Neanderthal Jock Insults the UW Tuba Players and Band

The jerk in the photo above is Detroit Lions Center Dominic Raiola -not to be confused with his brother Donovan, who played his college ball at the UW. Dominic Raiola is a Nebraska grad. This marginally-talented jock on the downside of his career is living several decades in the past, because he thought it would be a good idea in the warm-up before yesterday’s Lions/Packers game to call the UW marching tubas “fat motherf**kers”.  Then – all this without provocation – he said the tuba players sucked.

Later, according to verified reports, Raiola told a UW Marching Band trumpet player that he was going to take his trumpet and shove it up his sister’s p**sy.   Then, for good measure, Raiola repeatedly called the trumpet player a fag. Band members also reported that as they assembled to play the National Anthem just before kickoff, Raiola continued his unprovoked harangue of homophobic insults.

A trombone player said Raiola yelled at him “Hey, fat guy, you want a hot dog?” and continued his venomous harangue against the band as they marched off the field.

This story, which has appeared on several reliable NFL blogs this morning, has gone viral.  All of them agree that nothing was said or done by any UW Marching Band member to provoke Raiola in any way. One of the blogs reported that Lions safety Louis Delmas apologized to the band members for Raiola’s rants, told them he’d talked to Raiola about it, and then added that he enjoyed the band’s performance.

This sort of trash-talking is completely unacceptable, no matter what the context.  I’m not sure how another NFL player would have handled it if Raiola leveled his trash-talk at him, but by all reports, the UW Marching Band handled it with class, and refused to drop to his level and respond in any way.

If you’d like to make your feelings known where they might do some good, you can contact Roger Goodell, the Commissioner of the NFL, at 212-450-2000.

The Lions have a form on their website where you can register a concern or complaint, and you can find that here.

If you're on twitter, you can make your voice heard by tweeting to Roger Goddell at this handle: https://twitter.com/nflcommish .

If you do, please don’t lower yourself to Raiola’s level and use foul language.  A simple statement of disgust at boorish conduct will do more to generate results than a hate-filled partisan rant.

Oh, and Raiola: the tuba players are watching you. Insult one of us, and you insult all of us.