Dave Feit's Greatest Huskers by the Numbers: 54 - Dominic Raiola

Which Husker centers might have won the Rimington Trophy, and the final game of the Big Eight Conference.

Counting down the greatest Nebraska football players by jersey number. / HuskerMax

Dave Feit is counting down the days until the start of the 2025 season by naming the best Husker to wear each uniform number, as well as one of his personal favorites at that number. For more information about the series, click here. To see more entries, click here.

Greatest Husker to wear 54: Dominic Raiola, Center, 1997 - 2000

Honorable Mention: Rik Bonness, Marion Broadstone, Doug Dumler, Aaron Graham, Kelly Petersen

Also worn by: Bryce Benhart, Troy Branch, Mark Cooper, Barney Cotton, Ola Dagunduro, Korver Demma, Royal Kahler, Colton Koehler, Ron Michka, Chris O'Gara, Chris Patrick, Sam Schwartzkopf, Doug Seaman, Chad Sievers

Dave's Fave: Aaron Graham, Offensive Guard / Center, 1992 - 1995


Since the year 2000, the Rimington Trophy has been given to the best center in college football.

But what if the award had started in 1983 - the season after the trophy's namesake, Dave Rimington, graduated from Nebraska?

How many Rimington winners would Nebraska have?

We've mentioned a few already: Jake Young, Aaron Taylor and Mark Traynowicz. Nebraska would have some strong options as legacy winners too.

Heck, there are two potential Rimington Trophy winners right here at #54*: Rik Bonness and Aaron Graham.  Bonness, from Bellevue, was All-Big Eight and All-America twice (1974 and 1975). Graham, a Texan, was All-Big Eight in 1994 and 1995 and an All-American in 1995. Both earned Academic All-America honors as well.

*Random aside: 25 different centers have worn #54 at some point in their career. That might be the most for any single position at one number.

But for the title of Greatest #54, it's hard to argue against the first recipient of the Rimington Award: Dominic Raiola.

Dom was the first Hawaiian to become a Husker. Longtime assistant coach George Darlington recruited the West Coast for years and made some inroads on the islands, which led to Raiola, Tony Tata, Junior Tagoa'i and Toniu Fonoti coming to Lincoln.

Dominic Raiola with the first-ever Rimington Trophy. / Nebraska Athletics

I loved watching Raiola play.  He was a beast of a blocker who could steamroll anybody in front of him, averaging almost 12 pancake blocks per game in 1999. And yet, he was also surprisingly quick, setting position records in the 10-yard dash. His speed in the 40 was pretty good too.

As a redshirt freshman, Raiola was the long snapper on the punt team.  Many times, Dom would be one of the first guys down the field.  Imagine being a punt returner expecting to have a corner or safety be the first guy you see. Then you look and see a freaking 300-pound center bearing down on you. I'll fair catch the kick, thank you very much.

Raiola bypassed his senior season and had a lengthy NFL career with the Detroit Lions. Twenty-five years after winning the first Rimington Trophy, the Raiola name is still mentioned daily by Husker fans. But it is not Dom we're talking about.

Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford and center Dominic Raiola in 2013. / Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images

The odds are good that the Raiola fans are talking about is Dominic's son Dylan, one of the highest-ranked quarterback recruits in program history and the starter in 2024. Or maybe the fans are opining on Dom's younger brother Donovan, a Wisconsin grad who has been Nebraska's offensive line coach since 2022. Husker fans who follow recruiting are already talking about Dom's youngest son Dayton, another quarterback who has verbally committed to play for the Huskers.

Even though his family members are currently getting all of the attention, Dominic has a trump card. His name and number are currently the only one from the family on the north stadium façade. He set a high standard for the rest of his family to meet.

***

On Nov. 10, 1928, Nebraska played at Oklahoma. The Cornhuskers won 44-6. It was their first meeting at members of the Big Six conference.*

*Oklahoma and Nebraska were both members of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MVIAA) between 1920 and 1927. In May of 1928, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma split away from Drake, Grinnell, Oklahoma A&M (now known as Oklahoma State) and Washington (MO). Depending on which source you cite, the MVIAA is either a direct predecessor of the Big Six or a spin-off of what is now known as the Missouri Valley Conference.  

NU and OU would play each and every year after that. The conference grew and became one of the premier leagues in the sport. In 1948, the Big Six became the Big Seven when the Colorado Buffaloes joined. In the 1960 season, Oklahoma State became the final member of the conference known as the Big Eight. The membership would stay the same for 35 years, an eternity in college athletics.

On Nov. 24, 1995 - sixty-seven years and two weeks after that initial meeting as Big Six members - Oklahoma traveled to Nebraska for a milestone game: the final game of the Big Eight Conference.

