NFL LOCKER ROOMS:

In a piece written in the LA Times on November 12^th Neal Gabler speaks to how the NFL locker rooms are out of touch with the rest of the world. While I can’t say I completely disagree with Neal Gabler, although it would be a first, I do agree with the concept of manliness equals physicality. As young men we all thought that somehow our only option to harassment, when push came to shove, was through a show of force. As we got older we learned there are many ways beyond physical to face adversity.

I don’t feel anyone in any workplace situation should be confronted with physical nor emotional pain that is not tolerable. That level of tolerance has to be defined by the one receiving the harassment and that can, and will, vary from one person to another. Some of us are thinner skinned than others. Fine, but that is the way it is in the real world. But I also feel a locker is a different work place, a different environment. It is not an office. Offices do not huddle up before the day and rally to motivate each other to victory; offices do not think the way teams think.  Offices are not judged solely on the basis of 16 days of work. To equate a locker room with a normal work place is naïve, although many offices could probably learn a lot from team locker rooms about teamwork, goals, effort, cooperation, and sacrifice etc., characteristics that have all but been eliminated by lawyers from most office environments but thrive in NFL locker rooms.

Lockers are for teams and teams need to build a team characteristic. The strength of any team is developed when each member of the team willingly submits their ego to the team. There is no individual on the team. The team wins and loses together. When the team has a collective ego, separate from the individual members of the team, it is like having a 12th player on the field in football, a 6^th on the court in basketball etc. The extra team member is invisible, cannot be defended against and is the difference between winning and losing. The team is defined by this characteristic. All members of the team have to buy into this concept.

One only has to look at a winning team. There are no black players, nor white players, nor Hispanics, or Presbyterians. There are only teammates, all of which have a job to do and if done properly then they win. As a team.   I find the NFL a great model against the very concept of racism. Win and they all get more money, more rewards, more of everything and they each know they won’t win without the others on the team. Color and everything else be damned. Just do your job.

In the NFL today management has more interest in marketing the game than in the game. They want to sell NFL merchandise to women, women journalists now have to be in the locker rooms and on the sidelines interviewing coaches and players all so the NFL gets more women as viewers. Maybe a softer thought process to the game will attract more female viewers, maybe the game is too rough so they devise ways to hamper how players hit each other. While it is a fact that the average player today is bigger, stronger, faster and probably smarter than their counterparts of decades ago it is also a fact that the physical relativity of one player to another today is the same as it has always been, they are all bigger, faster and stronger. By hampering how a player hits another player by fines and penalties makes a player hesitate. Any one playing sports knows hesitation is a killer. It has to be all or nothing.

Head injuries have to be recognized and dealt with by professionals in the medical community. Unfortunately concussions will be part of the game yet no one should be subject to a concussion and then expected to go back into the game. There are probably better helmet technologies and there are other solutions no doubt on the horizon, but the answer does not lie in asking players to play unnaturally, which is not to say dirty.

If a locker room is a place where camaraderie is established and they need hazing to create it then have at it. No one should be injured or hampered from performing at their top level through in- locker room high jinks. Any player who violates those principles hurts their team and they should be shunned by their teammates for preventing the team for putting their best effort on the field.

People like to watch hard-hitting football. It is a physical and sometimes violent game. Those who play it know all the caveats and yet love what they are doing. Us, on the sidelines, who don’t play, but love to watch, should not suggest how they ought to play the game nor should we carry on the way we have for the last few weeks because something we don’t understand took place in a place we don’t understand yet we feel qualified to solve. We don’t and we shouldn’t.