The racial aspect of the saga took a fairly ridiculous turn when the Miami Herald posted a story titled "Richie Incognito considered black in Dolphins locker room." In it, three black Dolphins players are quoted as saying they don't think Incognito is a racist, and the Herald's Armando Salguero wrote this passage:
Well, I've spoken to multiple people today about this and the explanation from all of them is that in the Dolphins locker room, Richie Incognito was considered a black guy. He was accepted by the black players. He was an honorary black man.
And Jonathan Martin, who is bi-racial, was not. Indeed, Martin was considered less black than Incognito.
"Richie is honarary," one player who left the Dolphins this offseason told me today. "I don't expect you to understand because you're not black. But being a black guy, being a brother is more than just about skin color. It's about how you carry yourself. How you play. Where you come from. What you've experienced. A lot of things."
If you didn't think the Incognito story could get much weirder, it just did.