The biggest liar in sports this week is not Lance Armstrong. Check out Manti Te'o

[BlueStreak]

From the Detroit Free Press

http://www.freep.com/article/20130116/SPORTS08/130116085/notre-dame-manti-teo-deadspin-girlfriend?odyssey=nav|head

But the real story is here:

http://deadspin.com/5976517/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking-and-inspirational-story-of-the-college-football-season-is-a-hoax

Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school's football program back to glory, Te'o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua.

Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI's Pete Thamel described how Te'o would phone her in her hospital room and stay on the line with her as he slept through the night. "Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice," Thamel wrote.

Upon receiving the news of the two deaths, Te'o went out and led the Fighting Irish to a 20-3 upset of Michigan State, racking up 12 tackles. It was heartbreaking and inspirational. Te'o would appear on ESPN's College GameDay to talk about the letters Kekua had written him during her illness. He would send a heartfelt letter to the parents of a sick child, discussing his experience with disease and grief. The South Bend Tribune wrote an article describing the young couple's fairytale meeting—she, a Stanford student; he, a Notre Dame star—after a football game outside Palo Alto.

Did you enjoy the uplifiting story, the tale of a man who responded to adversity by becoming one of the top players of the game? If so, stop reading.

In short, the whole thing looks like a hoax carried out by Manti and a friend for publicity purposes. And part of the publicity might have been to elevate his chances of winning the Heisman and getting a huge NFL payday.

[Scuba]

1. Sounds like Te'o was the victim.

Those Vegas gambling guys must be desperate.

[BlueStreak]

2. That's how Notre Dame is playing it out. Read my second link.

I have updated the OP. I mistakenly only included the Free Press CYA story and not the source material itself.

It seems abundantly clear that Te'o was right in the middle of this thing.

I mean, think about it. The story was that he was really right with his girlfriend and that her loss was devastating to him. And now they are saying that he never actually even met the girl, but just developed a relationship over Twitter??? No, I don't think so. He is the perp, not the victim.

[ELI BOY 1950]

3. Your NUTS...

comparing anyone to Lance is nuts...he made his millions of of cancer victims...mostly young kids...yeah Lance, Livestrong...

[BlueStreak]

4. It is blowing out into the open now

Yahoo Sports: Manti Te’o's girlfriend, who supposedly died in September, never existed according to Deadspin
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/manti-te-os-girlfriend-supposedly-died-september-never-225622613--ncaaf.html

ESPN: Story of Manti Te'o girlfriend a hoax
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8851033/story-manti-teo-girlfriend-death-apparently-hoax

[BlueStreak]

5. AN appeal to Manti to stop being stupid. Come clean.

http://www.nationalfootballpost.com/Advice-to-Manti-Teo-Follow-Andy-Pettittes-example.html

Note that most of the other "news" reports are trying to stick with that insane Notre Dame position that Manti had nothing to do with this, but was actually a victim. That is insane on so many levels, but the same company got away for 30 years blowing off charges that many of their preachers were sex abusers too. So there you go.

The Deadspin stuff seems to be extremely well researched, as opposed to the trash that the "respectable media" has gone with on this story. In particular,they closed the loop on how the plot was hatched, and how Manti's friend was able to got the only real victim ("Reba&quot to provide the pictures central to this hoax.

All of those photographs—with one important exception—came from the private Facebook and Instagram accounts of Reba, whom we found after an exhaustive related-images search of each of Lennay's images (most of which had been modified in some way to prevent reverse image searching). We sent her a number of photographs that had appeared on Lennay's Twitter account, which is now private but apparently still active (see this retweet, for instance). One picture in particular brought Reba to a start. It had been used briefly as @LoveMSMK's Twitter avatar and later in the background of the page (we've blurred out the face, at Reba's request):

That photo hadn't appeared on the internet—at least, not to Reba's knowledge. She had taken it in December 2012 and sent it directly to an old high school acquaintance. The two hadn't talked since graduation, but the classmate, whom Reba remembered fondly, contacted her on Facebook with a somewhat convoluted request: His cousin had been in a serious car accident, and he had seen her photos before and thought she was pretty. Would she be so kind as to take a picture of herself holding up a sign reading "MSMK," to put in a slideshow to support the cousin's recovery? (He didn't explain what MSMK meant, and Reba still doesn't know.) Baffled but trusting, Reba made the sign and sent along the photo.

