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

Don't want this to get buried. These are excellent questions.

 

Teo's agent? Wait, what??


All snark aside, ND's best course in this whole fiasco would have been to say, "No Comment."

 

I smell some bad lawyering....Rule 1 in law school, make sure one does not win the battle, only to lose the war.

 

I think there's a strong element of truth to this.

Pete Thamel told Dan Patrick today that he did check LexisNexis and Google for anything on her death, but while "small red flags" were raised in his mind, he also says in his experience that "it's 50-50" whether any college-age person would have a "footprint" on LexisNexis yet. So I guess he didn't find it that unusual when he didn't find anything on Kekua.

Also read where he said his SI story was due two hours after he was allowed to sit down with Te'o. Not exactly much time for in-depth fact-checking.

That said, he's also had three months now to assuage any concerns he may have had. And I don't care that the story's already written -- lots and lots of reporters, including Thamel himself (who went to freaking Turkey to chase down a lead on a Kentucky basketball recruit two years ago), have spent time tracking down these types of loose ends after the fact. Lots of reporters could have done more here.

 

That's what the desk is for, dude.

[/ducking]

 

In the second hour Dan Patrick was saying the fake girl was a volleyball player for Stanford - which I've not seen or heard anywhere else.

 

Follow the money. And, somewhere under this pile of pony sh–t, there's some money.

 

Camel toe!

Or is that imaginary camel toe?

 

Buck, regarding the 50/50 quote, this girl was at Stanford. You don't get into Stanford without accomplishing something. Grades, sports, community - something that would be recognized somewhere online.

 

There isn't a community newspaper in the U.S. that wouldn't print a line or two about a local kid getting into Stanford.

 

If she went to Podunk High with C grades, and went to a JC, perhaps no footprint.

Thamel's internal radar sucks, or he is just covering his ass for laziness.