deadspin.com/5976517/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking-and-inspirational-story-of-the-college-football-season-is-a-hoax
Let's hope this isn't some guy who doesn't have all his evidence as put together as his writing makes it look, just out trying to get the money & fame of being the first out with the story.
It gets even weirder when Ronny Tuiasosopo enters the mix. They actually conspired to create a story to garner public support? I kind of want these guys to run for office now.
Swarbrick's news conference to portray Te'o as the victim is one of the most incredible things I've ever heard. Making up the story about the dead gf was bad enough, but to try and cover it up and make him appear to be the victim now just goes beyond anything I've ever seen. The ******** is awfully deep in South Bend tonight...
It's a sad state of affairs when Deadspin is the premier source of sports reporting.* I guess ESPN/FOX and others are just too much in bed with the subjects they cover to get any kind of objective/factual/editorial analysis. *I get all my news from hornfans. Is Mack Brown still the football coach?
It seems ESPN knew about this but slept on it during bowl season. That would be funny if so. And it keeps getting more weird because names like Troy Hair Palomalo is coming into it, there are tweets on the account of his "dead girlfriend".
I think he made it all up in a play for attention and Heisman consideration. The question is how much the folks at Notre Dame knew about his fraud and decided to played along.
If the "love of your life" dies, I'd think you'd want to be at her funeral. He's either dumb as a rock or he made this **** up.
If he made this up, I would not draft him--or at least not give him first-round money. An NFL team shouldn't invest millions of dollars in a guy who makes up an imaginary girlfriend to gain publicity and get a sympathy vote for postseason awards.
I'm not buying it. I admit I am not well read or heard all the details on this story but, I have heard enough to make me believe this kid made it up, it got too deep, somehow had to come clean on it and used the hoax spin to make it look better than an outright lie. Unfortunately, I think this will turn out to be a lie. I could be wrong but that is what I suspect... not good for his future or even ND. One side benefit goes to Lance Armstrong as this story has distracted his scandal to some degree.
I watched Swarbrick's PC last night; he seemed a bit too rehearsed by half, including the choking up, followed by him saying something like: "When something like this happens to the most honest person I've ever known...." Uh, Swarbrick needs to meet more people. And what in the Wide, Wide World of Sports was Notre Dame doing an extensive investigation into this a couple of months ago? Isn't that either possible obstruction of justice or unfair benefit to a student athlete. Te'o's blowup doll girlfriend should have been between him and, well, her/it. This had nothing to do with football, did it? As an aside, this whole episode makes me think of the current insurance commercial: "I read about it on the internet, and they can't put anything on the internet that's not true." "Where'd you read that?" "The internet." "Oh, here comes my date; I met him online; he's a French model." "Uh....Bonjour?" Most analysts are saying what I think is the only thing you can right now --- Te'o either was seriously scammed over MONTHS about a girl he claims became "the love of his life (I suggest he gets out a bit more, and gets counseling as to what "love" is), or he became complicit towards the end, not wanting to be exposed as some dweeb in tighty whities with a 5-pound bag of cheesy puffs and a 2-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi, too distant from reality to understand what was going on. Either way, this fruit loop needs help. Serious help.
At the very least, Teo never met this "girl" in person, and instead he got chatty with someone online whom he believed was a woman but instead was a fictitious person created by someone pulling a prank on him, and then embellished the relationship because it created some nice publicity. At worst, he contrived this whole thing from the beginning. Either way, he doesn't come out as squeaky clean as Notre Dame has suggested.
If Manti is telling the truth, he claims to have spoken with her on the phone. If so, this goes beyond an internet prank. I wonder if he sent money to his poor, sick, dying girlfriend?
