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

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The proof that he was involved is, "Well, he had to be!" And a friend of the other dude saying he's "80 percent certain" he was in on it, which is a number I'm 100 percent certain he pulled out of his ass.

 

he's a Mormon at a Catholic school, he'll believe anything

 

I just talked to a friend of mine who is a HS counselor. She said that aside from the fame, this is an amazingly common situation with young people, including the dupe lying about it to make it seem more real.

It takes a dumb and naive person. But there are a lot of those. And as for the lack of personal contact ... I know one twentysomething who was "dating" a guy for six months. The relationship consisted of a weekend together and an endless stream of text messages. They had never talked on the phone.

 

Yep.

We're projecting our idea, from our mid-30s in a lot of cases, about dating and relationships onto what we think a 21-year-old should be doing.

 

Well, the funeral being 10 days after the fact, him not going, not meeting family members, the whole "the family doesn't want a story written about her." It just ended up being too much for me to believe it. I don't know what happened 100 percent (only a handful of people do), but it all will come out sooner or later. This is not going away any time soon. Journalists won't be fooled twice.

 

The Schaap interview has supposedly been scrapped.

 

Waiting For Oprah

 

That happens sometimes. And I doubt a 21-year-old would think twice about it. His experience with the ritual of death was, presumably, limited.

He didn't go to his grandmother's funeral, either. I didn't go to my own grandfather's funeral.

He didn't meet her, either. Why would he have met her family members?

None of this is implausible. None of it.

 

In Alabama do they have imaginary cousins?

 

I still can't get my arms around why, if an innocent dupe, wouldn't Manti and/or Notre Dame come out immediately and said he is the victim of this hoax. They couldn't have honestly thought it was going to go away. If he would have come out and said he got caught up in this hoax and didn't know how to get out of it this story would have gone away pretty quickly. Now they are really playing from a defensive position.