We recorded this during the 2001 bye week episode, but haven't had a chance to share it with you until now. Listen in as Greg does a deep dive into Richie Incognito, Jonathan Martin, and bullying in the NFL.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/patriots-dynasty-podcast.
This is Christine Brown. And while I have to listen to this podcast as my motherly duty, you have the choice not to. My sons, and of course Michael, sometimes say some naughty things when they're trying to be funny. But really, they're just being stupid. You still want to listen? Go right ahead. I am not your mother.
So enjoy. We'll see you soon. Greg. All right. Let's get into it. All right. So I think most of us are familiar, at least remember to a certain degree, the Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin scandal on the Miami Dolphins back in 2013. So just to give you some context as to who the two guys were.
Jonathan Martin. He was a second round pick out of Stanford in 2012. So this all went down in his second year in the NFL. So he's still pretty new to the league. His dad was a Harvard grad and criminal justice professor at Cal State. His mom was a Harvard grad and a corporate lawyer for Toyota. So obviously Jonathan Martin here. Jonathan Martin. Yeah. So so obviously he had, you know,
a decent upbringing and a fairly affluent family, right? Yeah. As far as mental health issues go, he had had discussions about having severe depression. And he had, you know, this emails with him and his mom talking about how he had contemplated suicide before he showed it to Miami. So this is, you know, this didn't develop in Miami, but he had had issues going in. Gotcha.
Incognito, on the other hand.
He was a 2005 third-round pick.
So he'd been in the league for eight years by now.
He kind of bounced around.
He was a great athlete, but definitely had character concerns.
In college, he was kicked off Nebraska for all sorts of stuff it looked like.
They put him in anger management courses.
He had multiple things of spitting on opponents, getting in fights, all that stuff. Wait, multiple spitting incidents? Yeah, there was a couple. Even Romanowski didn't have multiple spitting incidents. Yeah, right? He's like a poster boy. Yeah. So 2012, he was his first year in Miami. So that was Martin's rookie year. And it happened to be Incognito's best year in the pros.
He's a pro bowler that year. And coincidentally, he got awarded the Good Guy Award for a player who best helps the media do its job, which is pretty ironic considering how the media approached. Is it though? Because I feel like he basically wrote the story for him. That's exactly what I'm saying. Being a media member in Miami at that time hasn't been like dick easy. Yeah. Yeah, but think of which content he gave him the next year. He should have won that award multiple times.
Yeah. The stories wrote themselves. Maybe we'll give it to him this year. Yeah. So 2013 is the year that it all goes down, right? So this is Martin's second year in Miami, incognito second year on the Dolphins. And a few weeks into the season, I think it was like November, Martin unexpectedly leaves the team citing emotional reasons. So that's all that
I'm going to slap your fucking mouth. I'm going to slap your real mother across the face. Fuck you. You're still a rookie. I'll kill you. So once that comes out, Miami's like, you're done. They suspend the rest of the year. And then basically from there, the whole like leak to the press gradually comes out. So there's a lot of like information getting thrown around about, you know, coming from both camps.
Incognito does a sit-down interview with NBC or one of those people.
Oh, I feel like I remember that.
There's not a lot coming from Martin.
He's pretty quiet himself.
There's some stuff from his lawyer, but nothing really directly from Martin.
Then the NFL has Ted Wells.
Recognize that name?
Boy, do I.
He does a hell of a job.
How much money did he make off the NFL? My God. For real. So he does a, you know, one of his official report investigation things. He finds whatever the NFL wants him to find. Right. And he, ultimately his, his, you know, finding was that there was a pattern of harassment between Incognito and a couple other players on the Dolphins, basically bullying Jonathan Martin.
The Case Against Incognito and then The Case For Incognito, right? Oh. All right. So The Case Against Incognito. There's some pretty raunchy shit. There's some stuff specifically about Martin's sister. I'll read you some quotes here. We're going to run train on your sister. She loves me. I'm going to fuck her without a condom and come in her cunt.
Hey, J-Mart's sister's in town.
Get the plastic sheets ready.
She's a squirter.
I'm going...