This is getting even weirder. Yes, apparently, that is possible. The Link NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – OK, now it’s really getting weird. On the same night the story of Manti Te’o's girlfriend and her death last year from Leukemia was revealed as a hoax, an NFL player insisted “No, she is real.” Um — what? Arizona Cardinals fullback Reagan Mauia said he met Lennay Kekua in person during an outreach trip with Troy Polamalu of the Pittsburgh Steelers and others in June 2011. “This was before her and Manti,” Mauia said Wednesday, according to ESPN. “I don’t think Manti was even in the picture, but she and I became good friends. We would talk off and on, just checking up on each other kind of thing. I am close to her family. When she was going through the loss of her father, I was — I offered a comforting shoulder and just someone to bounce her emotions off. That was just from meeting her in Samoa.” Deadspin.com rocked the sports world when it published a report at 4:10 p.m., saying there was no evidence Kekua ever existed. Te’o later said in a statement that he was the “victim” of “someone’s sick joke and constant lies.” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick called a news conference Wednesday night, aligning himself and the university behind Te’o. Swarbrick said investigators hired by Notre Dame “were able to discover online chatter among the perpetrators that was certainly the ultimate proof of this, the joy they were taking.” In the middle of the whole saga was Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, whose friends and relatives told Deadspin they believe he was behind the Kekua character. Deadspin said Te’o may have been in on it, pointing to some sort of acquaintance between Tuiasosopo and the Fighting Irish linebacker. Mauia said he was introduced to Kekua by Tuiasosopo, and thought Kekua’s mother was operating her Twitter account — a key cog in Deadspin’s report. “She was tall,” Mauia said. “Volleyball-type of physique. She was athletic, tall, beautiful. Long hair. Polynesian. She looked like a model.” Te’o’s story hit the national stage after an emotional upset over Michigan State in Sept., following the deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend. Kekua’s passing after a battle with leukemia — now apparently fiction — was widely reported. The Heisman Trophy runner-up was projected by many to be a first-round pick in this year’s NFL draft. ----------- MAN, they must have some SERIOUS ganja over in Polynesia --- would like to get my hands on some and I don't even smoke dope. But if their version of weed is doing THIS to pudgy, grass-skirted football players, I'm THERE!!
*Steps on soapbox* To me, the bigger story here is the total lack of professionalism and journalism in the media in general. Gene Wojciechowski was on SportsCenter last night and said something to the effect of "we asked Manti if we could contact her family to convey our condolensces. He said "the family does not wish to be contacted." We then asked him if we could have a picture(s) of her. He said "the family does not wish to share pictures." And at the time, I made nothing of it." Ok, that, to a journalist, has to raise a red flag already. You have what amounts to evasive replies on two related questions, and they're evasive for (presumably) the same reasons. A real journalist would launch an investigation. Wojciechowski chose not to and instead chose to just take Te'o at his word, which is why Deadspin ended up being the one to spill the story and not ESPN even though ESPN has more money, more resources, a larger staff, and a better connection to the Notre Dame athletic program, all of which would have made such an investigation much quicker and easier than what Deadspin had to do to uncover this. The bigger problem here isn't just that GW took the guy's word for it. It's that no one at ESPN held him accountable for it. They didn't drop him a line saying "you need to look into this, it's your professional responsibility, blah blah blah." They just took it at face value, ran with the story, and did nothing to factcheck what they were getting themselves into. ESPN isn't the only network that permits crap like this to happen. This happens with the regular "news" outlets quite often, and it's not always a mistake either. I guarantee you that at least part of Wojciechowski's mindset was that he didn't want to investigate further because the story was just too good at face value, which is probably the same reason ESPN didn't hold him accountable. They had the absolute perfect story and they wanted to run with it so badly that they basically convinced themselves that no investigation was necessary. ESPN has an interest in promoting charismatic athletes the way ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and the like have in promoting the US government. It's the same reason that Tebow, up until very recently, has garnered so much positive attention despite being a subpar quarterback. In this era of 24/7 media coverage and the internet, where fluff pieces dominate so much of the mass media's coverage of a variety of topics, they are so desirous to find total packages. Manti Te'o was their latest project, and it backfired on them big time, which is why they want to appear so agnostic about "who was behind this?" They give token lip service to the notion that he was behind it, but they're most likely not launching (nor will they launch) any additional inquiries. They're probably just going to stick to their agnostic reporting of "well this person said this, that person said that, so who knows?" even though finding out is very simple: 1. Twitter can almost certainly trace the IP addresses of the accounts being used. If they can establish that Te'o, Tuiasosopo or any of their friends has that IP, the case is pretty much closed 2. Since Mauia is vouching for her existence, ask where either she or for any of her records (i.e. where is she from, what school(s) did she attend, etc). If Mauia doesn't satisfy those questions, he can only be considered a (but not necessarily the) perpetrator. 3. If she does exist, track her down and bombard her with calls and emails asking what her involvement is in this and why Te'o is connected even though he's now telling us she's fake, which is completely against his interests. 4. if she doesn't exist, investigate to whom that phone number belongs. Like the Twitter accounts, if it belongs to one of Te'o's friends (or friends' friends), we know who's responsible. Those are 4 pretty simple steps to take and no one (except Deadspin) even attempted them or anything similar. They just sat there, trusting the guy to the point where it was perfectly obvious that they actively wanted what he was saying about her to be true. The whole thing is just stupid and bizarre, but I don't think the mass media's role in this is being talked about nearly enough. *Quietly steps off soapbox*
