This didn’t happen.
If you have not yet, first read Deadspin’s remarkable investigative story on Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o’s involvement in a hoax with a fake dead girlfriend.
(I didn’t follow Notre Dame all year so this girlfriend story to me is all new.)
The star linebacker apparently conjured up a fake girlfriend along with at least one other person, made it a national headline when she died of leukemia and got the rest of America to believe that the linebacker was going through tough times and overcoming it. But as the Deadspin article points out, there are so many holes to this story that they’ve concluded that not only was this entire story false, but the said girlfriend never existed.
Notre Dame immediately released a statement saying that Te’o was not part of the hoax, rather he was a victim of it.
On Dec. 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed by Manti Te’o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia. The University immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax. While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators.
Rather than distance themselves from this, the university is siding with Te’o. OK, fine. The university isn’t the issue really anyway.
Te’o himself echoed what the university said in this statement released shortly after the Deadspin article was published.
This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her.
To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.
It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother’s death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life.
I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been.
In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was.
Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I’m looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft.
But here’s where I am confused. At the 4:30 mark of this interview with Jim Rome a month after his “girlfriend’s death”, Te’o openly talks about her and how they would talk on the phone all the time. Everything he says leads us to believe that he actually knows this person, confirming she exists. And I would only assume that if she was his real girlfriend, that they would have actually met.
(Also note that other media outlets have said in the past that these two met at a game a few years ago. Te’o claims their relationship is online only, despite saying in public they’ve “met.” If Te’o truly believes that, then how come he didn’t squash these previous reports?)
You can’t proclaim that your girlfriend died and never have actually met her prior. And to not even attend funeral to see if she did die, only to assume? It gets real weird if you continue reading the article.
As much as I would like to believe that this is a hoax and Te’o is the victim, everything in this article suggests that he was involved in all parts of this. Unless more information comes out, what I know now tells me that Te’o deceived all of us intentionally.
My only question is this: Why?
What benefit does he get from this? Was it just to gain more popularity and sympathy for the Heisman voting? Was it to make us the audience feel for him throughout the year? Could he have foreseen such a hoax as a way to elevate his name and status?
There seemed to be no reason to do any of this. He was a talented player and he didn’t need a dead girlfriend to boost his status. The risk, as we can see now, was too high and doing such a thing won’t sit well with people. It just doesn’t make sense and I want to know why this happened.
The confusing part about this is that there was not enough background checking on Te’o’s part to cover all the holes. Using the image of another person and saying she was a student at Stanford was too easy to disprove. And then all the subsequent lying in public and through Twitter just makes it all so strange in every single way.
But if the research by Deadspin is true, Te’o is in a whole world of trouble now as he tries to move into the NFL Draft as a top prospect. I’d say all NFL teams should do their research on him to make sure they know everything about him. Because if he can fool an entire nation for several months, who knows what else he could be hiding.
Manti Te’o’s appearance to the public has now been altered severely.
But at the end of the day... 