<p>I hope she asks those questions as well ^^^. It seems that the media has some egg on its face!</p>
<p>This just gets weirder and weirder…</p>
<p>Agree that he should not say anything. He is simply digging his own grave. He should let the story die (apologies for bad puns).</p>
<p>Having two sons around the same age as Te’o, I find his story absolutely believable. Especially for a young man whose extra-curricular time is engrossed in his sport, and who is in school thousands of miles from home/family. Kids that age can be so caught up in having a GF/BF, saving face with peers, the allure of technology.</p>
<p>Agree that he should not continue to pursue interviews and public explanations. The perpetrator(s) will undoubtedly be revealed in time.</p>
<p>Brent Musburger reported, “The SEC, real football and real girlfriends”.</p>
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Really? Do any of your kids go to ND?</p>
<p>Whenever we had a friend or acquaintance die, we looked up the obit. It gave us details we may not have known, where to make donations, etc. for none of his friends to have done that, for his coaches to not have looked, for him to have gone, eh, is unbelievable. My daughters ask, hey mom where can we send a card or flowers or donation if they can’t make the service.</p>
<p>What is disgusting to me is nd paying more attention to this circus then to a young woman who was raped and then committed suicide. </p>
<p>They should be ashamed of themselves for shedding tears over this, having press conferences, etc and ignoring publically to what happened to this student and her family.</p>
<p>But hey footballs and fake gfs are all that matters.</p>
<p>I find nd s dealing in all this repugnant.</p>
<p>I obviously don’t have sons but I have plenty of early 20s male friends. His story would have raised many red flags to us especially if he was a close friend. A primary online, long term relationship where they only met a few times? Flags.</p>
<p>It’s interesting, though not at all surprising, that the only ones who seem to give any credence to that interview - held at midnight and off camera, with a lawyer - are notre dame fans. Oh and ESPN talking heads. A teammate from his high school said the same non-existent girlfriend story happened back then. </p>
<p>As for the time commitment, probably took joke classes half time year round like most D1 athletes. This excuse evidently didn’t stop his teammates from a real relationship. #136, If you’re so angry about speculation on his sexuality, well that reflects on ND, mormonism, catholicism, the NFL etc. Most of us speculating on that are sympathetic to him, if that’s the case. You’re the ones bent out of shape about it, and then lo and behold, someone created a fake girlfriend. Wonder why that might be.</p>
<p>There’s no reason to take anything he or Swarbrick says seriously. I would be very forgiving if I were in on it too! What else should he do, demand evidence that will implicate himself?</p>
<p>Has he broken any laws? (Theft, criminal misdemeanor, etc). Has he been found guilty of academic dishonesty? I am not dismissing this whole debacle, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, ND will not be the first nor last top tier school that has handled a situation less than forthcoming.</p>
<p>He didn’t win the Heisman. They didn’t win the championship. He did not break any laws that I am aware of…time to put this to bed!</p>
<p>If Norte dame didn’t cry over it all then maybe, but until nd gets its priorities straight, then well…tears? Really? Yet no tears for a raped girl</p>
<p>Ok, I’ll bite. I’m not an ND fan, and had never heard of Manti Te’o before this story broke. I wouldn’t bet money that he wasn’t involved in the scam, but I’m leaning toward believing him. </p>
<p>Contrary to early reports, it seems like the person behind the Kekua persona was NOT a friend of Manti, who had met him only recently. It also seems that several other people, including at least one other football player, have had contact with “Lennay Kekua;” presumably, they too were potential targets of the hoaxers. With no prior friendship between Manti and Ronaiah, I find it very hard to believe that the two were in cahoots over a deception that extended well beyond Te’o. </p>
<p>Te’o is obviously guilty of lying about having met this woman. I suspect he is also guilty of embellishing the extent of his attachment to her. Alternatively, it sounds like this may have been a casual online flirtation that the hoaxers deliberately made exponentially more intense through creating the car accident/coma/cancer scenario. If we are to believe Manti’s recent statements to ESPN, the two had a sporadic online friendship that had been intensifying in the year before Kekua’s “death,” but became dramatically more intimate, for lack of a better word, only after the accident in late April. Given that Ronaiah and whoever else was involved in the hoax were apparently telling Te’o that a comatose Lennay was responding to his voice and that the Lennay voice herself claimed that she needed to be on the phone with him to go to sleep, it isn’t hard to see how someone who had until this point not been terribly emotionally invested suddenly starts to think he’s living an epic romance.</p>
<p>What still strikes me as the most suspicious aspect is Te’o’s claim that the thought of visiting her in the hospital “never really crossed his mind.” Either he’s got some serious psychological hangups, is awful at expressing himself and meant to say something like “it never occurred to me once Lennay told me she did’t want me to see her until after she’d recovered more”, or he was at the very least deliberately lying about how close he had felt to his “girlfriend.”</p>
<p>At this point, if he comes out “clean” as in fully being a victim of the hoax, I still will have a tainted view of “who” he is - claiming for her to be the love of his life, but never in all that time meeting her well or sick, not attending her funeral or going at a later day to pay respects to her or her family, etc. -</p>
<p>Archiemom, all kids make bonehead mistakes, but Te’o’ tale is just…indescribably bizzare if he truly was that naive.</p>
<p>I’m not sure it’s time to put this to bed. There are still chapters to be written – the Katie interview, how does this affect his draft status. And I’m not sure what he has to gain by going on Katie. The story already is dying down as keeping it alive puts the media in a bad light. You’re right that right now no crimes seem to have been committed, but I still think it’s early.</p>
<p>I haven’t been following this story and I have not read the previous pages of this thread. Sorry if this has already been discussed up stream.</p>
<p>Last night H and I had dinner w/ an elderly couple. They explained how during WWII families created fake girlfriends for soldiers the family believed to be gay. After a period of time the soldier would receive a ‘dear John letter’ or a letter saying the fake GF had died. In most cases the solider was complicit in the farce. They think this maybe the situation w/ Manti.</p>
<p>Tutu, yeah, that’s been proposed, and, in fact, it’s the theory I like best because it makes Te’o a victim of society, that he felt like he couldn’t be his true self in the macho world of football. Otherwise, he’s way too naive for a 22yo (or however old he is) or he was too calculating and was trying create a compelling narrative for the Heisman voters.</p>
<p>Just wondering. Is “naive” the new buzzword for “completely stupid” ?</p>
<p>It seems kinder. ;)</p>
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<p>No, but he is clearly either a phony or incredibly dumb. Not sure which is worse.</p>
<p>Having known a couple of people who tell outrageous lies, and also knowing the people who believed them, I can believe it, that the football player was both duped, and that he embellished the truth here and there to make his relationship sound more normal to those who asked about it. Once people have an attachment to someone, they believe what they want to believe. Still waiting to find out where the truth lies in this scenario.</p>