Richie Incognito, notorious bully, named first national ambassador for anti-bullying association
Richie Incognito earned infamy in the NFL for being the ringleader of a toxic bullying culture when he was a member of the Miami Dolphins in 2013.
The horror show in the locker room included Incognito abusing rookie Jonathan Martin and directing racial slurs at the team’s assistant trainer, which got the offensive lineman kicked off the team and eventually shipped to Buffalo.
Even wilder given the times we now live in, Incognito was accused of throwing racist taunts at Yannick Ngaouke of the Jaguars during a game last season.
For that persistent pattern of bullying, poor character and just generally being one of the least likable players in the sport, Incognito has become a pariah in his post-football life, destined to live with the shame of his terrible behavior …
… no, wait, it says here in a report from NewYorkUpstate.com that Incognito has been named a national ambassador for an anti-bullying organization in Los Angeles.
Incognito will be representing the Boo2Bullying group, founded in 2011 to provide “outreach, education, mentoring, inspiration and support for our youth and their families,” according to a press release.
In it, Incognito called bullying a “national crisis.”
He also went on to say, “I can personally relate to it from both sides — being bullied and being accused of being a bully.”
Which, tell that to the third-grader who bullies the kindergarten kid out of his lunch money and then has to hand his take over to the sixth-grader.
Incognito also says he was bullied in high school.
“A group of guys actually threw rocks at me,” he said. “My dad told me not to worry and to focus on football. So I grinded, and at this point I was really starting to excel. After a few weeks of not letting it bother me, I actually became friends with the guys that bullied me. They are still my friends today, and anytime I go home now, I make sure we find some time to catch up. It just goes to show what can happen when you actually take the time to get to know someone, instead of treating them a certain way because they are different than you.”
Hey, good for him learning a life lesson and showing it’s never too late to mend one’s ways. Let’s not take that away from him.
But this is a questionable move for Boo2Bullying, which undermines its credibility as an organization by enlisting someone whose life has been an example of what not to do.
After all, even if you put Sarah McLachlan music behind Michael Vick in a commercial, the first thing you think of isn’t going to be “be kind to animals.”
Incognito retired in April, tweeting to the NFL Players Association that he was “done” playing football, this shortly after firing his agent with a tweet.
He asked the Bills to release him from the retired list in May 21 so he could become a free agent, but after an arrest and a brief three-day stint for observation in a mental hospital, Incognito refuses to live up to his name.
And just two months after using Twitter as a bully pulpit, we’re supposed to believe that Incognito cares about the people he used to brutalize.
Here’s hoping his actions will match his words and he’ll go from part of the problem to part of the solution.
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