Is the NFL's Attempt at Regulating Locker Room Culture Going to Work?

The NFL didn't have a dogfighting problem in 2007. It had a Michael Vick problem.

It's fair to ask in 2014: Does the NFL have a bullying problem? Or a Richie Incognito problem?

The league is not waiting to find out, already having dispatched a cadre of "Ambassadors," former players well-versed in the language of locker-room culture, for a three-week tour of every NFL team facility this month. The one-hour seminar will be devoted to discussing why referring to your teammate as a n-word is a bad thing, you guys. While other potential "workplace issues" will surely be addressed, it's clear that the seminars are a reaction to and designed to avoid a repeat of the antics in the Miami Dolphins locker room last year.

This is what the league loves to do. Bringing in former players to sit in front of current players for a don't be like me chat is the NFL's version of "Put A Bird On It," as one can almost hear the rolodex of league alums being rolled out whenever prolonged negativity begins to stick in the SportsCenter rotation. But do the league's other 31 locker rooms have the same issues as Miami's did last year?

Most of us know the story: Dolphins offensive lineman Jonathan Martin walked out on his team in the middle of the season, reportedly due to harassment at the hands of Incognito, the Dolphins' veteran guard. The media swarmed and heads rolled. The Dolphins limped to an 8-8 finish with the media's glare trained on the organization throughout.

Incognito's contract would run out after a suspension that lasted eight games; he remains a free agent. Martin said publicly that his days in teal and orange were done through, and was traded to San Francisco in March, where he'll battle for a roster spot on his college coach's team.

Dolphins head coach Joe Philbin kept his job, claiming (credibly) that he knew nothing of what was happening in his own locker room. Offensive line coach Joe Turner was less fortunate. Dolphins head trainer Kevin O'Neill was also let go, as was general manager Jeff Ireland, though it's arguable he should have been fired for the team's on-field performance anytime since 2012.

The supposedly unprecedented nature of Martin's treatment while on and after departing the team, led to the Wells Report, a 148-page document produced through an independent investigation, highlighting the offensive lineman's travails through 2013. It is a document full of both fantastic profanity (Incognito taunting Martin about his sister: "My dick is dry and needs some of her healing squirt juices.") and gut-wrenching sadness (Martin later texting his parents: "People call me a Nigger to my face …they say terrible things about my sister. I don't do anything"). The Wells Report is impossible to read without harboring both sympathy for Martin as well as scorn for Incognito, and the report's release cemented Incognito's role as a dickhead cum laude in NFL lore.

"The facts we uncovered do not support the view of Incognito and his teammates that this conduct was all good-natured fun among friends," the report reads, in perhaps the understatement of the year. Martin not only fended off verbal barbs from Incognito for the first half of the 2013 season before walking out, but also fellow offensive linemen John Jerry and Mike Pouncey, who reportedly followed the veteran Incognito's lead.

Incognito had the track record of anger management issues, even during his days at Nebraska. He had been named in a 2009 poll as the NFL's dirtiest player, the more he sounded like a bully. Allegations of misbehavior at a charity golf tournament in 2012 and of punching out a security guard last summer made it infinitely harder to take Incognito's side, though few seemed to rush to Martin's.

Lydon Murtha, who was on the Dolphins roster during the 2012 preseason, suggested that Incognito wasn't the issue with Martin, and echoed the sentiments of many who weren't ready to consider this an instance of bullying.

"Martin did not seem to want to be one of the group," Murtha told MMQB.com last year. "He came off as standoffish and shy to the rest of the offensive linemen. He couldn't look anyone in the eye, which was puzzling for a football player at this level on a team full of grown-ass men."

"The crap [Incognito] would give Martin was no more than he gave anyone else, including me. Other players said the same things Incognito said to Martin, so you'd need to suspend the whole team if you suspend Incognito."

The Wells Report didn't exactly give Martin a pass for being so introverted. "To be candid, we struggled with how to evaluate Martin's claims of harassment given his mental health issues, his possible heightened sensitivity to insults and his unusual, 'bipolar' friendship with Incognito."

But the report does define Martin as the victim in certain, almost conflicting terms. "Martin's vulnerabilities do not excuse the harassment that was directed at him. That the same taunts might have bounced off a different person is beside the point." One could argue that Martin's inability to manage his relationships with his teammates might exactly be the point.

The report also failed to conclusively establish whether or not Incognito was acting under order from the Dolphins coaches or front office. "[W]e saw no need to make a credibility determination regarding the conflicting recollections of Incognito, on the one hand, and Ireland and [now-former assistant general manager Brian] Gaine, on the other."

In the end, it was The Voicemail that did Incognito in.

"[The Voicemail] he sent came from a place of humor, but where he really screwed up was using the N-word," Murtha said in November. "That, I cannot condone, and it's probably the biggest reason he's not with the team right now."

The Dolphins called Tony Dungy.

