<p>And his fake dead girlfriend.</p>
<p>[Manti</a> Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax](<a href=“Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax”>Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax)</p>
<p>I skimmed it. Truly bizarre.</p>
<p>Wow! I couldn’t stop reading the article. It is sad and creepy at the same time and I wonder if we will ever learn the truth.</p>
<p>I watched Te’o’s interview before the ND/Bama game. If this is true, then I am disappointed in him. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it started as a prank, but he is old enough to know when to reel it in.</p>
<p>Twitter is burning it up</p>
<p>That story was so convoluted, I don’t know how he kept up with the whole thing.</p>
<p>Some people have a bizarre sense of what constitutes a “prank.” How he ever thought this house of cards was not going to eventually come crashing down is beyond me.</p>
<p>[Notre</a> Dame’s Official Response To Manti Te’o’s Fake Girlfriend Story](<a href=“http://coedmagazine.com/2013/01/16/notre-dames-official-response-to-manti-teos-fake-girlfriend-story/]Notre”>http://coedmagazine.com/2013/01/16/notre-dames-official-response-to-manti-teos-fake-girlfriend-story/)</p>
<p>Read the response from the University. ???</p>
<p>Yes and it makes zero sense as he talked often on the record about meeting her in HI,. etc etc</p>
<p>*“Notre Dame Statement: Manti Te’o</p>
<p>On Dec. 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed by Manti Te’o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia. The University immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax. While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators.*</p>
<p>What? Are we now supposed to believe that he’s claiming that he never met her? And, claiming that the family never met her?</p>
<p>Before the BCS game, they interviewed him and he said first his grandmother died. Then he said he got a phone call from someone in his family (his brother???) and he immediately knew that his GF had died. So, are we to believe that his relative was somehow contacted about her “death” and then the relative passed on the info?</p>
<p>Too odd.</p>
<p>Oprah in the near future: Manti-Lance-Lance Manti. Now, you guys have lots of 'splaining to do.</p>
<p>It strains credulity to think that Te’o was not in on the hoax. If he was in on it, it shows incredibly bad judgment that he thought he could get away with it, and a pretty deep flaw in character that he would go to such extremes to generate publicity for himself. If he wasn’t in on it—well, as I say, that just doesn’t seem plausible, but if it were, it would show almost boundless naivete, and again extremely poor judgment.</p>
<p>I’ll lay my cards on the table–I don’t like Notre Dame football. But I had a lot of respect for Manti Te’o as a football player and, I thought, as a person, until this came out. Now I think he’s a despicable, arrogant ba<em>tard who thought he could manipulate the media and gull an entire nation with a *</em>**-and-bull story about his dead girlfriend. And it worked for a while, but now it’s all come crashing down. I now think he is one despicable human being.</p>
<p>Are we also supposed to believe that after “the death,” that he wouldn’t have contacted her family in some way? </p>
<p>If he really wasn’t “in on it,” then he would have contacted her family in some way at some point. Are we to believe that a guy would think his GF died and never attempted to contact any of her family? Wouldn’t he have tried to have gone to the funeral?</p>
<p>ND press conference at 7pm EST</p>
<p>Right now on ESPN a reporter said that when he interviewed Manti, he looked for the obit and info about the earlier car crash and found nothing. He asked Manti for some pictures, etc, and Manti told him that her “family wouldn’t allow that.” So, was Manti lying when he said that he had been in contact with her “family” or what?</p>
<p>I find it hard to believe he wasn’t in on it, especially since the girl in the picture says she’s never met him. I think he’s claiming that he met a real person who gave him a fake name and then pretended to die. If that’s the case, how did he not realize that the twitter photo was of a different girl than the one he met?</p>
<p>On Dec 26, Manti and his parents told ND that the story was a hoax. Yet, they allowed that story to go forward during the days up to the BCS game.</p>
<p>The reporter on ESPN, who interviewed Manti in October, also asked if he could contact her family, and Manti said that they would prefer not to be contacted. </p>
<p>So, who was Manti in contact with that was supposedly giving the “no” responses? </p>
<p>Manti also claims to have spent many nights sleeping with his phone connected to her phone - because it supposedly gave her comfort. Whose cell phone number was he connected to during those times? or was that untrue, too?</p>
<p>If I did not have a son of the same age with astounding and bewildering na</p>
<p>Re #14 Actually, that makes sense. If ND thought he was telling the truth, it may have recommended legal authorities be contacted. In the IMO very unlikely event Manti wasn’t in on it, he may have been swindled out of money–to pay for the funeral, her hospital bills, etc. In that case, it might have made sense to keep quiet until authorities completed the investigation.</p>
<p>Manti is on record having said that the two of them got together in Hawaii. Now, the story is that they never physically met and that when a meeting in Hawaii was arranged, she never showed up. </p>
<p>I’ve been a ND fan my whole life (except when they just played Bama…lol). This is just weird. </p>
<p>I wonder if they’re going to ask to see his cell phone records. He’s on a video saying that everynight the two of them slept with their cell phones connected to each other.</p>
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<p>This is just like out of the TV show Catfish:</p>
<p>[Catfish:</a> The TV Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish:_The_TV_Show]Catfish:”>Catfish: The TV Show - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>It appears that the number of fake online identities is apparently astounding.</p>
<p>People are having long-time relationships without ever actually ever meeting.</p>
<p>And the ability to find out a fake identity is so easy just ask for a photograph with a specific pose, or holding up a newspaper, etc.</p>
<p>Jack Swarbrick ND’s AD held a press conference this evening to address this. He said that the university retained a private firm with expertise in Internet issues and it is their conclusion, and Notre Dame’s that Manti T’eo was the victim of a vicious and elaborate hoax. </p>
<p>While some facts may come out that are embarrassing to Manti (perhaps he told some he met a woman in person when he only “knew” her online and was too embarrassed to admit it) it seems that he did nothing wrong.</p>
<p>While I find these Internet “relationships” bewildering, I am told that many of the teens and 20 somethings persue them with intensity, but that is for a different thread!</p>