More than two years since bullying landed on the NFL radar with the Miami Dolphins, Kevin O’Neill, the trainer fired in the aftermath, still doesn’t have a job.
“This is a weight that hangs over me,” O’Neill, sitting in his living room, told USA TODAY Sports during a recent interview. “I definitely feel like a scapegoat.”
Guard Richie Incognito, a central character in the saga, revived his career with the Buffalo Bills. Jonathan Martin, victimized by the bullying, quit football last summer and is expected to pursue to law school. Joe Philbin was fired in October as Dolphins coach.
O’Neill, though, has seemingly paid a disproportionate price for his connection to the scandal and is left trying to restore his reputation. He disputes the portrayal of him in independent attorney Ted Wells’ report as a participant in an environment conducive to bullying in his training room, but O’Neill acknowledges he didn’t fully cooperate — on the grounds of medical ethics — with the investigation headed by Wells.
With a defamation lawsuit against the Dolphins pending an appeal of a Florida judge’s ruling that his contract with the team stipulates arbitration, there’s no dispute that O’Neill, 61, is rather toxic. He says he’s applied for 35 jobs and, despite 40 years of experience, was called for three interviews. Slim chance he’d be hired by another team in the highly-politicized NFL. Several major colleges have turned him down, too.
Rather than age, he blames the bullying scandal.
During a visit recently in his New York office, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross — who recently launched the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality (RISE), inspired by the bullying ordeal — told me that a key factor in O’Neill’s firing was for not cooperating with Wells’ team. “That’s insubordination,” Ross said.
O’Neill, however, maintains that investigators wanted him to discuss medical issues without consent from the players involved. However The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects confidentiality. That goes a long way toward explaining his lack of cooperation.
“The club owns the records, but the club doesn’t own my testimony,” O’Neill said. “If I testify, give them information or answer questions that are medically confidential and pertaining to medical records, then I jeopardize losing my state license, and I think I put myself and the Dolphins in jeopardy of violating federal law.”
O’Neill said that he expressed such dissent to Dawn Aponte, an executive vice president for the Dolphins, who told him she would pass his concerns along to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. O’Neill said Aponte never specifically followed up on that; in his next conversation with her, she told him they needed all of the medical records of Incognito and Martin.
“My stance was, ‘Those records don’t belong to Kevin O’Neill,’ ” he said. “My department was the keeper of those records, but the records belonged to the Dolphins.”
When O’Neill’s concerns about violating HIPAA were mentioned to Ross, he told USA TODAY Sports, “I don’t remember all of the specifics. All I know is that he didn’t fully cooperate, and the things that were said, it was an interpretation at that point in time. But I thought he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing, what he was asked to do.”
Investigators ultimately obtained the medical records. It is fairly safe to conclude they wanted the records to see if any “mental health” issues were included. O’Neill, again citing HIPAA rules, would not talk to me about that.
O’Neill, who worked for eight coaches in 18 years with the Dolphins, is well respected in NFL training circles. It’s ironic that the week that he was fired in February 2014, he received an award from the NFL Physicans’ Society as NFL Trainer of the Year. In 2006, the Dolphins were honored by the Professional Football Athletic Training Society (PFATS) as its training staff of the year.
Three trainers with extensive experience in the league, two of whom never worked with O’Neill, were effusive this week in their praise of his professionalism, with one adding that O’Neill is the type to express strong opinions when needed. They also share the opinion that O’Neill got a raw deal as the essential fall guy.
His case not only resonates with his peers but also illuminates the delicate role of trainers, who care for the physical well-being of players but also work for management and coaches.
It’s a fine line.
Trainers are team employees that owners and management will tap in gauging the pulse of players, and those same trainers are most effective when they gain the trust of players. That’s why the training room, where players receive treatment for injuries and preventive measures such as getting their ankles taped, is essentially a sanctuary within a locker room.
“Sometimes, you let things go on in there that you don’t want your family to be a part of,” an NFL trainer told USA TODAY Sports. The trainer spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
“Sometimes you compromise, to let things run smoothly.”
O’Neill contends that he didn’t connect the dots between bullying and the severe depression that the Wells Report documented that Martin revealed to the team in May 2013.
“In my mind, this was a transient, depressive episode,” O’Neill said. “If you look at the latest research the NCAA has done, over 20% of NCAA athletes have some type of something — whether it’s ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), depression, anxiety. I’ve had players that have had a transient episode of depression — they lost a loved one, got an injury, something happened, and you work through it.”
The Wells Report, though, described how O’Neill called Martin into his office for a pep talk during the tackle’s rookie year in 2012, urging him to stand up for himself — which, in retrospect, might have been a sign of the bullying that apparently persisted. O’Neill said he was moved to intervene after observing Martin being derided by teammates as being soft.
Martin, however, pointed a finger at O’Neill, contending that the trainer laughed as players teased assistant trainer Naoshisa Inoue, an Asian-American, with racial insults. That’s a damning allegation, to which O’Neill questions whether Martin was truthful.
The Wells Report concluded, based on testimony from several players (in addition to Martin and Incognito), that there was a severe pattern of verbal abuse directed at Inoue. O’Neill suggests that characterization was overblown.
“They made fun at how he talked a little bit,” said O’Neill, seemingly oblivious to the potential damage of that. “He laughed about it. I laughed about it, too. I didn’t laugh about anything that had to do with anybody’s mom or girlfriend, or somebody using a racial slur. Yeah, they made fun of him. They made fun of me, too, for simple stuff.”
The Dolphins and so many of the principals associated with the scandal have moved on. But that’s difficult for O’Neill to do, with a lawsuit pending and no job, which allows him much time to reflect.
“I was put in a position where I really couldn’t win,” he said.
Now it seems to be a matter of just how great of a loss he will endure.