In that sense, if he knows that personally, then, I mean, it is what it is.
But if he doesn't, that's really messed up.
This next one's kind of ironic.
I'm going to bang the shit out of her and spit on her and treat her like shit.
All right, that one I can verify is wrong.
That one is definitely wrong.
She's a squirter.
He's a spitter.
You know, what are you going to do?
Hence the sheets. Yeah. And my personal favorite, my favorite quote to come out of this whole thing. Hear your sister as a wolf puss, a fat, hairy pussy. Now I'm curious where these texts come in in context of the conversation. Exactly. Oh, we'll get there, Mike. All right. All right. This is the case against. Yeah. So then there was some other stuff about him, like bullying.
trainer like there was like Asian trainer there and they were making like Pearl Harbor jokes or something like that.
Some more of the sister stuff.
He claimed Martin claimed that on the practice field incognito Jerry and Pouncey would call his sister a squirter and then squirt water onto the field from the water bottles.
And that while engaged and warm up stretching they would simulate having sex with his sister.
Incognito confirmed these allegations.
So Incognito is not really high.
You can't get arrested for being a dickhead, I guess.
And he's not denying any of this, right?
Incognito says, yeah, I said all this stuff.
I did all this stuff.
Is his sister hot is the other question.
Does he even have a sister?
Well, yeah, that's a good question.
And also, did they actually date?
Did Incognito actually date his sister? I don't know. We'll have to find that out. Yeah, stat check, Steve? Yeah, I'll do it. So then the other big piece against Incognito is there's a lot of N-words. Well, not a lot, but there is a fair amount of N-words thrown in there, right? Martin's a black player. Incognito, obviously white.
So in text messages, in voicemails, he's throwing that word around pretty flippantly. All right. So the other side of the coin, the case for Incognito. So when all this goes down, right, it all starts getting leaked to the press. There's records of the text messages between Incognito text Jonathan Martin and is like, hey, how you doing? Like, I miss you.
what's going on here? And Martin's like, yeah, no, no, this has nothing to do with you. This is all, you know, none of this is coming from me. And it sounds like really cordial, right? Yeah. So that was kind of weird. And then maybe like three, four months after like all that went down, they released the text message history.
between the two of them.
So this is like over roughly a year.
Yeah, over a year.
And there's like over a thousand text messages between the two of them.
Wait, and did you find out why they waited so long to release all that?
Yeah, so one of them, they said that they don't know where the leak comes from,
but they were, you know, the thing I read was that they were implying it was coming from Incognito's party
just because it honestly puts some of it in context.
It makes it look better for incognito, if we're being honest.
Because, I mean, essentially,
whose text is somebody they dislike or bully a thousand times, right?
Unless he's intimidated, but it definitely gives context.
Because if you're picking and choosing isolated shit, which happens every day now,
it kind of sucks.
And I'm not saying that incognito is right or not.
I don't know the whole thing we're finding out.
But obviously it's a lot more advantageous to pick and choose as opposed to just showing us what happened. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And that's basically what you got. I read through every single one of the text messages. And it was amazing. I tell you, there's some unbelievable stuff in there. But the overall point of it is, I mean, these two guys were...
It didn't come off as like an intimidation thing, right? Like Incognito is inviting them out to bar. Like all the texts were about them like going out and getting puss essentially. Oh, dude. Some of it's raunchy as hell. But at the end of the day, like Incognito is like, you know, being like, hey, meet me out here. Meet me out there. What are you doing tonight? Like, let's go. Let's go to Vegas together. This and that. And, you know, Martin's giving it back to him, too.
He's not being just like a passive observer. Yeah, you have some of his texts. Yeah, so there's one that Incognito is kind of standing by where Martin sends him a meme and it's like, I will murder you and your whole fucking family. That's a hilarious meme. So they're going back and forth kind of shitting on each other, right? Some of it's definitely over the line if you're in...
Yeah, give me some more of the wolf pussy shit from the Jonathan camp. So Jonathan's not so much like, he's less of like, I'm being aggressive towards incognito, but he does say a lot of like, I mean, he's talking about like, coming on girls titties and shit like, you know, like, like raunchy shit himself. It's not so much. He didn't seem like a guy. Not incognito sister or whatever, just some random. Right, right. Yeah.
