{"id":1198,"date":"2013-11-06T12:40:29","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T17:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=1198"},"modified":"2013-11-06T12:48:16","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T17:48:16","slug":"tuesday-teabag-richie-incognito-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=1198","title":{"rendered":"UPDATE: Richie Incognito"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bully,<\/a>

Bully, or Employee of the Month?<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday, The Machine awarded our Tuesday Teabag<\/a>\u00a0to Richie Incognito (whose name, we\u2019re told, is code for \u201cDick in Disguise\u201d) for his bullying\/harassment of Jonathon Martin and subsequent suspension from the Dolphins.\u00a0 The story seems simply:\u00a0 a player with a known history of anger issues and being a douche clown harassed and intimidated a teammate.\u00a0 Everyone was quick to jump on the \u201cCondemn Richie\u201d bandwagon.\u00a0 However, this story has elevated to Manti Te\u2019o crazy\u2026we\u2019re learning new things constantly, and it just keeps getting crazier and crazier.\u00a0 And because journalistic integrity is super important to The Machine, we want to give you the latest, which is this:<\/p>\n

Richie Incognito is a victim.<\/p>\n

Let that marinate for a second, and then hear us out.\u00a0 Yesterday, we (astutely) said the following:\u00a0 \u201cMakes you think that [the Dolphins are] taking it seriously not because they just found out about it, but because everyone else did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bingo!\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happened.\u00a0 Last night, the Sun Sentinel reported<\/a> that Dolphins coaches instructed Incognito to \u201ctoughen up\u201d Martin, and that\u2019s what led to Richie leaving that voice message and his persistent targeting of him.\u00a0 And the timing supports this.\u00a0 The voice mail in question was left in April, right after Martin missed two days of (voluntary) team practices.\u00a0 That\u2019s when Richie, known as the Team Enforcer, was told by coaches to contact Martin to \u201cget him in the fold.\u201d\u00a0 He did it at the direction of his employer, and now he\u2019s being held out as the sacrificial lamb for doing his job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, of course the Dolphins will say that they didn\u2019t know what Richie was going to say, they never told him to say those things, and that he crossed the line.\u00a0 That all may be true, it\u2019s all after the fact, cover your ass bullshit.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t the Dolphins ask Ryan Tannehill to reach out to Martin?\u00a0 Because they wanted to send the right message, and now the Dolphins are doing everything they can to distance themselves from the messenger.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s too little too late.\u00a0 It\u2019s like hiring Ron Jeremy to teach your son about sex, and then getting pissed when he goes for the money shot on the neighbor\u2019s daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Richie,<\/a>

Richie, get back there and practice that message again, this time with a little more flare!<\/p><\/div>\n

So how is Richie the victim?\u00a0 Perhaps he really had changed his ways (or was trying to) but the team kept calling on him to be the Enforcer, the take no prisoners asshole that gets everyone in line.\u00a0 Maybe he was just doing his job, perhaps overzealously, but still at the direction of his employer.\u00a0 That explains why there is more support for Richie<\/a> in the Dolphins locker room than Martin.\u00a0 He was doing what he was told, for the betterment of the team.\u00a0 The same team that callously used him and then tossed him aside.<\/p>\n

There are a ton of things wrong here, and by wrong we mean actionable conduct that the league will be forced to investigate.\u00a0 First, the fact that the team is (allegedly) pressuring players to attend voluntary team workouts.\u00a0 These voluntary practices are exactly that…voluntary, and they are voluntary because that are specifically bargained for in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the NFLPA.\u00a0 Any violation by a team of the CBA\u00a0is a big no-no, what lawyers refer to as a ULP (Unfair Labor Practice).\u00a0 To use another legal term:\u00a0 that\u2019s some serious shit.<\/p>\n

Also, it seems that the Dolphins not only knew that Richie was harassing Martin, but instructed him to do so.\u00a0 Can you say hostile work environment?\u00a0 An employer ordering an employee to \u201ctoughen up\u201d another employee is frowned upon, especially when the employer asks someone known as \u201cthe Enforcer\u201d to do their bidding.<\/p>\n

The Dolphins quick response to this issue, while championed by folks as showing the world that they\u2019re not going to tolerate this sort of behavior, is all a smokescreen, designed to protect the organization.\u00a0 However, the spotlight has been (rightfully) put on the team, and The Machine\u2019s willing to bet that the Dolphins aren\u2019t going to be able to withstand scrutiny.\u00a0 We\u2019re thinking fines, potential loss of draft picks, and suspensions from the coaching staff.\u00a0 Coach Philbin has some explaining to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This has now become larger than Richie Incognito (don\u2019t worry, he\u2019s still worthy of his Teabag).\u00a0 This has changed from a player (on his own) harassing a teammate into a team-sanctioned policy of violating the CBA and actively assisting in creating a hostile work environment.\u00a0 Heads are going to roll.<\/p>\n

Who knows where this will end, but this much is for sure:\u00a0 there\u2019s still a lot more crazy to be uncovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, The Machine awarded our Tuesday Teabag\u00a0to Richie Incognito (whose name, we\u2019re told, is code for \u201cDick in Disguise\u201d) for his bullying\/harassment of Jonathon Martin and subsequent suspension from the Dolphins.\u00a0 The story seems simply:\u00a0 a player with a known … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tuesday-teabag"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Bp3y-jk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1198"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1205,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1198\/revisions\/1205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}