Manti Teo's Dead Girlfriend is a hoax

[3irty1]

I thought we established that he was queer as a plaid rabbit.

[KYPack]

I thought we established that he was queer as a plaid rabbit.

Firstly, thx Mad for doing a good job of room service. Leave the political bullshit alone, FYI is it's home(I never go there).

31, I've abandoned the gay theory in this thing. I thought initially it was a classic case of two queens doing a "beard", but now i don't think so

I think the buddy was trying to scam Teo and he fooled him for a bit. Then the kid got so far over his head, he was stupid and over-whelmed.

The family (some of 'em) are pissed that Gramma got lost in the shuffle, like Mad was saying initially.

The kid deserves to get a solid beating with a rubber bat, but it's also time to move along.

The kid is a glory hog and a dumb (but not gay) bunny.

[Guiness]

You where given a fair warning, see you in a few days.

repped

[red]

what kind of NCAA rules did ND break by hiring a PI for their star football player?

[Cheesehead Craig]

The family (some of 'em) are pissed that Gramma got lost

My family gets pissed when that happens to.

[mraynrand]

Firstly, thx Mad for doing a good job of room service. Leave the political bullshit alone, FYI is it's home(I never go there).

Evaluation of the role of the press - which has political implications - was reasonable.

[mraynrand]

The family (some of 'em) are pissed that Gramma got lost in the shuffle, like Mad was saying initially.

[rbaloha1]

Braking News from the Star Advertiser

Manti Te'o has told family and friends that the woman who was the voice of his fictitious girlfriend “Lennay Kekua” called him in December and said she had to fake her own death months earlier to elude drug dealers, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser has learned.

The woman, who has yet to be identified, tried to re-engage a relationship with Te‘o months after she supposedly had died of leukemia in early September, the Notre Dame All-American linebacker has told the people close to him. The account was shared with the Star-Advertiser by a source close to the Te‘o family.

According to the account, Te'o asked the woman to transmit a photo to him with a date stamp, which she did, but this did not allay his suspicions and he later told his family and Notre Dame officials about being scammed.

The account does not give the date of the call but on Wednesday Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told a campus press conference that the woman contacted Te'o on Dec. 6 while he was in Florida for an ESPN post-season awards show. "He received a phone call from a number that he recognized as having been associated with Lennay Kekua," Swarbrick said. "When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person that he had talked to, who told him she was, in fact, not dead."

On Dec. 26, Te'o notified school officials, according to a statement from Te‘o Wednesday.

Subsequently Notre Dame commissioned an investigation that concluded Te'o had been the victim of a hoax, the school said.

In his statement, Te‘o said he was embarrassed to acknowledge that he was the victim "of what apparently was someone's sick joke and constant lies,” a hoax in which he had a long-distance online and phone relationship with a fictitious woman, whom he knew as Lennay Kekua.

However, Te'o has yet to address questions about statements he made to the press about her death from cancer after Dec. 6.

The bizarre case became national news after the website deadspin.com published a story Wednesday that Kekua did not exist. The story of Te‘o playing through the pain of having his grandmother and girlfriend die within 24 hours of each other became a major narrative in Notre Dame’s storybook 2012 season. With Te‘o as a team captain, the Fighting Irish had a 12-0 regular season and lost in the championship game to Alabama on Jan. 7.

The new details on the December phone call come on the heels of a report earlier today by ESPN which quoted a woman who said the California man allegedly behind the girlfriend hoax had admitted to her that he and his cousins had duped Te‘o, a 2009 Punahou School graduate from Laie.

The woman told the ESPN show “Outside the Lines” that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo of California cried when he admitted to her in December that he was involved in the scam. ESPN did not identify the woman at her request but described her as in her 20s and a church friend of Tuiasosopo.

"He (Ronaiah) told me Manti was not involved at all, he was a victim. The girlfriend was a lie; the accident was a lie; the leukemia was a lie," the woman told ESPN. "He was crying; he was literally crying. He's like 'I know, I know what I have to do.'"

She added, "It is not only Manti, but he was telling me that it is a lot of other people they had done this to."

Outside the Lines interviewed two others who said they had family members who had a similar hoax played on them by Tuiasosopo.

The deadspin.com story identified Tuiasosopo as the man behind the scheme, but also raised questions about whether or not Te'o was a willing participant in the hoax.

