The Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito saga appears to have run its course for now, but it says a lot about the problems that occur in locker rooms across the country.

While the truth behind whatever happened between Martin and Incognito has yet to reveal itself, the circumstances behind it are far more common in sports than can be believed. There have always been stories of hazing in high school and college sports. It always gets ignored until it goes too far. One would think hazing should be nonexistent in professional sports. That’s wrong.

Professional sports locker rooms operate on the same pretenses as high school and college locker rooms, and it’s ridiculous. There doesn’t need to be an initiation into a professional sports team. Those guys are professionals who are at work. That’s what gets lost in these stories.

Bullying creates a toxic workplace. If someone fresh out of college grabbed a job at a top business, he or she wouldn’t have to deal with nonsense like how Incognito tried to bully Martin into being tougher.

The reaction to Martin’s leave of absence from the team has been mixed. A lot of players have condemned Martin for “not being a man” about the situation. Even Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland suggested Martin should have punched Incognito. This is not how grown men behave, especially in a workplace. The NFL has to realize it has a serious culture problem to address.

An NFL game isn’t a warzone, no matter how many military analogies get thrown about. It’s a football game — with a stress on “game.”

There are reports Martin was too soft for the NFL, and Incognito was tasked to toughen him up. If true, that’s probably one of the most ridiculous things to happen in the NFL. If Martin can play offensive line for his entire life well enough to be drafted into the NFL, he’s obviously tough enough. There was no reason for any of this to occur, other than the fact that NFL teams seem to operate like a secret society rather than a job.

There’s always going to be a hierarchy in the locker room, just like there’s hierarchy everywhere. There will always be someone with experience or seniority. That doesn’t mean the low guys on the totem pole have to run into hazing.

Being a veteran doesn’t mean you can treat the new guy like crap. It certainly doesn’t mean Incognito can terrorize a younger player for being a younger player. There’s no place in the world any of that makes sense, but apparently it makes perfect sense in NFL locker rooms.