The Manti Te’O Saga - merged threads.

[socraticsilence]

Gotta love ND: When real women are raped they obfuscate when fake women die they investigate.

[gatorinmi]

Originally Posted by tommyuf21

Sports journalism doesn't exist anymore. Fact checking is unheard of. I'm certain something like this will happen again and again and again....

What's pretty pathetic is Gene Wojo from ESPN admitted last night that he tried to fact check the story and found no evidence that it was real but went with it anyway.

[Welshgator]

I'm crushed . Does this mean that Harvey doesn't exist either?

[swampspring]

That's because all espn does nowadays are puff pieces. When was the last time they broke anything of real value? I know this forum is on the espn network, and this comment may be removed, but it's true. Espn's relevance is based on its size, market share, etc., not on any substantial reporting. People mock the blogosphere, and sometimes rightfully so, for inane articles/comments, etc., but outside of yahoo sports, they tend to break most of the real news.

[RayGator]

Next stop for Manti: the Oprah show. No doubt there would be a record number of tears on it! And when the show would be over everyone would love Manti again. Perfect solution for the weird guy.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by RayGator

Next stop for Manti: the Oprah show. No doubt there would be a record number of tears on it! And when the show would be over everyone would love Manti again. Perfect solution for the weird guy.

It's still a little early in this story to completely convict the guy. A lot of questions yet to be answered.

[demosthenes]

Originally Posted by gatorr4life

I don't disagree with the picture, but if the article ridiculed him, them I could understand his position. Manti teo is a great role model and did/said all the right things when interviewd. He's a good guy and should be portrayed as such. Just my opinion.

This is funny in retrospect.

[secgator]

Great post from over at tigerdroppings:

"Lance Armstrong just called Te'o a liar"

LOL

[gatorman_07732]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

It's still a little early in this story to completely convict the guy. A lot of questions yet to be answered.

Yeah but geez this thing was going on for a couple of years and at the very minimum lied about meeting her at Stanford.

[92gator]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

It's like a "my girlfriend, back in Canada" tale gone far, far too far.

LOL!

Very well played, sir!

[nawlinsgator]

Originally Posted by GatorSean

That's what true journalism is supposed to look like. There is actually background information and facts to backup what they are writing about.

But to put it simply, the ND linebacker made up a story about how his girlfriend died. She wasn't his girlfriend, she didn't die, she didn't even exist. The pictures used are from somebody else's FB account.

Well, apparently, real journalism is very vague. Everyone seems to think he made up this whole thing, when it is possible (maybe even probable) that someone played a prank on him.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by nawlinsgator

Well, apparently, real journalism is very vague. Everyone seems to think he made up this whole thing, when it is possible (maybe even probable) that someone played a prank on him.

The story isn't done, but things are certainly less vague than they were before. Deadspin did not say that Te'o made up the story, simply that this "girl" didn't exist.

[GT Gator]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

It's still a little early in this story to completely convict the guy. A lot of questions yet to be answered.

Sorry, but after everything I think there is next to no chance of Te'o wasn't in on the hoax.

I would have bought some of his silly story if he had proactively come out and revealed he was being duped for 2+ years by some vicious Internet hoaxers (with nothing better to do but spend 2+ years talking on the phone with some poor hapless college football player).

However, notice that neither he nor ND mentioned a peep until Deadspin printed their article.

What questions do you need answered before you believe whether Te'o was in on the hoax?

[corpgator]

It's definitely not too early to convict the guy. The girl didn't exist and the person behind it was a guy. He said he talked to "her" every day on the phone including while she was in the hospital.

He lied because he obviously never talked to her on the phone. Guilty as charged.

[92gator]

Someone mentioned notre dame blogs earlier up thread--that should make for some interesting reading.

Anyone have links to any Notre Dame cites?

[TWGator]

My wife wants to get the new Barbie for our daughter. It's the Manti T'eo girlfriend edition. Just an empty box, but still...

[GatorAvatar]

Teo lied. This is not rocket science. Listen to his October interview with ESPN. He says, he 'met her', 'she was beautiful' bla bla. Kid was probably depressed or something and decided to make up a story.

[oakgator]

Originally Posted by Gatorzz

This is pretty straightforward. For those of you with Twitter, a partial confession just unearthed live on twitter.

This is the classic case of a juvenile joke turning into a giant misunderstanding.

1. Ronaiah was Lennay Kekua. This kid is a juvenile knucklehead. He did it to simply mess with Manti because the kid is a loser. You can see his twitter friends and how they speak. They are idiots.

2. To take the story to the next level, he got one of his knucklehead girlfriends to be the voice on the phone.

3. Manti was ashamed he had an online girlfriend, so he told his dad he met her at a Stanford game, and she visited Hawaii a few times.

4. The dad uninowingly told the media the rest and the lies/fibs of Manti to his dad about how they met spun out of control.

5. These kids like the MTV show catfish, and came up with the leukemia story to end the lie and submit their prank to the show.

6. Manti Teos girlfriend was never a news story until she died and he made a huge deal out of it and it became a national story. Thats when these kids said uh oh, this just got huge. Otherwise you would have never heard of his girlfriend.

7. A bunch of knuckleheads knew Ronaiah was messing with Manti Teo under the alias Lennay Kekua. When they heard on the news that Manti Teos girlfriend died and her name was Lennay Kekua, they all started tweeting "lol" and "lmao" and all of this stuff.

The end.

Very simple.

And it almost got Te'o the Heisman? Nah.

[92gator]

Originally Posted by corpgator

It's definitely not too early to convict the guy. The girl didn't exist and the person behind it was a guy. He said he talked to "her" every day on the phone including while she was in the hospital.

He lied because he obviously never talked to her on the phone. Guilty as charged.

I agree that there's very little question that he lied--but there is some degree of mitigation, depending on:

1. If he was not complicit in the fabrication of the girl from its inception (I don't think he was);

2. If not, depending on when he learned it was a hoax (e.g.--before or after the feigned death?)

Clearly if he learned of the hoax before the death...very little mitigation. However, if he learned of it afterwards...you gotta' give some leeway for the incredibly humiliating nature of the situation....

I'm reminded case--from Michigan, I think--where a man fell in love with a woman on-line; deeply--over a period of years--the 'woman' was a hoax. It received nat'l attention, b/c the man killed his co-worker after he got jealous, and believed the co-worker was cheating with the fake girl. Dude was middle aged man with a family; the *woman*, was actually a middle-aged mom who posed as her teen-age daughter--even used her picture.

T'eo is a naive, young kid, so some of it certainly seems plausible...

....but I also can't completely discount the probability of some guilty knowledge and covering up, somewhere along the way.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by GT Gator

Sorry, but after everything I think there is next to no chance of Te'o wasn't in on the hoax.

It's likely, but like I said too early.

Ray called him a "weird guy," and if it turns out he was behind it the whole time I think that would be hard to argue. If, however, it turns out he was just extremely naive and duped - which is unlikely but there is some evidence toward it - I'd feel out of place calling him "weird."

Like I said, he was complicit in some way in the perpetuation of all of this, but if it was out of deep shame I can somewhat understand. I'm definitely going to wait it out before I call the guy weird.