Loving the Bad Guy

The NFL needs villains. It always has. Those Raiders teams of the ‘70s are as big a part of the fabric of the NFL’s identity as any other great team, from that era or any other. They were mythic biker renegades from the grungy part of Valhalla, sent to terrorize mortals and pistol whip squares. They were glorious, and they perfectly captured an era – dirty, long hairs with drunken love in their hearts and iron hate at the end of their fists. They were the ‘70s in all its savage, ugly, stinking beauty – decaying monsters dying even as they fought like hell to live for just one more frenetic, glorious second, human supernovae at the heart of a cultural supernova.

I’m starting to get carried away here. The point is that the NFL needs villains almost more than it needs heroes, and if you can’t tell by my rapturous intro, to some people - a lot of people – those villains are actually the heroes of the story. After all, the Cowboys were America’s team. But those Raiders were America’s team. I won’t explain what that means because you either understand completely what I’m saying, or you don’t and not even God can help you sort it out.

These days, the heroes and villains of the NFL are more sordid than ever. And that’s only all too appropriate given the strange and terrible times in which we live. No one knows who’s evil and who’s good until someone gets tossed out of an elevator unconscious. Everything is magnified and under the magnifying glass everything gets distorted, myths are laid bare and all we’re left with are bullshit narratives. It’s easy to vilify someone like Ray Rice, but it gets harder when someone like Ndamukong Suh gets busted by the Great Eye In The Sky stomping – or gently stepping, depending on your perspective and rooting interests – on a fallen Golden Boy.

Everything becomes slippery then, and that word – perspective – becomes all that matters, and when that happens, nothing really matters. You pick your sides based on what you want to believe, and really, nothing could be more fitting in this twitter age of deep tribalism and outrage for outrage’s sake than that.

But it also reinforces that weird NFL world in which heroes are villains and villains are heroes and nobody really knows what the hell is going on. That is when the NFL is both at its best and its nauseatingly worst. The noise gets turned up, Joe Buck starts hooting like a chimp on angel dust, and the only thing you’re left to conclude is that everyone is secretly an asshole or a monster, and in that decayed wasteland of the human condition, you just pick whichever monster you like best and hope he doesn’t embarrass you by maiming a loved one or, you know, deflating footballs like a coward.

And that brings us to the strange case of the New England Patriots, who exist in that sort of zombie purgatory between good and evil. Everyone hates them, and why not? They do scandalous shit that isn’t even cool, they win all the goddamn time and they have a quarterback who seems like some sort of golden ice king, untouchable and terrible, both easily mockable and somehow infallible. And the whole thing is led by some ogre in sack-cloth who holds everyone in the world, from the media to the fans to his players to his own family, in open contempt. It is a weird situation and I understand why people don’t like it. The Patriots are easy to hate, and so most people do the easy thing and hate them.

But the Patriots are fascinating to me, and I don’t hate them. I am totally biased here, largely because I am a huge Michigan dude and thus for tribal reasons, Tom Brady is my guy. That is the easy take, and you’re not wrong. But where everyone else sees a model-boning, Uggs-wearing, frost-prince, I see a dude with an almost sociopathic need to win, a heart of fire beneath the frozen surface that never stops beating, burning him up from within and making him into a psychotic jackass on the field. But he’s the good kind of psychotic jackass, I think, the kind that wins and the kind that wins simply because he has to, because he can’t not. I can respect a man like that even if nobody else does. I get it, I do. He is not an easy man to love because he looks like everything you’re supposed to hate these days and he’d rather chill in a wine bar in Aspen than hang out at Lowe’s with Peyton Manning.

But he’s also a dude who wins and keeps on winning even though the Patriots seem less and less talented every year. Every year seems like the End for the Patriots, doesn’t it? Everyone licks their chops, sneers and waits for Brady to meltdown or get his knees chopped off by some crusader of justice, but it never happens, and every year that he survives, that he thrives, it seems like he gets crankier on the field, both his sneer and the fans’ sneer grows and everyone hates him even more. But I can appreciate and respect a man like that, a man whose sneer says “Fuck you, come at me, bros . . . you will miss.”