Notre Dame’s Swarbrick, meanwhile, said Friday he has strongly encouraged the Te'o family to speak publicly. Except for the brief written statement Wednesday following the deadspin.com report, the family has not commented. A planned one-on-one interview Thursday with Te'o was scrubbed.

Meanwhile, several TV sites, including Inside Edition, have identified the woman in the photo that had been posted on Kekua's Facebook page as Diane O'Meara, a 23-year old who works in marketing. She has said the photo was used without her permission and she was not involved.

O'Meara was not at her Torrance, Calif., office Friday. Messages left on her voice mail were not immediately returned to the Star-Advertiser.

[denverYooper]

?

if he plays for the Bears or Vikings, they will call him Pussi

There are a few Mantys in the UP, though they aren't quite as prevalent as Makis. I just imagined a bunch of Yoopers calling him Manty (man-teee).

[MJZiggy]

Outside of the terrible work by Mr. Thamel, the problem comes when it became a national story and was carried by major news agencies. You just pointed out that every half hearted attempt to verify failed, excuses or no. It would have taken an unpaid intern all of 10 minutes to make two more phone calls and come to the conclusion that this story should not be run because it could not one aspect of it could be verified - at all.

Like I said, this is just another failure of a "news" media in this nation who's sole concern has become "creating a narrative" instead of reporting facts and truth. Regardless of whether it's for political/social agendas or ratings, it's pathetic to watch.

Exactly. My job is to create narratives--because I don't work for a newspaper. The rule when I came out of school and for about 10 minutes thereafter, was that you had two sources for any piece of information you published and you verified everything for accuracy or you didn't publish. What's happened to the news trade these days is disgusting.

[red]

Exactly. My job is to create narratives--because I don't work for a newspaper. The rule when I came out of school and for about 10 minutes thereafter, was that you had two sources for any piece of information you published and you verified everything for accuracy or you didn't publish. What's happened to the news trade these days is disgusting.

media makes their own news these days. plus gossip and rumors are big money

we've become a tabloid society

[Kiwon]

Hold your nose.......another Jason Whitlock special......the NCAA is modern-day slavery...slaves destroying their brains through concussions, all for your amusement.....Shame, shame....

A few choice quotes....

"Lying is easy when you’re living one. No institution is living a bigger lie than Notre Dame. The Golden Dome believes it can live up to its religious ideals while participating in the systematic financial exploitation of young people.

Let me remind you of Walter Byers’ confession. Byers, a white, conservative from Kansas, created the modern NCAA and wrote these words in his 1997 memoir “Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting the Student-Athlete:

“Today the NCAA Presidents Commission is preoccupied with tightening a few loose bolts in a worn machine, firmly committed to the neo-plantation belief that the enormous proceeds from college games belong to the overseers (administrators) and supervisors (coaches). The plantation workers performing in the arena may only receive those benefits authorized by the overseers.”

That’s not the race card played by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or me. That’s unvarnished truth from the owner of the plantation."
...............................

"Everyone associated with the lie of amateurism is all in with Manti Te’o. Look at the media. Our biggest complaint about big-time college football is that there is no playoff system. In the era of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (concussions), we’re campaigning for more games, more money, more exploitation.

To justify our hypocrisy, we need more Manti Te’os."

http://msn.foxsports.com/collegefootball/story/manti-teo-notre-dame-hoax-media-outrage-hypocritical-fake-dead-girlfriend-011813

[rbaloha1]

media makes their own news these days. plus gossip and rumors are big money

we've become a tabloid society

It works because of a gullible society.

[pbmax]

Exactly. My job is to create narratives--because I don't work for a newspaper. The rule when I came out of school and for about 10 minutes thereafter, was that you had two sources for any piece of information you published and you verified everything for accuracy or you didn't publish. What's happened to the news trade these days is disgusting.

Magazine writers aren't writing the news. SI gets published every week, this wasn't a breaking story for them. I don't expect the same standards as newspapers or TV news because I realized long ago that writers (especially in magazines) aren't experts in these matters and the narrative is what they specialize at.

The story was about more than the girlfriend and would have been published on the cover regardless of her existence. What surprises me is that they buried the lede of their own story. And they buried it precisely because they couldn't confirm it. It should not have made it past that point. They tried to sneak it through and got burned.

[pbmax]

It works because of a gullible society.

Don't agree with this at all. Gullibility has stayed the same. Medium has changed. I have serious doubt that the reporters of the day would have cared enough to debunk this story 30 years ago. Especially of you had to travel to California to get it.