Now that he’s done with football following a career notable mostly for his role as the victim in a locker room bullying scandal, Jonathan Martin spends time talking to schoolchildren about social isolation. And Martin says his bully, Richie Incognito, thrived in an atmosphere where bullies are allowed to thrive.
“He’s got his own issues like I had issues with depression related to dealing with all their BS, but I don’t even know if Richie wants to be a bad person. Part of me thinks he just is because he’s allowed to be in the realm he occupies. It’s weird because we still have mutual friends. I have no desire to ever see or talk to him. I’ll get nothing from it. That’s in the past. I don’t know what his thoughts are and I don’t really care, honestly,” Martin told USA Today.
If Martin is right in that assessment, it doesn’t speak well for NFL locker rooms. But nothing we learned about the Dolphins over the course of the Incognito-Martin bullying case reflected well on the team’s locker room.
Martin, however, acknowledges that an NFL locker room is far from the only place where he’s a misfit. In a talk to seventh graders, Martin said that he had trouble fitting in at school, and he has learned that social interactions don’t come easy to him.
“I’ve known ever since I was a kid that I was different from the other kids,” Martin said. “I was trapped in my own head often, and I would later learn that I have major depressive disorder, which means you get sad easier than other people, and I get anxiety to go along with that.”
Martin hopes to encourage young people to be more open to people who are different from them. Perhaps a good message for both young Jonathan Martins and young Richie Incognitos to hear.