And everyone does miss and Tom Brady goes to another Super Bowl. I think I like him the more people hate him, tribalism aside, probably because I’m a contrarian, but also because people are dumb. Tom Brady is great because he wants this shit more than you’ve wanted anything in your lives. I see him and I see those Raiders teams of the 70s. Beneath all the noise, beneath the biker gang mystique, beneath the Uggs and Giseles, there is an almost psychotic need to win, and for me, that trumps everything else. Because they don’t care whether you love them or hate them. You are beneath them, and they are just there to win. Get with the program or get the fuck out of the way.

But it’s not just Brady. It’s also Bill Belichick. Together, they are what make the Patriots truly fascinating, fitting villains for our times. Brady is the golden, smooth exterior, the rich veneer hiding a decaying interior, dragging the Patriots to glory even while the rest of the team struggles to rise above the barest mediocrity, living off the reputation of those that came before, depending on Brady to carry them through one more game, one more season. And Belichick is the ugly, Dick Cheneyish ogre behind the scenes, keeping things going with ruthless and grim precision. He is a monster, a human being utterly without redemption, shuffling along in his hobo sweatshirts, scowling at everyone and everything, from the media to the sun and the moon and down to his own shriveled heart. He is easy to hate, and he doesn’t give a fuck.

There is something admirable in that, though, isn’t there? It’s easy to hate people who don’t care if you hate them. It’s easy, but who cares? There is no worth in despising people who actively ask for it.

Compare that to someone like Peyton Manning, a dude who desperately wants to be seen as both a winner and a good guy, but whose true colors come out whenever he fails. He’ll throw anyone and everyone under the boss – remember his “our liquored up kicker” line when he was with the Colts? – and then he’ll go right back to shaking hands and doing his middle-manager at Lowe’s routine that the Nascar masses lap right up. That is the sort of dude who is easy for me to hate.

And then you have dudes like Ndamukong Suh, who end up neither deserving my hate nor my love, because they become almost tragic figures, deserving something closer to pity. They can’t decide whether they want to embrace being the hero or the villain. Suh seems like he wants to embrace his villainous nature, but he can’t let himself truly run with it, and so he sort of vascillates between that “Fuck you, so what?” attitude and the “I’m really a good guy, I swear…” attitude, and the result is a sort of mushy incompetence, an ass-kicker who never really embraces the “Win or Die” attitude that is so essential to becoming a truly successful NFL villain.

I’ll take dudes like Brady and Belichick, who understand they are the villains, but don’t give a fuck. That’s what those old Raiders teams used to do, and that’s what these Patriots do.

I know that comparison sounds ridiculous, but think about it. The Raiders used to do all manner of petty shit to gain an edge – remember Fred Biletnikoff’s stickum? – and that’s what the Patriots under Belichick have done.

The Raiders used to grease their jerseys. They had bowls full of amphetamines in the locker room. Their trainer shot dudes up with adrenaline extracted from the glands of corpses (!!!) They did whatever they had to win, no matter how petty or crazy. Sound familiar?

Sure, Belichick isn’t shooting his dudes up with corpse adrenaline (probably not, anyway) but he will deploy spies, he will deflate some footballs. They are schemes that seem almost hilariously incompetent, almost Austin Powersish in their parody of super-villainy, and who knows if they actually help? But Belichick doesn’t give a fuck. He does it anyway because even if there is only a .00001% chance that they help him, it’s worth it to him. And why not? After all, he doesn’t give a shit if he gets caught. The NFL will slap the Patriots with some symbolic penalty, Belichick will shrug and shuffle back to his lab to cook up something heinous with Brady. They just don’t care. Either what the NFL thinks or what you, the fan, thinks.

I, for one, actually find that refreshing. The NFL sucks. It is a horrible organization and anyone who tells it to fuck off is okay by me. The enemy of my enemy and all that. And most fans are drooling idiots, obsessed with horse’s ass talk-radio bullshit. Always remember, the Dallas Cowboys are the most popular team in all the land. Fuck what the fans think.

The Patriots are cheating jerks, but they own that shit. All they want to do is win. Everything else is just noise, and I’m good with anyone who understands that. That’s what those old Raiders teams knew, and that’s what Brady and Belichick’s Patriots know. That’s why I’ll be rooting for the Patriots in yet another Super Bowl and why, damn it, I’ll say it . . . I’m a Patriots fan. Fuck you.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

The NFL has always been a cesspool of idiocy and arrogance. At least to anyone paying attention. The Lions getting boned by incompetent refs in the 4^th quarter, leading to lynch mobs being formed, blood orgies in the streets and one dude even calling sweet, gentle Ty Schalter a fucking retard (Excuse me, it was actually YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD) for daring to suggest that the Lions probably could have played a little better despite the dicking they got from the refs, was just the latest in a long line of examples of the NFL’s rotten bullshit.

