Ted Wells' Report: Richie Incognito a Locker Room Leader...of Harassment

By now, you may have already read Ted Wells'report. Before you comment too much here or elsewhere, please be sure to read the report. The summaries provided by most of the major outlets succeed in making it sound like another day in the life of a few not-so-great guys. This is understandable because of the nature of the report. They simply can't repeat or copy and paste some of the language in the report.

I am not going to cut and paste any of the language here, either, but I am going to make it clear that the report is incredibly disturbing. This stuff goes past what you would ever remotely consider as something common to every NFL locker room. It might be true that locker rooms engage in this kind of behavior here and there, but my guess is that after this report makes the rounds, the average NFL locker room is going to get a healthy dose of something the rest of the professional world already deals with every day: Human Resources.

I'll let the comments section take over from here, but please be careful about attributing this to "what happens in NFL locker rooms." To the extent that is/was ever true, it will not be as true tomorrow. What this report alleges these guys did to multiple persons in the Miami organization is just atrocious. Whether they make millions of dollars or not, this kind of behavior is unacceptable.

I'll leave you with this: let's say--for argument's sake--this kind of behavior is something the vast majority of football players accept as "part of the job and part of the locker room experience." The people who run these NFL organizations simply can't allow it to go down because someday, it will be documented in a report like this. I hate to suggest that the only reason they would ever curb this kind of behavior is because they fear for their own reputation, but we all know how the world works. Nobody wants to wake up one day and have this kind of dirty laundry just airing out for the world to see. It is beyond shameful and embarrassing. Not as shameful and embarrassing as having guys like Incognito on your leadership council, but you know...still pretty shameful and embarrassing.

If abused and harassed members of your organization is not reason enough for change, let's hope front offices will be shamed into reforming their workplace before their workplace shames them.