football culture: Richie Incognito and Ray Rice

It surprises a lot of people when they hear about how much I like football now. When I was younger, I hated a lot about football.

Or at least I thought I hated football, what I hated was football culture. I was raised with the idea that young men who play football are rude, sexist, uneducated and that football fans weren't too different.

My freshman year of high school the Freshman quarterback was in my English class. He was entitled and selfish. His mother worked for the schools so he never got punished for acting out. One day in English class he called me a dyke. I was a hot headed teen and we almost came to blows. He was sent to the office and nothing happened to him. The whole semester he said shitty things to me and he was just sent to his mom's office. I am smarter now. I work in education. If I would have known now what I knew then, I could have filed a lawsuit against my high school for not taking any actions to curb his douchey behavior.

However, as a freshman, that is when I learned that what you do and who you know gets you everywhere in life. He went on to be the JV QB, and the Varsity QB, but he never stopped being an asshole.

To this day, I bet he is an asshole.
~~~

I wasn't really shown differently in graduate school either. Not because of my cohort, but because of everyone else I knew who watched football. During graduate school, a lot of very smart people talking football was interesting. However I couldn't participate. 

I decided to start doing Fantasy Football and I had so much fun last season. I went to my first came with The Boyfriend on his birthday. I worked with my Coach so we could talk fantasy and strategies and it was fun. It was fun watching football with Mr. Anderson.

It was SO FUN! Fantasy gives you something extra, you don't have to know a ton about the different teams but you always have someone to root for.

These men are all wonderful people. Kind, fun, good friends. They all respect women and value diversity in people. I felt that I was proven wrong about football culture.

Then the season ended and the shit hit the Fan.

It started with Richie Incognito.

Just a little background really quick.
He was drafted in 2005 by the St. Louis Rams was there until 2009 when he played with the Buffalo Bills. He was there for one season and then started playing with the Dolphins in 2010 where he played until 2013.

His college record for douchebagger isn't short. Short temper, spitting on other players, picking fights. He got put in anger management classes in college. However he was still getting recognition for being a "great" football player. He was a First-Team Freshman All-American and was rewarded first-team All-Big 12 selection.
He got in a fight at a college party and earned 3 counts of assault. He was finally suspended from Nebraska because he got in a fight in the locker room.He went to the University of Oregon but was dismissed because he had not met the conditions set out for him to play at Oregon (he was supposed to take anger management classes).

Incognito is known for playing dirty on the field and obviously being a dick off the field.
in 2012 he sexually harassed a volunteer at a golf outing. Read More here

Big surprise, he didn't apologize and nothing happened.

Chances are nothing would have continued to happen expect he then got in trouble for harassing a fellow player, Jonathon Martin.

Now, I read the Wells Report. Yes I actually read the whole report the day it came out and it was pretty messed up. You can read it too here but only if you really want to be disappointed in men. He says some really terrible things about Martin's sister and mother. It's 144 pages of a sad man being a dick and having his behavior rewarded.
Now this is an edited transcript of one of the voicemails Incognito left Martin.

"Hey, wassup, you half n----- piece of s---. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. [I want to] s--- in your f---ing mouth. [I'm going to] slap your f---ing mouth. [I'm going to] slap your real mother across the face [laughter]. F--- you, you're still a rookie. I'll kill you."
Incognito was suspended for 3 months. Now he is a free agent and most teams would be smart enough to not touch him with a 10 foot pole, let alone let him in their locker room. 

Then came Ray Rice.

Worst thing is I drafted Ray Rice last year! He was one of my first picks. EDIT: I removed the video from my post. After reading The Revictimizing of Janay Rice it felt like the right thing to do

I think the absolute worst thing about this video is how he stands in the elevator after her face smashes into the railing. He just stands there. She is laying on the ground, her shoe has been knocked off and he stands there.

EDIT:The absolute worst thing about this video is that after he drags her out of the elevator and she comes to, she sits in the doorway and sobs. She sits there, with no shoes on and weeps. He stands away from her and you can tell by his hands that he is frustrated that she is carrying on. Her head just met his fist and the it met a metal wall. Towards the end of the video someone is rubbing her shoulder and comforting her, but it isn't Rice.

Here is a story for you. The Boyfriend accidentally elbowed me in the face once. The boyfriend isn't a small man either, he is 6'5" and quite strong. I thought my nose was broken. Pain explored through my face, snot dripped from my nose and I though it was blood. He was SO SORRY. He apologized and made sure I was okay. He took care of me.

The thing is, with The Boyfriend it was an accident. Rice, a professional football player, purposefully lays his fiance out. He spit in her face and punches her. 

When the pictures of him dragging his girlfriend out of the elevator came out in the off season I was furious. He got a 2 game suspension for his assault charges. The NFL came back and realizing they were too light on domestic violence issues set a new punishment for domestic assault charges, which is now a 6 game suspension. source

Then TMZ leaked that video and as of today Ray Rice was was released from the Ravens. On the NFL reddit, people were speculating who would sign Ray Rice next. Then the NFL officially suspended Ray Rice indefinitely. If a team wants to sign Ray Rice, they have to get express permission from the Commissioner.
Now there is a lot of talk about how the Commissioner Roger Goodell didn't handle this right. Now there is debate happening on when he originally saw the video. There is debate how the justice system didn't hold up their end of their deal. That Rice shouldn't have been given such a light sentence, and this is assuming that the the judges saw the elevator video. 
~~~

So now, as a football fan, I feel conflicted.