Despite withdrawing himself from the NFL sidelines five years ago, demand has never been higher for The Coach That Doesn't Yell. The 58-year-old Super Bowl-winning coach is the NFL's Predator drone for all things involving race relations. Dungy, a gentleman of color who's both soft- and well-spoken, directly led to the antiquation of pro football's stereotypical head coach. Dungy wasn't a hulking sideline figure, he didn't yell at his players, and he wasn't white. Now retired from coaching, Dungy serves as a talking head for the league's games on Sunday nights and for Roger Goodell's whims during the week.

Dungy's accomplishments and tactics are not to be discounted, but his success has tipped the NFL's sociology on its ear. Players and coaches today face a growing expectation to be able to crack each other's skulls in practices and games on the field and then assume model, gentlemanly lives off it. One could argue whether such an expectation is fair. What can't be argued is that incidents like that in Miami are leading to such a push from the league.

Dungy told Time last November, "I think [the fundamental question has] to be 'How do you foster an atmosphere in the locker room [that] allows the players to have the kind of fellowship and brotherhood that they can only experience in the locker room?' It may be different from other work environments. But also understand that it's still a place where everybody is working for the same goal, and everybody needs to get the respect of each other."

That sounds like a question that each team is best answering individually, rather than being subject to any league-wide directive. Such a directive hasn't been put in place, but that's part of the plan. Without specific language to navigate, teams will be left to their own devices, and not just with enforcement, but with what requires enforcing. By declining to outline those directives in black in white, the league's other aspiring Richie Incognitos will be erring on the side of caution.

Additionally, such a move puts the future Jonathan Martins on notice as well. As for the current Jonathan Martin, he has "no complaints" about his new teammates in San Francisco, a remark that requires context. Since Martin was traded for a conditional seventh-round pick, the Niners could cut him before Week 1 and not owe the Dolphins anything. It's conceivable that Jim Harbaugh, who recruited Martin for Stanford, might simply be doing a solid for his guy and nothing more, with no expectation for him to make the team. That's a significantly different situation from last season, when the 42nd overall pick in the previous year's draft was the lynchpin for a make-or-break season for Dolphins GM Jeff Ireland, and potentially head coach Joe Philbin as well. No pressure exists in San Francisco to get production out of Martin. In fact, just the opposite is true.

Despite the NFL's "blank check" approach to locker room antics (ahem …"workplace behavior"), there's great downside. Specifically, those teams that already have been doing what the NFL has been asked of them. And the expectation between the players has gone from implicitly clear to explicitly clear.

The NFL, with regard to its own workforce compared to others in professional sports, might be the opposite of diverse. While baseball showcases many Latin players and the NBA continues to import Europeans, pro football's rosters are filled from a single pipeline.

Nearly every NFL player was born in the United States, and played on the gridiron at the high school and college levels. Most players adjusted to salty locker room language, personal challenges, and the yin-yang that we'll push under an umbrella titled All That Other Macho Crap. Despite almost three-fourths of NFL players being African-American, the pro football workforce features almost no diversity at all.

And if that normal road to the NFL wasn't, um, vanilla enough, there's Martin, who played his prep ball at the upscale, private Harvard-Westlake School, apparently too good to be labeled simply a "High School." Then Martin made the grueling five-hour trip up I-5 to Palo Alto and Stanford University.

By and large, when the NFL has an issue with anything, they just pass another rule on it and the issue disappears within a couple years. End zone celebrations, untucked jerseys, and overly-sanded kicker balls have been sent running for the hills with the proverbial flick of a pen from the NFL's Manhattan offices. The league doesn't want to care so much as they want to look like they care, even at the expense of those doing the most caring. Whenever it comes to tackling the elephant in the NFL's room, Roger the Red is always the first man on the pile.

This could … could … curtail those team leaders that look to galvanize their squads with traditional means, and those prospective players now could start turning their more abrasive teammates in, thereby eschewing the team-mandated culture for that of the league. That option takes clout away from the veterans, and in some ways erects the same sort of invisible social walls that surrounded Martin during his time in Miami.

Most teams don't need that. Take Michael Sam, who has been embraced by his new teammates in St. Louis. A big reason why that happened was because the NFL stood back and allowed Sam and the Rams to get to know each other on their own terms. League meddling in that situation could only have made that orientation more difficult. Few teams have the leadership issues that Miami had; fortunately for the league, there's only one Richie Incognito.

The NFL owes its success to its place in society as a distraction from all the social issues that now seem to be creeping into the league. But pro football is not immune to the sea changes of society. And while Richie Incognito may not find himself in an NFL locker room again, one can be sure that he'll observe at least one new social norm.

He probably won't be leaving any voicemails anytime soon.

Josh is a freelance sportswriter, analyst and host. You may know him from such websites as Deadspin, Kissing Suzy Kolber, With Leather, WashingtonPost.com, and Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @JoshZerkle.