The truth is that it has been there for everyone to see for a long time now. Lions fans are already intimately familiar with it. Just go back to the Process of the Catch nonsense that stole an obvious touchdown away from Calvin Johnson in Chicago. That’s what makes this so hard for most Lions fans, I think. It’s not just a revelation of a combination of incompetence and arrogance by the NFL, but a confirmation. And it happened at both the worst possible time, and the time when long-suffering Lions fans expected it to happen. That is a terrible combination that leaves grown dudes and lady dudes shivering and shaking like broken junkies, sniping at each other bitterly and imagine dark deeds involving Emperor Goodell and a trash compactor.

It’s not just the incompetence. Refs in all sports suffer from that particular malady, and hey, we all make mistakes. To err is human, blah, blah, blah. But it’s the NFL’s almost unbelievable arrogance that is at the core of this rotten business. It manifests itself most obviously, and most publicly, when something like this happens. Or something like the Process of the Catch ruling. The NFL obviously fucks up, but instead of owning up to it, they just try to remake reality to fit the horrible New World that they have created with their inanity. It’s why I’ve compared the NFL’s rulebook to a Necronomicon. It’s a dark wizard’s tome that only fell sorcerers and wicked magicians can read. The Emperor clears his throat as the rabble starts to get out of hand, and the Minister of Propaganda, Mike Pereira, rolls his bones, smears cow blood on the face of a baby, watches the pigeons for signs and then declares the NFL’s obvious misdeeds just.

But it also manifests in other, more insidious ways. It can be as simple as the NFL fining dudes for not wearing Official NFL Merchandise during press conferences. Years ago, back when Jon Kitna was with the Bengals, they fined the dude for wearing a hat with a cross on it during a press conference. Kitna, for those who don’t know, is big into the Jesus thing, which… whatever, that is his deal and you have to respect that. But the NFL didn’t give a shit. They fined him because it was not an NFL Licensed and Approved cross, which… that’s some shit, isn’t it? I mean, that’s some straight out of the Bible money lenders in the temple kind of shit. That’s old school wicked fairy tale villain kind of nonsense.

And then there’s the Ray Rice incident, or any number of off the field incidents over the last several years, which have finally laid bare the arbitrary and ridiculous nature of Emperor Goodell’s punishments. He’s set himself on the throne and just arrogantly waves a dismissive hand at anyone who bothers him, offering barely thought out dictates that people are not allowed to question. It all depends on his mood, whether or not he’s paying attention and what he thinks he can cover up. It’s arrogant and stupid, and, well, those two things often go hand in hand. Hell, next season he’ll probably decree that a contract dispute can only be resolved by cutting a baby in half.

But it’s not just the NFL. No, the NFL is just the root of the problem, the festering poison that effects anyone else who spends too much time around it. NFL insiders soon end up exhibiting the same diminished mental faculties as a dude who fell asleep in his running car with the garage door closed.

All you have to do is look at how NFL insiders dealt with Jim Harbaugh’s move to Michigan. Their arrogance and lazy dismissal of what was happening right in front of them was almost shocking. It was a mirror image of the attitude of the league that they love and cover. While Michigan insiders were adamant that something big was happening, never wavering in their coverage of the deal for weeks and months, the NFL insiders refused to even acknowledge the possibility because no one leaves the NFL.

That shit is chilling. That’s a rotten, fucked up attitude right there, the sort of thing normally seen only in cults. NOBODY LEAVES THE NFL. That was the refrain heard from countless reporters who couldn’t imagine a better world outside of their twisted utopia. It was arrogant and stupid at the same time. Sound familiar?

