Detroit Lions’ Dominic Raiola Stands By His Vulgarity, Urges Fans To Come To His House To Fight Him

Sure, they haven’t won a game this season and have been in a perpetual rebuilding mode since the Eisenhower administration, but that doesn’t give fans of the Detroit Lions any right to boo their team.
That’s the logic of Lions’ C Dominic Raiola, who flipped his hometown fans the bird on Sunday while his team was, once again, losing a game on the field, this time to the Minnesota Vikings, 20-13.
Well, Raiola doesn’t regret telling Detroit residents to sit and spin, and is taking a pretty hardline stance with what’s left of the Lions’ faithful. In fact, he even wants to give fans a chance to come to his house and talk trash to his face, ‘cept he’s worried they might bring a gun!
Whoa, tough guy! How about saving some of that bravado for the field?

“I don’t take one thing back,” [Raiola] said Monday.

Raiola said fans have been particularly hard on him because he’s been with the team since 2001, when it started a slide that has become the NFL’s worst eight-season stretch in more than a half-century.

“I’m just so frustrated,” Raiola said. “I’m tired of being a doormat for people to just talk to us how they want to talk to us. I’m just not going to put up with that anymore.”

Raiola wishes he could give some fans his home address.

“I’d do that, but you can’t,” he said. “Nobody plays with fists. Everybody wants to play with metal.”

Absolutely nothing reeks of desperation quite like threatening to beat up the fans. I mean, why shouldn’t Raiola be pissed off? Here he is, making millions of dollars, while some blue collar pissant struggles to pay for his season tickets while his city’s main industry begs to be saved by the federal government. Where does that guy get the nerve to criticize poor play? What gives him the right to demand more than mediocrity from his favorite team? If he wanted to root for a winner, he shoulda moved to Boston, right?
What’s particularly classy of Raiola here is his quick copout on the whole “say it to my face” thing. Sure, he’d love to beat up every remaining Lions fan one by one, but they might bring a gun. He could be a real tough guy if only the fans would play by the rules. Jerks.
Speaking of guns, up next for the Lions is a road game with the Indianapolis Colts, who the Lions couldn’t beat with a squadron of tanks, let alone whatever guns they can confiscate from their season ticket holders.
0-16, here we come.
Lions’ Raiola won’t regret obscene gesture to fans [USA Today]
Images [Daylife]