Groupthink Affecting the NFL

Around March of last year the public became aware of the unethical behaviors of the New Orleans Saints football players. Apparently Greg Williams, the team’s assistant coach, was rewarding the players to purposely injure their opponents. Players were receiving anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 extra for each man they could take down. Coy Wire, former NFL linebacker, had the opportunity to work alongside with Greg Williams. He admits that he participated in these antics, and nowadays regrets his behavior; understanding the serious side effects of head trauma he was inflicting to those he hurt.

So why did Coy Wire and several other NFL stars, such as Jonathan Vilma, participate in purposely inflicting pain to opposing NFL players? According to Wire, the teams were falling susceptible to groupthink. Wire explains the idea of groupthink as, “a group of individuals who come together and do bad, irrational things that when as individuals they would see and assess that same situation as being wrong.” Thus he claims the players could not see the bad in the situation because they were too focused on winning. The players were accepting that their behaviors were ok because they were going along with how their teammates were behaving.   

After hearing Wire’s perspective on the situation one cannot help to wonder, is groupthink really to blame here, or was the money giving the football players incentive to behave barbarically? In my opinion, groupthink affected the way the players were thinking. It seems that the players were behaving unethically only because the rest of the team though it was ok to do so. These men sign large contracts for thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Thus, the thought that they were acting out on account of the money is unthinkable. Could the extra $1,000 to $1,500 really be significant enough to cause this type of behavior? I am interested in hearing anyone’s take to the situation.