Of course, they were wrong, just like the NFL is so often wrong. And just like their beloved NFL, they immediately tried to reshape the story to fit their bullshit narrative. It was pretty clear that Harbaugh and Michigan were a match made in heaven all along. The insider stories that have come out make that clear. But oh no! That doesn’t fit with the NFL’s vision of the world. They say the world is flat, so fuck you, Columbus. First, it was Harbaugh is never leaving the NFL for college, then it was Harbaugh turned Michigan down but changed his mind after a desperate Michigan made a last minute offer of a bajillion dollars that no one could match, then it was Harbaugh will still stay in the NFL because he’s only using Michigan for leverage (an idea which never made sense given that Harbaugh pretty much had his pick of jobs in the NFL, he didn’t need to use Michigan – a lowly college team according to NFL insiders – when he had several NFL franchises ready to try to outbid one another), and then when he finally took the job and made them all look like fools, it was that Harbaugh only did it for the money, and when that was proven to be bullshit (Harbaugh is making the same amount he made with the 49ers) they turned around and said that it was because he couldn’t find a job in the NFL, which… what the fuck? That level of intellectual dishonesty is staggering, usually only seen in, well, the NFL.

But the NFL can’t change reality, no matter how hard they try. And neither can its slappies, those Defenders of the Shield who have allowed themselves to be coopted and perverted into little more than propagandists, mouth-pieces for a corrupt regime intent on greedily raking in as much money as it can and glorifying its own image at the expense of everyone else, from the fans who make its existence possible to the dudes who concuss themselves into an early grave for a few tosses of the coin from the Emperor and his minions.

The NFL won’t acknowledge reality, and will try to change it to meet some alternate-universe bizarro-world that they’ve cooked up for themselves like meth-heads in a dirty trailer. They’ll tell you that somehow that bullshit call against the Lions was justified. It’s gotten so bad, though, that even Mike Pereira can’t bring himself to lie and twist the truth for his Emperor. He admitted it was a bad call, which probably means he’ll be hauled away for electro-shock treatment and “reeducation” by the Emperor’s goons.

The NFL will still try to twist it, to somehow make all their bullshit “true,” and if they can’t, they’ll just try to sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen because fuck your memories, peasant. The Emperor makes reality.

And doofuses like John Clayton won’t acknowledge reality either. They’ll still say shit like Harbaugh took the Michigan job as a “soft landing” because the NFL which was so hot on his trail only hours before, so hot in fact that one dude tried to claim that the Raiders would give him $16 million a year (no, really, an “insider” actually “reported” this) suddenly had no room for him and he was forced to lick his wounds with a lowly college team. (A college team that routinely draws over 100,000 fans, has an alumni and fanbase that any NFL franchise would murder small children for, is laden with tradition and is a financial powerhouse that can pay their coach whatever they damn well please, but… okay, sure, it’s just the Minor Leagues) But why wouldn’t the insiders do this? Why wouldn’t they lie and twist and play intellectual shell games? The world that they live in, the world of the NFL, has made those things into virtues. They are merely doing what daddy taught them.

But anyone with eyes to see and a brain to think can see reality, can see just how rotten and absurd the NFL has become. It has been this way for a while now, and you can even make the argument that their arrogant bully tactics are at the heart of the league, interwoven in its origins and its staggering growth through the years, much like a crime family. But regular people are starting to see this shit. The Emperor has no clothes and while his advisors and the Baghdad Bobs who cover him and his kingdom insist that he’s got on the finest of furs and the best silks from all across the world, the peasants can see him standing naked in the window, his doughy ass hanging out for all the world to see.

The NFL isn’t going anywhere. It’s too big and its sheer momentum means that it will remain the Big Boss in the sporting world for years to come. But that doesn’t mean that I have to pretend that it is righteous or good or worthy of my adulation. Fuck the NFL. This isn’t about my team getting screwed or throwing a hissy fit because I don’t like what happened. I blame the Lions for fucking up that game just as much as I blame the refs. Well, maybe not just as much, but I’m certainly willing to say that they could have done a lot more to make sure that call would be little more than an unfortunate and irritating footnote.

I say this because I want you to understand that this is not the result of irrational anger of the lynch mob variety a la what we saw on twitter while it was all going down in real time. No, this is the result of years of arrogance, of heavy-handed megalomania, of having the NFL’s bullshit shoved down my throat for far too long. I see you, NFL. I will always see you. You are too big to miss. I am not going to make outrageous claims about burying my head in the sand and pretending that you’re not there. That would just be letting you get away with it. You see, I am a football fan. And you are fucking with that, and I don’t like it. You will not drive me away from being a football fan because you are not football. You are the NFL, and there is a world of difference between the two, and it’s about time everyone sees that.

The NFL is not football. Football is football. The NFL is a corporate wasteland of rotten souls and diseased brains. I am a football fan. The NFL can go fuck itself.

