Watch the extended version of the Jay Glazer exclusive interview with Richie Incognito.
Here now, highlights of the interview:
Incognito: You can ask anybody in the Miami Dolphins locker room who had Jon Martin’s back the absolute most. And they will undoubtedly tell you, me.
Incognito: Jon never showed signs that football was getting to him, um, the locker room was getting to him.
Jay Glazer: You’re saying you don’t know what led to this. Your teammates are saying, ‘We don’t know.’ His side has clearly said, ‘We do know.’ OK, and there’s bullying involved. There was a voice message left. I’m going to read it to you. You did leave this voice message?
Incognito: Yes, I did leave this voice message.
Jay Glazer: And it’s, ‘Hey, what’s up, you half N-word piece of blank. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. Want to blank in your blank mouth. I’m going to slap your blank mouth. Going to slap your real mother across the face. (Laughter) You’re still a rookie. I’ll kill you.’ You hear that, going back to that now, do you look at that and say, ‘I left that for Jonathan Martin?’
Incognito: When I see that voicemail, when I see those words come up across the screen, I’m embarrassed by it. I’m embarrassed by my actions. But what I want people to know is, the way Jonathan and the rest of the offensive line and how our teammates, how we communicate, it’s vulgar. It’s, it’s not right. When the words are put in the context, I understand why a lot of eyebrows get raised, but people don’t know how Jon and I communicate to one another.
Jay Glazer: But there’s one thing of saying that, another thing with a white man using the N-word. How do you tell America, how do you expect anybody in America to believe you’re not a racist?
Incognito: I’m not a racist. And to judge me by that one word is wrong. In no way, shape or form is it ever acceptable for me to use that word, even if it’s friend to friend on a voicemail. I regret that.
Jay Glazer: How much in today’s locker room is it thrown around by African Americans and white players?
Incognito: It’s thrown around a lot. It’s a word that I’ve heard Jon use a lot. Not saying it’s right for when I did it in the voicemail, but there’s a lot of colorful words thrown around the locker room that we don’t use in everyday life. The fact of the matter remains, though, that that voicemail was left on a private voicemail for my friend, and it was a joke.
Jay Glazer: Right, wrong, or indifferent, because of all this, you’ve become the face of bullying in America. Someone thinks of a bully, they think of Richie Incognito.
Incognito: This isn’t an issue about bullying. This is an issue of mine and Jon’s relationship where I’ve taken stuff too far and I didn’t know it was hurting him.
Jay Glazer: Did Jonathan Martin overreact? Or was Jonathan hurting that much?
Incognito: I can’t sit here and tell you who overreacted, who did what. I can just sit here and be accountable for my actions. And my actions were coming from a place of love. No matter how bad and how vulgar it sounds, that’s how we communicate, that’s how our friendship was, and those are the facts, and that’s what I’m accountable for.
Jay Glazer: You’re telling me there wasn’t any signs going into that?
Incognito: As the leader, as his best friend on the team, that’s what has me miffed — how I missed this. I never saw it. I never saw it coming.
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an affiliate of Fox Sports. He’s also an analyst for multiple news talk radio stations across the country; with regular weekly segments on NBC and Fox Sports Radio. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks) and RSS