In The Locker Room

A very hot topic right now going on in the sports world is Bullying in the locker room of a professional team and in normal everyday life. What’s the difference? I’m here to tell you folks. There is a difference a huge one. When growing up as a child whether you are hanging out with friends or family members every single one of us have been witness to bullying at some point. When you’re a kid you get bullied because either you’re not seen as one of the gang or some tough kid thinks that he’s bigger and stronger than you. At some point if you’re going to stick up for yourself and have dealt with it for a good amount of time what happens? You get tired of it and you fight it out. The bigger man wins and most of the time the bully will leave you alone and everything is all good and most of the time you become very good friends. That’s what happens in your child hood. So if you fought as a kid and took care of the bully then what is the big deal here with Martin and Incognito? These are grown men in the toughest of the toughest sports and the most diverse locker rooms in sports. These guys go out and fight tooth and nail competing in practice and games. Things are said on the field that would never be repeated in the outside world. This is a different sport folks and you cannot compare it to anything in the normal world because inside that locker room the world is very different. Conversations are different, relationships are unique, there’s a brotherhood, a code that every player that walk between those doors have to hold themselves to. Like going to Vegas “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”. That’s the same thing in the locker room people. It’s a bans world a dog eat dog world and if you don’t take care of yourself then you will get taken care of. These guys love you but at the same time if you’re not tough then this isn’t the job for you. You can’t run and avoid conflict. If you want to survive then you better stand your ground. In the Locker room u there’s no room for the in between. You’re either on board or not, you in the fraternity or not. Guys can’t look over at you and know they can depend on you if they don’t see that you don’t have that fight to keep getting up when you are getting knocked down. It’s about trust, accountability and pushing the guy next to you to be the best that he can be. Maybe he’s not tough enough and you need to toughen him up. If you’re the guy who is a leader on the team it's your duty as a leader to call guys out. When doing so you may get the personal as a hard person who being too aggressive and pushing too hard. You call guys out when you or the team feels like he’s not working hard enough. If your they guy getting the flack and your mentally not strong enough to deal with it then most likely you’re going to either break or walk away. Remember you don’t want any conflict because you’re not use to the atmospheres. But at the same time, you have to stand up because if you don’t then they are going to keep at it. Moral of the story is no one should ever compare the life of the professional athlete to a normal person career because these guys are cut from a different cloth and that is what got them there where they are at. Drive, Determination, competition and being able to weather the storm in any situation brought in front of them. The same thing that drives them is sometime the same thing that gets them in trouble. That’s the fine lien that you have between a Pro Bowler and a Hall of Famer. A good player and an average player. And you scrub from a backup. Some things in a locker room a normal person may think of as bullying is actually a way that a player see fit as a way of lighting a fire underneath another player to get them to play to the best of their abilities. It’s the way of life in the NFL or as a professional athlete.