Deadspin: Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend story was a hoax

Starting in 2011?

 

Which goes against "conniving."

His boy did this, maybe to mess with him. The Heisman thing?

Maybe they decided to just hit the eject button and kill her off, with no plan beyond that. When you've already given your fictional girl leukemia and a bad car accident, you either have her lose a leg the following year, or you eject.

 

between the raging self-righteous hypocrisy that is Notre Dame and the Catholic Church, the mystery of Mormonisn (socially acceptable scientology?), the ethnicity of Te'o and his faith and the total fear of journalists to appear to to question anyone who invokes a Judeo-Christian religion as a basis for personal behavior (as DW pointed out), it's quite clear how this hoax was perpetrated upon the public. And how the media is looking for closure by wrapping itself around Te'o the victim, the honorable, naive religious Hawaiian football player. If Te'o was a victim then so was the media, the journalists, the reporters and the major religious University in America. If, on any level, Te'o participated in this hoax and web of lies, then this simpleton, this unexceptional 21 year old jock, just defeated the First and Fourth Estate.

I'm betting that regardless of the truth, he will be declared, essentially, the victim by the arbiters of the court of public opinion, journalists.

 

He was not even a dark horse Heisman candidate when this broke. His team was, at best, a fringe top 25 contender. At best.

 

Which was my point.

He knew, they ejected, then it grew to levels they did not expect. And as it did, he was happy to add details.

After Forde's "I believe Swarbrick!!!" performance the other day online and on radio, now Wetzel also wants to join the ranks of Yahoo Sports Guys Who Carry Manti Te'o's Water.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaaf--manti-te-o-says-he-didn-t-know-about-girlfriend-hoax--and-what-s-not-to-believe--091138142.html

So, yes, I think there is truth to what you said. Just as the media are waiting for a 2-0 start so they can say "The Irish are BACK!!!!!!!!!!!" they won't mind when this story goes away. Especially with the added layer of Deadspin slapping them around on this one. Traditional media dudes have to stand up for themselves and for the school that helped make the sports journalism industry.

Notre Dame, horse racing, boxing. Ah, the good old days.

 

You could smoke cigars and cigarettes at your desk or in the press box, and have your flask at your side.

Kids today think they're hip with iPhones and energy drinks.

 

Oh bullshit. That's only because he was asked to talk about the girlfriend more than the grandmother by the media, it's not because of his "screwed up value system." And the reason is because it's simply a more interesting angle to readers: players' grandmothers die all the time, nothing particularly unusual about that. But players rarely ever have beautiful 22 year old girlfriends die of leukemia, now that's an angle with some serious public interest meat in it.

It was reporters/journalists that are responsible for the story focusing more on the girlfriend than the grandmother, more so than Te'o.

 

Two people are responsible for every lie. One for telling it and another for believing it.

 

How much different is this story covered and speculated upon absent three words in the Deadspin piece: "80 percent sure"?

 

So in ESPN's transcript, Te'o denies telling Thamel he met Kekua through one of his cousins. But in Thamel's transcript, he says that is how they met.

I'm curious why it took 15 hours for the Schaap/Te'o transcript to be made public. And I'm also curious why they decided to stage that PR stunt so late on a Friday night.

 

Awaiting the day, soon no doubt, when Te'o phone records pop up on the web and detail all the texts.