Oregon TE Colt Lyerla apologizes for Sandy Hook conspiracy comments
Oregon tight end Colt Lyerla apologized Saturday for Twitter comments he made two weeks ago suggesting that the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary last December was a government conspiracy.
At the time, Lyerla posted on his Twitter page a YouTube video about the government conspiracy and claimed it was aimed at further its anti-assault weapon.
Lyerla didn’t exactly change his opinion Saturday, but did say it was wrong to express it on Twitter.
"Overall, I feel that I made a mistake in getting involved in such a personal matter on such a public platform," Lyerla said. "And I'm apologetic to my teammates and my coaches and the program overall for doing that. But on the same note, I would never want to discourage anyone from having their own opinion or raising questions like that.
"But for me it was a bad idea because of the position I'm in, so like I said I'm apologetic and I'm looking forward to learning from this and moving on with the season."
Lyerla did receive some support for his theory, but the majority of the comments toward him were negative. Even Oregon released a statement saying it didn’t support Lyerla’s comments as it tried to distance itself from the junior tight end.
"It's something I should've been prepared for but wasn't, obviously," Lyerla said. "But I feel like sometimes those things have to happen if you're going to learn from it, so I'm just trying to look at the silver lining of the situation and I feel like I learned my lesson from that."
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