Richie Incognito Isn't a Racist...

...He's just an asshole.

A bunch of of the talk about the Incognito/Martin saga going on down in Miami has centered around Incognito's use of the N-word to refer to his Martin, his teammate.  Many of the meatheads running to Incognito's defense, especially fellow Dolphins, center around their contention that Incognito is not a racist.  My response is that they may be right, but who cares?

Icognito is a bully.  Bullies bully using the tools they have available to him and racial slurs are easy for someone of Incognito's level of sophistication.  The evidence doesn't suggest that Incognito bullied Martin because Martin is black.  The evidence suggests that Richie Icognito is an asshole, regardless of who his unfortunate target is.  It doesn't matter if he's targeting a teammate, or some woman who had the unfortunate luck to encounter him at a charity golf outing in 2012.  Truth be told, it doesn't take an especially talented google searcher to find accounts of Incognito's misdeeds going back to his college days. 

In short, those focusing on the use of the N-word and whether or not that means Richie Incognito is a racist are clouding he issue.  The fact remains that he is a bully and an asshole.  Some of his bullying involved the use of racist language that may or may not have been condoned by other teammates.  While that's an issue worth considering, it's not the primary issue that Joe Philbin and the rest of the Dolphins' leadership has to worry about.

Racist or not, the Dolphins allowed this type of bullying behavior to go on.  By some accounts, it may have been with the knowledge or even direction of the coaching staff.  Racist or not, this type of behavior should not be tolerated in any workplace, even one as aggressive and testosterone fueled as professional football.  Incognito is a horrible bully.  The question that remains open is whether Philbin and the coaching staff knew about the situation, was willfully ignorant of the situation, or, worse yet, ordered the "code red" on Martin.  That will go a long way to decide how this situation ends up playing out, but it seems pretty clear that things are not going well in the Dolphin's locker room.