Dominic Raiola Is A Dumb Asshole

Dominic Raiola is an asshole. That is not exactly a revelation to anyone who’s been paying attention, but it still needs to be said, especially after the fiasco earlier today against the Bears, which, well… just look at the above.

I mean… come on. This, of course, is just the latest in a long line of assholishness (assholery?) from Raiola. Here’s a little primer put together by my old pal Andy Isaac over at Uproxx in case you need a refresher. I’ll wait while you take a stroll through bad memory lane.

That was written in the wake of Raiola’s ridiculous attempt to take out the knees of Patriots defenders during a fucking kneel-down play (he failed, because . . . well, of course he did, which pretty much sums Raiola up, both as a player and a human being) and Isaac tweeted that out today with a note that it was time to update the post.

That’s the sad reality of following Raiola’s long and pathetic career. You’re constantly having to update that mental picture of him to account for whatever dumb goon bullshit he just pulled. It’s fucking ridiculous.

But the worst part about Raiola isn’t that he’s an asshole. He’s a dumb asshole. Just ludicrously stupid. He isn’t like one of those sly, wily veterans from the ‘70s who would twist a dude’s dick off at the bottom of a pile. No, he just does this shit openly, for everyone to see, and then he gibbers like a moron to try to rationalize it. He’s a fucking fool.

Fools come and go all the time in the NFL. It is basically the National Fools League. Lions fans get this perhaps better than anyone. Charles Rogers, Titus Young . . . look, I could go on forever here and we’d all be reduced to a pile of tears and ash by the time I was done, so let’s just not do that, okay? The point is, is that these fools usually blow up and then get kicked out of the league and sent to jail or the nuthouse or to get their brains studied after they strip naked on the highway and start waving a gun around. They don’t last more than a decade, and they certainly don’t last with one team.

But Dominic Raiola has, and really, that about sums up the many, many issues the Lions have had as a franchise during that same time period. He’s been with the team for 13 years, and most of those years have been terrible. Joe Buck finally did something worthwhile when he pointed out during the broadcast that during Raiola’s 13 years with the Lions, 10 of those years have seen the team lose 10 or more games. Holy shit! I mean, there’s losing and then there’s whatever the fuck that is. Raiola is literally one of the biggest losers in NFL history.

But we also have to deal with the fact that he’s figuratively one of the biggest losers in NFL history. That is a combination that is too odious to bear. This is not the story of some asshole who everyone forgives because he leads the team to glory on the football field. No, it is the story of a dumb fuckup asshole who loses all the time and incredibly still not only keeps his job but maintains his place as the wise old elder of the franchise. This is so messed up that when people wonder why I burned out on the Lions, I should just point at it and scream THIS! THIS! FOR FUCK’S SAKE THIS!

It’s not really a secret to anyone who’s followed me for a while that I have kind of dialed back my fandom the last couple of years, and I think this is one of the biggest reasons why. I still watch the Lions and I root for them to win because I can’t not. They are my team, for better for worse, through sickness and in health until death do us part. But let’s face it, there’s been a whole lot of sickness and if that sickness had a face, it would be Dominic Raiola’s.

His soul is made of burning garbage, wasted tears and a whole sewer’s worth of shit. He looks and acts like a dude who smells like stale Funyons, cheap beer, old smoke, sweat and regret. He challenges his own fans to fights and he makes it embarrassing to be a Lions fan. He is Lions Disease made flesh.

Most of the time, assholes are forgiven by their own fans, who rationalize their behavior and develop a persecution complex that allows them to imagine that their poor picked on boy is just the target of unfair harassment. It’s what fans do. But the incredible thing about Raiola is that Lions fans hate his fucking guts probably more than opposing fans do. He’s a goddamn loser, a hideous ghoul plaguing our hearts and souls for more than a decade now and he just won’t go the fuck away. He’s a dumb asshole who deserves every bit of vitriol he gets and more. He is what makes being a Lions fan Not Fun. He makes the whole team feel so goddamn unlikable and hard to root for. He doesn’t just need to be run out of town, he needs to be strapped to the back of a flatbed truck and paraded through the streets while fans pelt him with trash and then a priest needs to come in and do an exorcism. Fuck Dominic Raiola, I will see him in hell.