And now here it was on a dead girl's Twitter profile. After googling Lennay Kekua's name, Reba began to piece things together. She called up the classmate. He expressed alarm, Reba told us later, and "immediately began acting weird." "Don't worry about it," he told her. Moments after the phone call, Reba's picture was removed from the @LoveMSMK Twitter profile. Then, in a series of lengthy phone calls, Reba told us everything she knew about the classmate, a star high school quarterback turned religious musician named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

And later

Te'o and Tuiasosopo definitely know each other. In May 2012, Te'o was retweeting Tuiasosopo, who had mentioned going to Hawaii. Wrote Te'o, "sole"—"bro," in Samoan—"u gotta come down." In June, Te'o wished Tuiasosopo a happy birthday. How they know each other isn't clear. We spoke to a woman we'll call Frieda, who had suggested on Twitter back in December that there was something fishy about Lennay Kekua. She was Facebook friends with Titus Tuiasosopo, so we asked her if she knew anything about Ronaiah.

[BlueStreak]

6. And here's the NYT article. The comments are a lot more insightful

than the "journalism".

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/sports/ncaafootball/story-of-manti-teos-girlfriend-is-said-to-be-a-hoax.html?_r=0

Stupidest.
Cover story.
Ever.

What kind of a moron would believe a word of that -- "I was duped"?

The most telling comment to me is this one from Bruce in Upstate NY

"If I loved someone dying of leukemia, nothing could stop me from visiting her before her death or from going to her funeral. If Mr. Teo was truly duped, he is truly insensitive."

He was able to fly to Hawaii to the funeral of his grandmother, but he never managed to get to the hospital to visit his girlfriend in all the time she had leukemia?

[BlueStreak]

7. Today's articles are starting to openly state the obvious

that this was a hoax in which Te'o was a major architect and actor.

Balloon Boy in cleats.


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/01/the-mythmaking-of-manti-teo.html

And now two other attention whores want to get in on the action: Reagan Mauia, an Cardinals fullback nobody ever heard of, and Troy Polamalu, the Steelers player that nobody talks about anymore since he's been injured and has most of his good days behind him.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/17/sport/manti-teo-controversy/?hpt=hp_c1

http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2013/01/16/teo-deadspin-story-eight-crazy-things/1840729/

[pipi_k]

8. This actually explains a lot

about why he appeared to be uncomfortable during the Heismann ceremonies when the whole subject of his "girlfriend" came up in his bio.

He didn't look pained. Just sort of... squirmy.

[BlueStreak]

9. Some sports writers out there are spewing on about how this will affect his NFL draft position

Last edited Thu Jan 17, 2013, 06:30 PM - Edit history (1)

I seriously doubt that, with this caveat.

If a team thought he was a great LB, they wouldn't be put off too much by this thing, compared to the guys who have violent criminal records. At least Manti didn't ever beat up his "girlfriend" (as far as we know).

However, the NFL draft people are fairly sophisticated. Some of them will figure out that Te'o was really a mostly mediocre player,who was elevated to cult status because of this scam. They will draft him based on his actual abilities versus the legend. The exposure of his big scam, per se, doesn't push him down in the draft. But the draft scout who was already planning to put him down about 20 positions now has a much better basis for explaining that decision.

[LiberalFighter]

12. NFL teams do scores on everything.

If they don't add up right they will be leery. You are right about the sophistication in the draft. The do their own IQ tests that focuses on football and their position.

[BlueStreak]

13. And really, the NFL scout has to decide between only 3 possibilities

1) This guy is a big time con artist

2) The guy is psychotic

3) This is the stupidest guy who ever went to Notre Dame

None of those are really great for that draft score. But ultimately, if they thought he would be the next Junior Seau, they would pick him. Maybe that's not the best example.

Last week several mock drafts had him going as high as #8 to the Bills. The drafts you see coming out in the last couple of days have him much lower. I'm thinking he'll be at the bottom of the first round or early second round. He won't slip any further than that. Somebody will take a chance on him. It isn't like he held up a liquor store or something. And really, he might have slipped almost that far after the game against Alabama.

[BlueStreak]

10. USA Today lays out the impossibilities in the Notre Dame story

http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2013/01/17/mati-teo-fake-girlfriend-hoax-notre-dame/1842081/

[BlueStreak]

11. NBC asks 9 simple questions Te'o and Notre Dame could easily clear up

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/17/16564736-9-baffling-questions-in-the-manti-teo-girlfriend-hoax?lite

[Go Vols]

14. lol