I have worn this matter out on my personal social networking avenues because I am passionate about it.

I make no apologies, I sympathize with Jonathan Martin in the Miami Dolphins-Richie Incognito debacle and in this column I rely heavily on the arguments ESPN Radio personality Colin Cowherd made last week in his opening rant and again on comments he made as I listened this morning on my way to Halifax.

Cowherd asked last week why do all NFL players have to be loud cavemen and I wholeheartedly agree.

They don't. As players like Ryan Fitzpatrick, a Harvard-educated quarterback and possibly the smartest player in the NFL, has proven you don't have to be.

There are simply players in the world, just like there are people in the world, who want to do their jobs, do it well, be a team player but not have to deal with the neanderthal and barbaric brutes that oftentimes seem to come with the work place, whether it be an office place or football field.

Not everyone wants to be part of the hazing rituals, the taunting and the sheer sophomoric antics that should have been put in the closet and locked after high school.

Toughness should not have to be measured, as the Martin case proves, by how well you handle yourself against a bullying creep like Incognito. Instead it should be measured by your demeanor and performance in practice and during games.

Incognito has always been an NFL problem child dating back to his days in St. Louis. In fact, St. Louis brass admitted he should have been gone sooner.

Now the whole Miami team is suffering because of the Incognito matter. Teammates, or pack followers, have defended him, the team won't admit the so-called scandal affected their game Monday night against the Bucs because it would prove them liars and prove them wrong they chose the wrong player to supposedly mentor Martin.

They do this because in the world of manly men behavior and going with the herd it shows weakness, or perhaps complicity in the wake of stripping down Incognito to who he really is — a loud mouthed bully.

Friends of mine have asked why he didn't take it up the chain of command. In my experience, the chain of command is full of weak links who would rather protect the company name than protect anyone who wants to improve an situation.

It's been my experience that it's best to go your own way because once you try to follow that chain you're labeled as a cry baby, someone who is not a team player or in Martin's case, a sissy, because he didn't want to join in the reindeer games of the babbling, bullying, middle school hijinks of the rest of his teammates. In other words, he wanted to be his own man and that to me makes him a stronger man than following a gutless bunch of cavemen down a road to nowhere.

Some folks say it's all part of the game but I've never known where it's part of a game to use ethnic slurs or text vile things outside practice hours of what you're going to do sexually to someone's mother as Incognito is reported to have done.

The cursing, the name-calling, the insult-screaming at practice is enough to get the point across that you need to toughen up; it shouldn't be handed to someone who has never been considered a team leader in the first place and that's where the Dolphins truly failed. It should be the job of coaches to do that.

In the end, Incognito needs to get his issues in order, go through the anger management he was supposed to go through in college and once he's proven himself to not be a bully, be given another chance in the NFL.

Martin simply needs to find a team with veteran leadership to take him where he is at in his young career, but to say he isn't tough, is clearly wrong. No one plays at Stanford and makes it to the NFL without being tough.

And no one needs a bully creep like Richie Incognito telling him he's not tough; his work on the practice field and in games will determine that, not the herd of manly men following the pack and towing the company line at all cost — Lance Martin