The Big 12 Conference was founded in February 1994 and started play in 1996. The league consisted of the original Big Eight schools and four schools of the former Southwest Conference (Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech).

The original Big 12 was a marriage of convenience, with the best schools from Texas (and Baylor) looking for a lifeboat from the sinking SWC. The Big Eight schools were looking for their own TV deal and felt more teams and TV sets in Texas was the way to do it.

The formation of the Big 12 was a uneven time for Nebraska. On the field, the Huskers were dominating: two national championships and a runner-up finish in the final three years of the Big Eight. But in the boardroom, Nebraska was getting blown out. They were on the losing end of 11-1 votes on multiple topics. At times, it felt like if Nebraska said the sky was blue, the other members of the Big Eight would vote that it was actually burnt orange.

That early resentment definitely soured the perception of the Big 12 with Nebraska fans.

Husker fans who experienced the Big Eight will usually speak glowingly about it. What was not to love? In football, the conference was usually Nebraska, Oklahoma and the six dwarfs, which certainly helped Nebraska's record. During the Big 6/7/8 era (1928 - 1995) Nebraska won 78% of its games against CU, ISU, KU, KSU, MU and OSU. During the Devaney and Osborne years of the Big Eight (1962 - 1995), Nebraska won 90% of its games against conference foes other than the Sooners. Nebraska was sub .500 against Oklahoma during the Big 6/7/8 era (.439) and in the Devaney/Osborne years (.475).

Another big benefit of the Big Eight was the proximity.* In the Big Eight years, the average distance between Lincoln and the seven other campuses was 317 miles, with Manhattan (KSU) just 135 miles away.

*For reference, Nebraska's closest opponent in the Big Ten is Iowa (301 miles from Lincoln). Only three of the 18 Big Ten schools (Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin) are closer than the farthest Big Eight school (Colorado).  

When Nebraska joined the Big Ten, the average distance was 626 miles. With the addition of Maryland, Rutgers and four West Coast schools, the average distance from Lincoln has ballooned to 920 miles.

During the Devaney and Osborne era, fans would flock in large numbers to away games. Partially because the college towns of the Big Eight were fun places to visit, and partially because the Nebraska sellout streak often made it easier to get tickets to an away game than a home game - even if it meant buying season tickets to Kansas or Iowa State.

But for all of the romanticism of the old Big Eight, creating the Big 12 was the correct financial decision at the time. The Big Eight couldn't survive today and probably wouldn't have survived 25 years ago.

Back to that final Big Eight game…

Nebraska was wrapping up its best season ever. Oklahoma, under first-year coach Howard Schellenberger, was struggling (the Sooners came in at 5-4-1). The Blackshirts pitched a shutout and scored on two of OU's three turnovers. The mighty Nebraska offense struggled, scoring "just" 23 points.* Seven of those came on a Joel Makovicka run with 44 seconds left that drew an excited whoop followed by "Judas Priest! They've done it!" from ABC's Brent Musburger.

*Tommie Frazier had his worst game of the season, rushing for just 35 yards and throwing for 128 on 12-of-15 passing. It is likely a contributing factor as to why he did not win the Heisman.  

As for Musburger's exclamation, I'm guessing he had wager on the combined score to be over a certain amount of points. Apparently, the line was somewhere around 34.5

The Nebraska rushing attack was below its dominating season average, but as was usually the case in 1995, the offensive line played well. Center Aaron Graham was the anchor of the line. The lone returning member of the famed Pipeline, he was a two-time All-Big Eight pick and a first team All-American.

Aaron Graham / Nebraska Athletics

Throughout his entire stellar career, he did not allow a single sack. Additionally, Graham was an academic All-American, earning multiple awards and scholarships during the 1995 season. After the season, Graham earned the prestigious NCAA Today Top Eight Award, the highest honor for student-athletes. Graham, was a fourth-round draft pick and played six years in the NFL.

During the Big 12 Conference's formation, Nebraska wanted an exception to continue playing the Oklahoma series every year. The Sooners - in a downward spiral after Barry Switzer's resignation - did not want any part of it.

The Huskers and Sooners would play in the first two years of the Big 12 (1996 and 1997) - both Nebraska blowouts. But for my money, the OU-NU series died along with the Big Eight. With Nebraska in the North Division and Oklahoma in the South, they would only be matched up two out of every four years. With two championship game matchups, Nebraska and Oklahoma did meet 10 times during the Big 12 era.

In 2010, Nebraska left for the Big Ten. In 2024, Oklahoma left for the SEC.

Some things, such as the Big Eight Conference and the Nebraska-Oklahoma series, are too good to last.

---

More from Nebraska on SI

feed

---

Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI, subscribing to HuskerMax on YouTube, and visiting HuskerMax.com daily.