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

If I were a Notre Dame fan and I journalist, I'd also probably console myself right now with how "great" this story is from a writing/car wreck standpoint. I am thankful I am not an ND fan.

 

Interesting development. The South Bend Tribune's website has apparently taken down the October story that detailed Teo and Kekua's meeting at Stanford, and also included the quotes from Brian Teo about her visits to him in Hawaii.

The story was at http://articles.southbendtribune.com/2012-10-12/sports/34419536_1_brian-and-ottilia-manti-te-o-irish-head-coach and still shows up on the paper's own Google search, but you get a "Story Not Found" error.

 

Scrub, scrub, scrub.

 

Wojciechowski said on ESPN tonight that IN OCTOBER he couldn't find an obit, a death notice, a newspaper account of a traffic accident, nothing. When he asked Teo, he said the family wanted everything private. When he asked for a photo of the girl, same response. When he asked for a contact number for the family, same response -- privacy issue.

That's about nine red flags there. When some high school football player says he's playing the season for some brother, cousin or friend to got shot over the summer, we confirm that. When some guy gets a coaching or administrative job in our area, and says he lettered in football for three years at Podunk U, we check that.

Sorry, but if Wojo couldn't find proof of her death -- or her life -- and Teo was not forthcoming with help in that regard, you've got to hold that story until you do.

But, it is the WWL.

 

Yes. That's *exactly* the sort of tweet a hacker would post.

 

Just a thought I've been bouncing around. Perhaps Tuiasosopo wanted there to be a romantic relationship between him and Te'o but Te'o was, well, straight. So then the next best thing in his mind might have been to have an online, romantic relationship through a female avatar of his own creation. Or hell, maybe he feels uncomfortable

If that's true, and I admit that's a big if, then I can see one of two things happening. The first would be that after telling some people about this new girlfriend, Te'o found out and realized he'd been had. In order to keep people from asking where she was, he/Tuiasosopo concocted the car accident/cancer story and it grew completely out of control once people in the media heard about it. He's been consciously duping people this whole time, up to and including his own family.

The second is that as this online relationship progressed, Te'o grew tired of it and wanted to break up which freaked out Tuiasosopo. So he went to the strategy most used by overdramatic teenage girls writing online fiction - throw in life-threatening drama as part of the "storyline" so Te'o would feel too tremendously guilty to break up. In order to eventually extract himself from the situation once it starts picking up all this attention, Tuiasosopo eventually has the girl die. Or he could have been found out at some point in here before the "death," which would explain the inconsistencies in his story about when she died.

Both of these rely on a fair amount of active lying by Te'o, obviously, though much of that would be typical of people being embarrassed about an online relationship and having never met the person they are dating. So you make up the story of how you met and how you hung out in Hawai'i when she came over but, oh sorry dad, she didn't have time to come meet the family. And it would involve Tuiasosopo being almost pathologically committed to the character, to the point of faking her voice and possibly other family member's voices on phone calls.

There are lots of sick people out there who fake having cancer or other serious illnesses for attention, both in person or more often on online journals (like this chick: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/844614--woman-faked-cancer-to-raise-money) , and if Tuiasosopo was sick enough to create this fake person for online dating, I wouldn't put that past him at all.

But who knows. Like I said, I'm just spitballing.

 

Wait a minute .... without making me read pages 2-13, Brian Teo said he met the girl?
Is he in on it, either hoaxing his son, or in cahoots with his son?

 

Given Thamel's dogged reporting on college eligibility violations of players, you know the not-inspirational normal people, this tweet was pretty spot-on.

https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/291662093940305920

 

Don't worry everyone, the Catfish dude is on the case!

https://twitter.com/NevSchulman/status/291725337430204416

 

You actually had a point. We have a politics thread for a reason and YankeeFan is trying to circumvent that board policy by dragging his anti-Clinton stuff here.

Then you turn around and do something very similar.

The idea behind keeping politics on the one thread is to keep the pissing matches there rather than having them spread to a bunch of other conversations. How is taking a swipe at two posters who weren't even involved in the discussion during your chastisement of YF any better?

 

Earlier it had an "I miss you too!" Tweet from today. Since deleted.

 

No, Brian Te'o said that she had visited his son in Hawaii.