way it is. The men who play know that they are elite and rare. They are part of a community we can’t begin to understand. How do you understand grown men who try to hurt each other for three hours on a Sunday afternoon embracing each other when it’s over?
It’s not for everyone. It looks like it’s not for Jonathan Martin. But I have trouble condemning Richie Incognito when his own teammates come to his defense. That should tell everyone that something more complicated is going on here than one worker harassing another.
One commenter brought up Terry Tate, Office Linebacker: