Hazing: Tradition or Bullying

While scrounging ESPN for interesting articles to read, I found yet another article about hazing. Hazing has been all over the sports news stations recently, so I decided to search the word hazing in the search box on ESPN. I found 13 articles written in the past week regarding hazing, 8 of them in response to the Miami Dolphins story.

In the past few weeks, the sports world has been deeply diagnosing the hazing charges of Miami Dolphins offensive guard Richie Incognito. Jonathan Martin, the victim,  released texts and voice mails left by Incognito on Martin's phone containing racial slurs, homophobic content, and slander of Martin's family. The Dolphins immediately suspended Incognito when the horrifying messages were leaked to the news. Incognito then argued that it was tradition to haze young players. Martin then retaliated by understanding the harassment during his rookie year, but he was no longer a first-year player, and felt he deserved his teammates respect. When the problem was reported to the rest of the Dolphins, the overwhelming majority took Incognito's side. They too argued that his incident was tradition, not bullying. While looking at some of the other articles on ESPN, and researching other cases, the argument of tradition vs. bullying almost always comes up. 

While reading all of these articles, I began to think about my older brother, who is currently in the fraternity Theta Chi and the University of Michigan. College fraternities are often associated with hazing as well. In an interview with an anonymous fraternity brother conducted by Cornell University, the tradition argument came up again. He says fraternities haze in order to "Mold good brothers", learn "responsibilities" and to "create links to past generations" (A defense of Hazing-Cornell). The student's entire interview can be found here.  If fraternities use it to create a sense of brotherhood, can sports teams use it for the same function?

I believe that hazing can be successfully incorporated into professional sports. Although some athletes cross the line between hazing and bullying, hazing is a tradition, and should continue to be allowed in sports. Do you agree?