Locker room talk, as we say. Locker room talk, right? Yeah. And to be honest, being a football player in your 20s in Miami sounds awesome. It sounds awesome. I didn't even think of that. Yeah, because these guys, you know, they're off season. They're just like going out to these bars, getting like the best treatment. They can do whatever they want. You know, they got all the money. Yeah, it's unbelievable.
that team and almost, you know, a lot of people said no comment, but a few people were saying, hey, listen, like these guys are best friends and I don't, I don't agree with this, you know, accusation of bullying. Basically there were more forward than I thought people would be. So I could read you a quote from Ryan Tannehill actually quarterback speaking. Yeah. He said, if you would ask John Martin a week ago, a week before who his best friend on the team was,
Like, big thing that like his defense had on his side was that after these allegations, whatever might have happened, that, you know, these, his victims would continue a relationship with him or, or reach out to him or be very cordial or whatever. Now, obviously like, you know, he's, he's a guy of power and whatever. So it's a little different situation than like teammates. But what I'm, what I'm thinking is, so I'm not going to say any names.
have friends that we say stupid shit with each other and it's not necessarily
personally offensive maybe to other people but um but yeah i'm curious like were they
buddies or was it a situation that it looked like they're buddies and he's like fuck this guy
yeah i mean that's a that's a pretty interesting take i mean i i think i think i understand you
could argue that he richie does have a a certain amount of power over martin right because he's well
that's fair he's a pro bowler he's a leader in the log room actually yeah it's a really good point
There's definitely
so I actually pulled out some
text from the
the texting that I thought was kind of like
because most of the talk
is not serious at all.
Right. They're not actually discussing real
problems and they're just shooting the shit.
So it's kind of hard to get a read on that
of what would happen
if Jonathan Martin says hey listen
you know I'm having a
There was one about getting a girl pregnant too. I don't think I pulled it out, but basically he was like, yo, if you have sex with that girl last night. And he's like, oh, here it is. You good, dude? Did you get some chick pregnant? I'll help you offer if that's the case.
I guess on a tangent so go for it yeah I mean most of it was like some of it was kind of mundane but when I first started I was like dude there's so much funny shit in here like a quarter of the way through I was like all right I gotta like filter down what I think is funny because all of this is pretty funny well and then I was gonna bring up another situation and maybe you guys can like you know as we discuss their relationship I don't know if you have experienced this kind of stuff I would imagine
are two different sides of like this conversation where it's like it looks like a
friendship and one person might even think it's a friendship so they're like no one's
necessarily wrong in the situation if they're not malicious but can it still be a detriment i think so
it's just no but i think in the other case though you you don't keep that guy at bay right you're not
spending your free time with him uh the uh the well the first scenario um i did spend time with a
It wasn't necessarily my first choice
So you were hanging out with him outside of work?
I was, yeah
Andy has been in similar situations
I know for a fact
He probably knows what I'm talking about
But yeah, there are scenarios
You can say it
I was stuck in a pool van with my brothers
I was stuck in a pool van with my brothers
having to listen to them talk
pretending we were friends
Is that what you're talking about?
No, I was talking about just friends that we've had along the way. Oh, okay. Yeah. I loved our time together. Just like that. Cause I was the boss. He just didn't want to listen to me. Oh, he was your boss. Damn. You didn't tell me that. I mean, it was very clear. You were upset, Andy. You hated that job. Wait, we've been friends for the whole time. You didn't tell me that Steve was your boss. He thought he was the boss. Andy was a great employee. Greg was the worst.
Yeah, because we're fucking cleaning pools, bro. Greg didn't give a fuck. Yeah, you didn't listen to anything I tried to tell you to do. Yeah, that's because Steve was like, we're going to change the world cleaning these pools. I was like, dude, I'm making eight bucks an hour in the summer. Give me a break. I'm just trying to survive this thing. And I was the other end of the spectrum talking about how I hated my life. I wanted to kill everybody. When was this? Around the same time?
