Detroit Lions center Dominic Railoa landed himself in hot water earlier this week when he was accused of hurling homophobic slurs at a Wisconsin marching band before a game with the Green Bay Packers. Although Raiola recently admitted that he did act inappropriately at the game, he says that he never uttered anything homophobic during his tirade.
According to initial reports, Raiola allegedly went on a bullying tirade against the band and several band members claimed that he hurled misogynistic and homophobic slurs as well as a slew of curse words at them for no apparent reason.
According to USA Today, in a statement issued Tuesday, Raiola apologized for his behavior, saying, “My interaction with the Wisconsin Marching Band was inappropriate. I apologize to those I offended along with all of the members of Wisconsin’s marching band. I also apologize to the Lions’ organization and my teammates.”
“I understand the standards to which we should conduct ourselves, and my actions Sunday fell dramatically short of those standards,” he added, also saying that he would make “a significant contribution” to the band.
However, Raiola refused to go into details about the incident and seemed to deny the allegations that anything he said was homophobic.
“I said what I needed to say yesterday, and my mind shifted to Cleveland yesterday. I don’t know how accurate all those reports were but I’m not going to go on and bring it back up again and make it fresh. It’s behind us and we’re moving on to Cleveland.”
In regards to the homophobic statements, he added, “That definitely was inaccurate and that’s all I’m going to say. If you can’t come to me and prove to me what was said with a video or a recording or something like that, obviously, it’s somebody sitting in a college dorm and it got blown up. The director agreed: It got blown way out of proportion.”
Well, we’re still not convinced that several of the band’s members would lie about the details of being verbally assaulted, especially since Raiola admitted to doing it. Check out some other offenders below. – nicholas robinson
