This is my third “NFL Bullying” post since the topic splashed all over the national media this past Monday. The first (“The N.F.L. Culture and Bullying“) presents the theory that one reason why bullying is sometimes viewed as acceptable is the belief that it can increase motivation to reach a level of excellence not achievable without bullying. Whereas there may indeed be legitimate examples of some…
Yesterday, my post discussed a New York Times article titled “In Bullying Case, Questions on N.F.L. Culture.” There we learned that what are being called pranks by some and humiliating behavior by others is ubiquitous in the N.F.L. What is the reason for it? The Times article tried to throw some light on this when it stated that “Most incidents come with tacit, unsupervised approval…
We just finished up National Bullying Prevention Month. Throughout October, after far too many suicides because of bullying, numerous organizations banned together to do what they could to change a culture. What they tried to accomplish is far from easy. The difficulty is that our culture is filled with examples of people telling us that insults can be the mother of invention. If you are…