Yeah, those are dark days for you. Well, Steve started there, and then I joined, Steve left, and then Greg joined. Oh, okay. So we're kind of all overlapped. But yeah, so I mean, I know you're joking about your brothers and whatever, but like, you know what I'm talking about, like, as we were growing up. And so my question is, and I don't know how it even happens, because I don't even think like, like, I didn't even know that I didn't like hanging out with like, certain people until like, time passes. And you're like, wait a minute, what the hell am I doing?
may have been.
Then even if you're what was he six,
four or 300 pounds like that,
you still like inside still have that thing.
We're just kind of going to go along with whatever they say.
And because Richie incognito is the pro bowler and the leader of this
you're just going to go along with what he says.
And if he says you guys are friends and your friends and unless like
something changes,
about teammate you know it was all like high level stuff no one really got into the weeds of it of like trying to look at the actual context of the stuff it was you know trying to get people to click on their article yeah i mean it's definitely a gray area thing right for sure yeah yeah one guy is more nuanced just richie uncognito has literally zero filter and it's just talking about wolf plus
Yeah, right. But it is also tough because there was an age difference, right? So when you're young, and you're in a new environment, you might think a certain way. And like, you know, how I think Andy said, maybe, or maybe it was you, Greg, but how his parents may have sort of enlightened him as things went on, like, hey, you're a football player, but you don't necessarily have to take this or whatever. Maybe he didn't even know how he was feeling. And then he figured it out over time.
I don't think based on what I've remembered from the past that Incognito was
trying to be malicious like Steve was saying
but it is tough
it seems to me that Incognito had some like other shit going on with him
he was fighting his own demons but I don't think he was
well I mean I actually don't know
he was caught off guard by it
Yeah. Oh, he definitely was. He was very surprised when it all went down. And that seemed authentic from what I could tell. I mean, what I find interesting is I can speak like personally from those two scenarios that I said that looking back, it was never a relationship like, you know, we can all talk about stuff and whatever. With those guys, it was never a relationship where I really opened up about much, to being honest. It was like all on the surface stuff. So, and I definitely didn't confide anything. They confided things in me probably because of that false sense of security. But, um,
I never like really went into anything. So that's why I was like curious like if Martin had that relationship with him sometimes where he did open up because if that was the case then it kind of makes it seem like there's a little bit of like a you know cost benefit thing between them. But if it's all just like wolf pussy and then every once in a while hey I can't afford something sorry man oh it's all good then it's like I don't know it's tough. But then obviously it's on Martin as an adult.
to speak up if he wants to be treated a certain way. So yeah, man, I don't know. I mean, what did you determine after all this? Yeah, I mean, I think that you kind of hit the nail on the head there as far as it probably was detrimental to Martin, but he never said anything. Richie thinks he's doing a good thing. So there's no one that's really the asshole here. But it definitely had a
that effect on Martin, right? Yeah. But I don't think it's right to vilify incognito though, because he's, he's not coming from a place of I'm trying to fuck with this guy. He's actually thinking he's doing a good thing. So I, I don't think there's any assholes here. I think it's just one of those weird situations. Right. And I do hate the media. Cause it's like, you know, we've all said stupid shit. You know what I mean? The president has said, grab, grab women by the pussy and he gets a pass for that. Right. So people say stupid shit.
And what people forget nowadays, it's context, right? It's intention and context. So if Richie could say something shitty, and we all can agree that it's shitty, but if he believes based on the environment that was created, that he is being funny or supportive, well, then that sort of manipulates the intention. And so we vilify people because we're like, Oh, you shouldn't have said this thing eight years ago. But it's like, who was that said to? And what was the intention?