Sorry, I’m getting a little carried away, but . . . you know what? I’m not sorry. Fuck that. A lot of people will probably write a lot of things about Dominic Raiola this week, but every damn one of them will try to take the responsible tone of a Serious Journalist and try to sanitize all of this nonsense, and in doing so they will miss the point. Because the point isn’t that Dominic Raiola is a jerk who does irresponsible things for dudes like Joe Buck to tut-tut. The point is that he is a hideously dumb asshole and a colossal fuck-up. This isn’t a smug, moral issue. This is a “Hey, fuck this guy,” issue and that deserves to be said out loud. Or in print. Or in fake print on the internet. You know what I mean.

It’s not like this a new thing that we’re all figuring out. We’ve known this for years, and frankly, I’m just sick of having to put up with it. Fuck you, Dominic Raiola, you are impossible to root for and you have infected my team with your stench for long enough. Get thee gone, foul beast!

Getting carried away again. But that is what Dominic Raiola inspires. He doesn’t inspire Hope or Confidence or any of the shit you would expect from a veteran of his stature. He inspires wild gibberish and biblical ranting. That’s your team leader? Come on.

It’s embarrassing as hell watching him clown his way around the field, in the locker room and, yes, in wars with his own fans. Can you imagine being his teammate, knowing what an asshole he is, and knowing that he’s wrong all the damn time? How can you fight next to someone like that? He’s firing up the other team – notice how the Bears sparked right after his buffoonery – while his own teammates probably struggle to back his dumb ass up. You can talk about it all you want, about loyalty and all that jazz, but it’s tough to really summon up that righteous fury you need to back up a dude like Raiola. He is Wrong and everybody knows it and that calls into question your whole damn thing, which is not the state of mind you want your dudes to have, you know?

This is getting weird and existential, and I’m speculating on the mindsets of overgrown millionaire man-children, which is probably a hideous mistake, but it’s just human nature. These dudes have to hate playing with a dumb asshole like Raiola. They have to. And this has been going on for 13 fucking years!

By the way, do you know who followed Raiola at Nebraska? Richie Incognito. That’s right, for almost a decade, the Nebraska offensive line was anchored by Dominic Raiola and then Richie Incognito. Good Lord. That’s not really relevant to anything, I just wanted to point it out because, well, goddamn! Actually, you know what? It is kind of relevant, because I think it helps to explain Raiola a little bit.

He was a star at Nebraska, the same school that produced Incognito, stairwell menace Lawrence Phillips, alleged rapist and all around degenerate Christian Peter, and, yes, Ndamokong Suh. It is basically the crucible within which assholes are born. It is an asshole factory, and so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Raiola is the way he is. Besides football, the only thing to do in Nebraska is drink, menace the townsfolk like fucking Frankenstein and sodomize each other with corn. Corn Sodomy was probably Raiola’s major.

Look, this whole thing has been kind of rambly and about as ranty as it gets, but don’t let all of my ridiculousness take away from the main point here, which is that Dominic Raiola is not just an asshole, but a dumb asshole, which is a lethal combination that will kill your fandom dead. Or at least leave it a twisted, mangled perverted version of what it once was. He is no goddamn fun to root for. It’s fucking exhausting. He is everything you pray you don’t get stuck with as a fan, and he is certainly not someone you ever expect to be married to for more than a decade. He is the past of the Detroit Lions in all its tragic despair, and it is infuriating to watch as he drags that past into the present like a mangy dog dragging his shitty ass all over the carpet.

It sucks because I can’t just pretend like he doesn’t exist. I can’t just surgically remove him from my mind’s vision of the Lions. He’s in there, and he’s not going away. And so all I’m left with is an alternative in which I cheer for the Lions in spite of him, which diminishes my fandom, and let’s face it, this is a fandom that wears on you anyway. It isn’t easy being a Lions fan. We don’t need Dominic Raiola around to make it even harder. I just want him to go away, but with my luck, he’s probably got another decade left in him, and sometime in 2024, when he and Jared Allen are jerking each other off on the field in an asshole singularity, a black hole will be produced which will finally suck the remnants of my sanity and fandom inside and all that will be left in the ensuing Void will be a voice cackling incessantly at me and then Raiola’s face will appear like the hologram head of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz and I will know that God is dead. Fuck you, Dominic Raiola, you killed God. You probably stomped him to death and then taunted Jesus.

Until then, go Lions, I guess. Except for Dominic Raiola, because he is, and always will be, a dumb asshole.