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The Art Of War And Football

Calum Hayes |
November 19, 2013 | 11:10 a.m. PST

Columnist

Richie Incognito is a jerk. But then, so am I.

Richie Incognito is a jerk. But so am I. (Monica's Dad, Creative Commons)
Richie Incognito is a jerk. But so am I. (Monica's Dad, Creative Commons)

And so are you. 

It’s easy when we see a story like this, one in which a grown man has to leave his work because he’s being bullied so badly, to pick a side.

We can say that Jonathan Martin should have stepped up and stopped what was being done to him. Or we can say that Richie Incognito is a creep who needs to be sent off into the woods until he figures himself out. While either of those could be a rational idea, they miss a central holder of responsibility in this story.

That would be us. 

How simple would it be to remove ourselves from the story of a grown man bullying and throwing racial slurs at another? How simple would it be to get on our soapbox and wag our finger at Richie Incognito? It is all too tempting to stand here and condemn Incognito (deservedly so) for what we see as repulsive actions… but what about our repulsive actions?

Last Saturday was homecoming for USC. The TROJANS, who play in the freaking COLISEUM, went to WAR in the TRENCHES against Stanford. Cody Kessler will threw a couple of BOMBS but, when those fell short, the defense staged a LAST STAND to give Andre Heidari the chance to drill the kick like a SNIPER to win the game. 

It's time to call an audible on this societal pattern. 

Maybe the war metaphors would be more OK if football players had some reminder of their own mortality beyond their coworkers shooting themselves because so much damage has been done to their brains. Maybe the war metaphors would be more OK if there wasn't a 300 lb. man with tribal tattoos rampaging around South Florida dropping the N-bomb (there’s that war terminology) on his teammates left and right.

Maybe, just maybe, the war metaphors would be more OK if we didn’t actually see football as a matter of life and death. 

How long are we willing to push this issue to the back of our minds? At what point are we forced to admit that we’re complicit in Incognito’s behavior? We spend every weekend telling these athletes how invincible they are and we’re surprised they’re treating each other like nothing can touch them?

Richie Incognito was out of line, but so am I. I’m the one in the stands justifying the whole process. I’m the one in the stands staging my protest in the form of… paying to watch the SPECTACLE that is football? 

For a long time, I’ve refused to watch UFC; as far as I can tell, it's just televised assault. Yet, here I am promoting a culture that bred someone like Richie Incognito, who is committing verbal assault (he just didn’t need the cameras around to do it). Here I am, creating a culture that bred someone like Richie Incognito. 

The worst part is I’m going to sit down this weekend and watch too many hours of football and keep supporting this culture. I'll talk about how wrong it is to make football and war the same thing, I'll probably talk about how we should stop treating football players like ancient gladiators. Then, I'll give a dishearteningly hearty thumbs up with my time and money to the culture I'm railing against from the sidelines... like some modern-day Comodus.

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