Because if you're trying to be a prick, then yeah, let's fucking take matters into our own hands and ruin your life. But if you're trying to be funny or stupid or, you know, whatever it is, and you don't mean any harm, shit, man, like society is pretty rough on that nowadays. Yeah. And I think like a point to bid on that is some people would say that like all the the culture of the locker room is the real problem, right? Because it it fosters this type of like, it fosters incognito thinking he's doing the right thing.
outweigh the fun quote unquote that they're having. I mean, I can agree that, hey, she has a wolf pussy is probably not the best thing to say. That's funny. You know, someone would be like, I wish incognito called my sister squirt. But yeah, that's a language that some people, you know, it is what it is. So now I'm going to determine I'm so high and mighty that I'm going to determine what people should and shouldn't say and when they should say it. That seems insane. Yeah.
like his language that was like vocabulary that was for like you know term papers when you're
talking yeah exactly talking to his parents you know talking about all this stuff and like being like you know
addressing his emotions pretty thoroughly but then with incognito he's one quote i have here is
i'm not gonna make it to dinner i'm shitting chocolate pudding every 10 minutes you know
It sounds like he's just trying to be funny, but he can't really. He didn't seem like he could. He didn't have the same humor. He was trying at times, but it didn't quite hit the mark most of it. I mean, the interesting thing is that like, because I don't remember the timeline, but obviously awareness across the board has happened in the last 10 years. And I think for the most part, I'm a positive. So when these situations happen, I think people have a little bit more tools or support where if someone's
something is bothering you or whatever. Hopefully you feel comfortable enough where you can come out and talk about this stuff. But I mean, wasn't this when this came out, it wasn't like extremely talked about, right? Like wasn't this like sort of opening up the discussion like nationwide? On like bullying? Yeah. Somewhat, yeah. For sure. So I mean, that's interesting because I think, you know, the conversation has grown.
since then, which I think is a plus throughout all this, even though their situation didn't turn out so well. I don't know. What do you guys think about seeing that in sports and sort of the discussions that it's opened up over time? About bullying specifically? Yeah, I mean, I guess overall in general. Yeah, but bullying and that environment. Yeah, I mean, I've been in a lot of locker rooms and I think like,
A good locker room has balance, right? So you have people like Richie, which are great, but then you also have people that are looking out for people like this and that are leaders too that are respected that can be like, that can check Richie for Martin and be like, hey, listen, fuck you. You're such a Neanderthal, right? And Richie would probably be like, yeah, I know.
But then that also makes it feel like Martin's being protected by someone else in the locker room, right? So you have to have both ends of the spectrum to give it more balance. Yeah. So did it just kind of deteriorate too, Greg? Yeah. So as far as like where it went from there, obviously, so Martin, he, you know, never really made it back into the league. He like, you know, was on a couple of teams.
didn't really make an impact and I think he was gone within like three years he was retired
um incognito has had his obviously documented issues since then there was like videos of him
uh ferrari or lamborghini something with a baseball bat yeah he's definitely got his own uh mental
health issues and he's been pretty forward about it too he's talked about it in the media as far as like
Listen, I battle all the time with my anger and mental health. Interesting, Martin maybe fairly recently put up an Instagram post with a picture of a gun and bullets and tagged his high school and said something about bullies will get what's coming to them or something like that. He tagged some of the Dolphins players too, didn't he? I think so, yeah. What?
or revenge.
What? Yikes. So I guess that probably explains the relationship a little bit with some time passing. So that's the coward thing we were talking about where he's probably a little bit more passive in that relationship. So Mike and I keep going on to something. Yeah, I don't know. How did that post it, Andy? February 22nd. It doesn't tell me what year. Incognito's still playing, by the way. I looked it up.
So I think this got him into legal trouble. I think he got arrested for all this. Yeah, I heard that. Yeesh. Yeesh. I mean, so I guess that, you know, at least it did open up discussion so that people can talk about this stuff. Because also, I mean, unless you feel threatened, you should definitely tell somebody, but there's no point in being in a relationship if you don't want to be in it and you're afraid to be in it anyway.
So it's easier said than done, but hopefully it helps, you know, at least give us some tools. And I don't know, you know, what measures were taken since then, but that can help people with that. Right. And make probably makes people think, Hey, is this all in fun? You know, if they have that type of relationship, it probably made them at least think about and be like, this guy's kind of quiet. He might be, you know, a similar situation.