Incognito reminds me of that asshole QB from my high school who made my English class hell. Who called me a dyke and was allowed to be an asshole because of who he was. Rice, who is literally a month and a half younger then me, beats the shit out of his soon-to-be wife. I wonder "How can I support an institution like the NFL?"I literally just spent $250 on Colts tickets for next Monday. 

Then coach Harbaugh, says that he hopes they (Rice and his wife Janay) can get through it. WHAT THE FUCK MAN! She needs to get out. They don't need to work it out. HE needs help. She needs support, she needs to know it's okay to leave. Abuse survivors stay with their abusers because they are convinced that is what they deserve. They tell themselves things will get better, that if they do x,y and z their partner will be good to them. I am hoping she gets out. Rice just had the carpet pulled out from him, who's to say he won't hit her again. Now that his livelihood is gone, where is he going to channel is anger? He couldn't get through an off season without hitting his now-wife, what about now when there is no return?

Of course the person we weren't hearing from was Janay Rice, Ray Rice's wife. She made a statement via Instagram.

"I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare, feeling like I'm mourning the death of my closest friend. But you have to accept the fact that reality is a nightmare in itself. No one knows the pain that the media and unwanted [opinions] from the public has cause my family. To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret every day is a horrible thing. To take something away from the man I love that he has worked his ass off for all his life just to gain ratings is horrific. THIS IS OUR LIFE! What don't you all get. If your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you succeeded on so many levels. Just know we will continue to grow and show the world what real love is! Ravens nation we love you!"

I am feeling very conflicted about many things. Actors and sport players are public figures. This is difficult for many people. I think Janay is completely validated in her feelings. She didn't give her consent to have that video aired. Her husband has become a public figure of an abuser, and she, the victim. It's hard to talk about because on one side, the public needs to discuss this situation. Ray Rice is a famous football player. Many people looked up to him. Ray Rice, in a sense belongs to the public. On the other side, a woman deserves her privacy especially as she starts to work through her situation.



~~~
I thought seriously about giving up football. Especially with all the Incognito stuff, which really rang home for me.

However, then I remember my friends Mr. Anderson and Coach, men who like football, who are good people and respect women. The Boyfriend, who grew up watching football but is one of the most level headed men I have ever met. I think about the parent's who are talking to their children about how it wrong to hit people off the field and that it's always wrong to use your fists in anger. 

I hope that bystander intervention happens more often because of this. I hope people see that bullying doesn't have to happen in the locker room. That is doesn't make you tough to pick on someone else.

I think I hope most of all that football doesn't let me down.

First Sunday, the holy Sunday

Today I am starting Andrew Luck in my BB league over my backup Jay Cutler.

Andrew is ranked higher in Fantasy point then Jay Cutler but the Colts play the Broncos tonight at 8:30.

And for those of you who don't know, the Broncos mean - Peyton Manning.

There is so much love in Indiana for both the Colts (our home team) and the Broncos (Peyton Manning's new team). If you ask anyone in Indiana, they will tell you that Peyton made Football good at home.

Manning played 14 seasons with the Colts. He took them to the Superbowl twice and they won once and there are many division champions in there too.

In Indiana, Manning is a football god.

Last year in his first game of the season Manning through 7 touchdowns (this is fantasy football gold, actually this is just plan FOOTBALL gold.)

Andrew Luck threw 2 in his first game last year.

However when the Broncos played the Colts last season, the Colts won on their home field. It was an overall emotional affair for Indianapolis since the city never really got the chance to say goodbye to Peyton Manning.

No one expected the Colts to win, but they did.

Tonight they play the Broncos in Denver.

So we shall see if starting Luck over Cutler who is predicted to put up 21 points today, just like Andrew Luck.  Yet the Bears are playing the Buffalo Bills tonight.

Well no use worrying. It's time to play.

New Season

Today, it was calm on campus. Students walked about and I sat in my office looking out my window. I knew. I knew the time had come. In my heart, I felt that football season was finally upon us.

The occasional football jersey in the crowd was an unspoken sign from friend to foe. My team will destroy your team. Eyes met, smirks were exchanged.

Today starts the season.

The season in which I will WIN