I [17M] embarrassed one of our school's football heroes [17?] and now the rest of the team is trying to bully me at school and call me "racist"

School started last week for us. The football team I guess practiced during the summer so they hung around the campus long before the rest of us.

"Danny" is on the football team as one of the runningbacks. I knew him a little bit in middle school but we were never friends. We are both juniors.

I was at the movies with my girlfriend [18] who is a senior yesterday (Sunday). My older brother [20] was there with his girlfriend [20?] also. My brother is in college and he plays a fullback for his school team.

Danny was there with his friends (three other guys, all 17-18) and he starts saying stuff to my girlfriend which she doesn't like. I tell him to stop but because he's with his friends he's feeling pretty big. Then he tries to push me and get all ghetto-hard and my brother was about to knock his teeth out but instead I punch Danny right in the eye and he starts whining and sniveling like the scared coward he is.

His friends are on the football team too but they don't do anything and my brother isn't afraid of anyone and I have no doubt he could murder all of them at the same time if they tried to touch me. They just gather up Danny's crying ass and walk away.

So we go home and don't think anything more about it.

At school today I ran into Danny and his friends at lunch. He's got a big bruise on his face thanks to me. I'm not on the football team but I'm not scared of him or his friends. He tries to jaw at me and call me a little [derogatory name for women] and saying I'm hiding behind my brother and if "I tried anything" he would "kick my ass."

I tell him I'm not hiding behind anyone and any time he wants to settle things with me I'm not running away we can do it right here and I invite him to kick my ass. Of course he doesn't do anything but talk some more.

He started going around telling everyone I'm a neo Nazi and that my brother is in the KKK and that I threatened to kill him (Danny) and get all the Aryan brotherhood to protect me. His friends are also joining in calling me racist. It's pretty ironic that all of them are the same color as me and only Danny is a different ethnicity. In fact our school's football team is 90% the same ethnicity as me.

My girlfriend says I should tell the principal but if I do that I think I'll be dead socially. I'm not afraid of anyone on the football team and I will fight every one of them because they're all a bunch of follower losers. But if they all jump me at once I'll be in trouble.

My brother is really angry for me and he wants to defend me but I don't like the idea of him putting himself at risk and his scholarship in danger to help me with my problem.

Another problem is that Danny is somewhat popular at school and to prove how not-racist they are a lot of classmates just go along with his BS and are now calling me racist.

I have my own friends but among them only I am trained to fight (my brother and I went to Jiu Jitsu classes when we were younger and boxing, too) and although my friends want to support me I don't want any of them getting hurt fighting my battles.

How do I get out of physically confronting Danny and his friends without looking like I'm backing down? I know that one on one I could absolutely destroy any of them but I don't want to get expelled and I have really good academic marks and want to go to a good school for engineering.

What can I do about the racism comments? I'm not racist it just so happens that Danny is a different color from me and HE is the one starting mess.

tl;dr: smacked up one of our school's football heroes. Now everyone is calling me a racist.