What? Yeah. Well, that's an image. Yeah. Richie recounting the previous night. I got the worst hand job ever. My ween is so chafed right now. Oh, my God. My ween. W-E-I-N. Oh. I was going to ask you how you spelled it. No, yeah. I would have bet money on double E's. Yeah. My ween. He started spelling weener and just couldn't, thought it was cooler without the E-R.
I'm going to say that incognito probably thought the word was cooler without the ER as well.
Hey, just misspelled it because it's not a spell.
And to be fair, he was probably like, oh, wiener, that's childish. I'm going to call him a ween.
So chafed right now. Worst handjob ever.
Two stars.
There was a lot of talk about prostitutes too, which I guess is fairly common.
They'd be like, oh, you going to this bar?
Or like, how is it there?
And they're like, oh, no, it's all prostitutes.
Don't bother coming.
So Martin doesn't like prostitutes.
Richie, can you guess?
I guess he has less of a problem.
Martin says, nah, I'm grossed out by prostitutes.
To which Richie says, ha ha, you cunt.
The strippers who go the extra mile.
Oh, Richie. And then the last one I had pulled up was Richie saying, yo, I got those chicks from last night lined up. Let's go eat with them and bang their mouths. That shouldn't be funny. That's so funny. Who knows? Whining and dining, baby. Let's go eat with them and bang their mouths. That's ridiculous. That way in the world. I don't know.
I feel like that might be our sign off. No, wait a minute. What about like, thanks for listening. Don't bang their mouths. Hey, this is awful. What about do you guys think that this was going on in the Patriots at all? Like just by any type of thing that you might have heard over over time? Like do you remember seeing anything like this coming from the Patriots side of things? I would think it's a more professional locker room. I don't think I can think about it off the top of my head.
What year was Gronk drafted? 2011? Alternate universe. Rich Incognito and Gronk on the same team in the same locker room. 2010. Incognito on the Bills in 2010. Because he went from the Dolphins to the Bills, right? Oh, that's right. And the Bills passed on Gronk.
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, do you guys have any opinions on this stuff? I've been kind of talking about this stuff. But Andy, I mean, we grew up together. Did you encounter some of this stuff? Because I know we were both quiet. I obviously developed a little bit of a tongue as we got older. But yeah, I don't know if you had any or how was your childhood, man? I was never big enough to be able to talk back to people. So I just had to make jokes out of it all.
So I got really good at the self-deprecating humor very quickly. Because I was super annoying as a child. And people wanted to beat me up. And so I would ask them to schedule it, please. Because I had so many people who wanted to beat me up. I would see if I could fit them in. And that seemed to diffuse the situation in middle school. So you had jokes written? You were already writing jokes of that age? Off the top of my head, bud.
Shitty Upbringing
When it comes to opposite sex
I don't know that backpack you had was pretty
fucking cool though
Right? A little spiky backpack
Well that was part of the whole Columbine look
That's not a good thing to throw around
I'm not saying I was going to do anything
but I used that to my advantage
It had happened and everybody
I didn't bring it up on myself
It's just as soon as it happened everybody kind of
April 20th, 1999. So I think we would have just been... No, because we graduated in 01. So yeah, probably sophomore, maybe junior, give or take. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. But I'm also wondering why that is, because obviously, like, you know, and I don't know if everybody goes through this, but, you know, you obviously felt that. I felt different things as well. And maybe it was perception. I don't know, because, like,
Have I ever bullied someone? And two, have I ever been bullied? That's also a very good point. Yeah. So from the have I bullied thing, there's one thing that came to mind of at UNH, I was on a soccer team. And so this may be like my junior or senior year. When you first come there, we all shower together, which is very like strange for a lot of the freshmen because they show up and they've never had to shower.
around, you know, a team, which can be weird at first. Like you get over it within like a month and it's after that, it's not a huge deal at all. But so to like break the ice, I used to like kind of be like in your face about it, you know, and just be like, you know, in my, in my mind, I was like, just to be like, Hey, this isn't a big deal. You know, we all got dicks. Let's swing them around. And I remember there was one kid who showed up who was quiet. That was the locker next to me. And I used to
Like, do the aggressive under-the-leg drying of my nuts. Looking him in the eye. I always thought he thought I was funny, but looking back, I'm like, maybe that wasn't the right thing to do. I think he was a good player, so I think he ended up finding his way pretty easily. But still, if he hadn't been a good player, I think it could have been easily gone the other way.
is a big smelly n-word with AIDS. And immediately I was like, oh, it's him. There's no fucking way it's not him. There's the type of shit you do. And I was just like, yeah, I have no idea why that would happen. And then I had to like go and talk to the fucking guidance counselor or everything. But when I saw him, I was like, dude, what the fuck, man? And he was like, yeah, it's funny, right? And I was like, no, really?
Not that it absolves anybody from acting like that, but I also hate how I have to like, I feel like in talking about this stuff, like I was bullied. I was probably a bully too. We're all fucking dickheads. But like, as we're talking about this, I find myself dancing around words and I have to pause and make sure I'm like, it's bullshit. Like most people nowadays don't talk like this, but I think it's good to have this discussion because it's not just so bland or black and white. Yes. Yeah. It's like, it is
I went to Target and bought one. And then to my credit, he's like, dude, don't wear that. And I was like, all right. I get that. I'm sure he, you know, in like you can compare that to Richie and Cognito and Jonathan Martin. He had the wherewithal to be like, Steve, like, I know you should think this is funny. And like, it doesn't really bug me that much. But if you did that, that would piss me off. And I was like, all right, bet. I got you. I'm not going to do that because we're friends.
I can see you know me I'm sure I've taken it too far at some point in my life oh yeah I'm sure I have too yeah I can be relentless in that too I get that talk often from even my wife where she just apparently I'm like a puppy where as soon as if I if I'm home first and she comes home from work I just like I'm sitting there waiting by the door for her to just shower her with affection when all she needs is to be
I'll throw anybody under. No, especially me. It's everybody. I just know more things about you. Oh, there you go. That's what it is. You're lucky that I do value our friendship and I do think you're a friend. But that could change at any minute. I'll keep that in mind. Fair enough. Let's keep an open dialogue. Yeah, but like you were saying, Mike, when I was the quiet kid in high school and so because of that, everybody thought I was the college
I'm lying kid but it wasn't just because I was quiet it was because I was socially awkward as well so I think to your point when they would come and try to talk to me and try to open me up I didn't know how to interact with them because I didn't know how to interact with anybody so I was I would come off as strange to people I didn't know I probably still come off as strange people I do know but they understand that I'm strange and that's just how I am so they look past it
I think those sorts of things in high school especially get you a bit of a reputation. Yeah and I think it's like age is a lot to do with that too right you've come into your your own a lot now you understand who you are you understand what kind of like people you want to interact with whereas at that age you're like hormones are flying you know you're learning on the fly how to interact with people you're trying to finger bang you don't know you know you don't know what's going on so you just try not to get back
That's going on. It's hard to
take a step back and be like, all right, how is this affecting other people?
Because all you can think about is yourself.
True. And there's so many people in one location, especially at that young of an age,
where let's say you have a well-intentioned teacher that's got like 35 kids running around like maniacs.
That's tough for anybody.
Things are going to slip through the cracks.
Exactly, for sure. I think it's inherent in just you're trying to find. It's that pack mentality, unfortunately, where you're trying to find people that you can gravitate towards so that you don't feel alone. And sometimes there's fallout with that. And I think we're trying to figure it out. But yeah, it's insane when you're younger. And even to your point earlier, Mike, I think there's a ton of pressure to fit in to be a part of that pack. And then as you get older, you're like, wait a minute, no, fuck that.
It's gonna be me. Yeah. Guys, I think we just solved the school shooting problem in the US. Everyone just, everyone just listened to this pod. Right? Yeah. I don't know if we can do another episode after this. Yeah, Richie Incognito is really good. Maybe we'll tackle cancer next. I'd rather not. Yeah, that one seems black and white. All right, maybe football then. All right, yeah. With a little football, we're not.
And if not, we strongly apologize for everything. We don't condone anything that we said. We're not professional. And as Mama Brown said at the beginning of this episode, we're very naughty boys. So it's well intentioned across the board. So God bless or not. God bless.