Don't you get it? A devout Mormon could easily life his life "never been kissed". It was all about football to him and he is just a victim of being a young innocent child (20 year old). It could happen to anyone with these evil geniuses out there in this world....
Yea he does deserve to be ripped to shreds. Why not? Lets say best case scenario he really is that dumb and got duped. OK, well he kept going with it. He reaped the benefits of the fake story. ND found out dec 26, before bowl games, but didn't report it because Teo said he would. At the very least, he lied about his fake Gf dying, which fooled thousands fans and people who thought she was real.
Dude, you're really, really reaching here if you truly think that he carried on a relationship with a girl for 3 years and never met her. There are so many lies and inconsistencies that Manti would have figured out, over a 3 year span, that maybe he was talking to someone non-existent.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>Te'o told she wasn't real Dec. 6. Te'o said Dec. 8: "I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer."</p>— Todd Jones (@Todd_Jones) <a href="https://twitter.com/Todd_Jones/status/291902390951620609" data-datetime="2013-01-17T13:38:47+00:00">January 17, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I put myself in his shoes. I'm a socially awkward penguin. I have a lengthy online relationship with a girl. Since I'm a SAP (and not intelligent overall and probably practicing some form of cognitive dissonance) I don't catch onto the numerous redflags about this supposed girlfriend of mine's existence. My girlfriend dies. This becomes very public information. I then find out my girlfriend never existed near the end of my college football career. How the hell is someone supposed to react to that? Call up all the media outlets immediately and tell everybody how much of a gullible, socially awkward dope you are? Or would you expect somebody to just live in denial about the whole situation and hope it goes away on its own? I can't say I'd do the former.
1) As far as I've heard, the family never claimed they met her. 2) I'm guessing a star football player might make up stories about having met this girl in person so that people wouldn't think he was such a weirdo for having a girlfriend whom he had never met.
We are all getting trolled. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>My statement: This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but I have been told by Alabama's offense that Manti Te'o is not real.</p>— L K (@LennayKay) <a href="https://twitter.com/LennayKay/status/291991188607758336" data-datetime="2013-01-17T19:31:38+00:00">January 17, 2013</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
1) Yeah, I've never seen anything about the family meeting her. 2) Again, agreed. But, no matter the outcome, Manti has lied throughout (posted something a bit more vitriolic earlier).
So do you believe that there was a girl on the other end of this, who spent 3 years of her life talking to Manti over the phone?
Apparently they "met" in 2009 but reconnected online in late 2011/early 2012. Her "car accident" was apparently around the time they started communicating online and "dating". Sorry, everything seems like it has to be in quotations on this story. However, I do agree that if there was some woman that was leading him on and supposedly talking to him for 4 months for hours on end each night then this should be easy to prove. Also, whoever the phone is registered to should be easy to find as well.
More details: http://www.ndsmcobserver.com/news/controversy-surrounds-te-o-1.2972835#.UPhUdXHnYkl Lennay Kekua, the girl believed to have been former Irish linebacker Manti Te’o’s girlfriend and who was reported to have died of leukemia in September, never existed. After an afternoon of questions and swirling controversy, Notre Dame Director of Athletics Jack Swarbrick addressed the situation, originally reported by Deadspin.com, at a press conference Wednesday evening. Swarbrick said Te’o received a phone call from the number he associated with Lennay Kekua while he was in Orlando in early December for an ESPN awards show that took place Dec. 6. “When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same voice he had talked to, who told him that she was, in fact, not dead,” Swarbrick said. Following the phone call that day, Te’o received what Swarbrick called “persistent” contact from the number; the frequency dissipated in time because Te’o stopped responding, Swarbrick said. Te’o waited to act on the situation until he went home for Christmas on Dec. 21 because he wanted to speak with his family about it in person, Swarbrick said. When he returned to campus, Te’o alerted head coach Brian Kelly and defensive coordinator Bob Diaco before Swarbrick was notified. Swarbrick said he met with Te’o on Dec. 27 and 28 after the linebacker returned to campus for practice leading up to the Jan. 7 BCS National Championship Game. In those meetings, Swarbrick interviewed Te’o about the chain of events. “I want to stress, as someone who has probably been as engaged in this as anyone in the past couple of weeks, that nothing about what I have learned has shaken my faith in Manti Te'o one iota,” Swarbrick said. “The same great young man, great student and great athlete that we have been so proud to have be a member of our family is the same guy tonight, unchanged in any way, except for, as he indicated in a statement in his release, the embarrassment associated with having been a victim in this case.” Following the meetings, Swarbrick met with University leaders and they made the decision to acquire the services of an independent investigative firm. Swarbrick said he met with Te’o’s parents — Brian and Ottilia Te’o — on Jan. 4, and the family made the decision to release the story sometime the week of Jan. 20. Swarbrick refused to release many of the details regarding Te’o’s perceived relationship with Kekua, saying it’s “Manti’s story to tell.” He added that the University does not plan to publish the investigative firm’s results. Swarbrick said he does not know the details of when or how Te’o plans to speak about this, but said it could come as early as Thursday. Swarbrick said authorities have not been alerted to the case, due in large part to the lack of criminal activity such as extortion. Swarbrick said Te’o never met with anyone claiming to be Kekua in person and that the entire relationship was conducted electronically and over the telephone. Te’o had spoken of falling to sleep in bed with Kekua on the line in a story that appeared in the Oct. 1 issue of Sports Illustrated. “There were lengthy, long telephone conversations,” Swarbrick said. “The issue of who it is, who's playing what role, what's real and what's not here is a more complex question than I can get into.” The comments contradicted published reports in October that Te’o met Kekua in person in Palo Alto, Calif., in Nov. 2009 when Notre Dame played at Stanford over Thanksgiving weekend. “I'll let Manti provide the details, but as I said earlier in this press conference, when Manti took me through the entire story from start to finish, when he first described the contact, he used the verb ‘met,’” Swarbrick said. “For him, the fact that they connected online, that they met online, was consistent with using that verb. “Not one that I might have chosen, but it was for him. And the timing was consistent with the playing of that game.” Stanford University spokesperson Lisa Lapin issued the following statement to The Observer regarding Kekua’s alleged enrollment at the school: "We've had no student attending Stanford by that name or any other similar name." Additionally, Dan Anderson, an employee at the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner, told The Observer there is no record of Lennay Kekua or anyone with a similar name dying in the county from Sept. 11 to 13. It had been reported that Kekua died in Carson, Calif., sometime around those dates. Te’o released a statement to ESPN Wednesday afternoon in which he said the situation has been “painful and humiliating.” "This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her,” Te’o said. “It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life.” Until Te’o speaks in more detail, the controversy surrounding the star player who helped return Notre Dame to national prominence on the field will continue to build. But Swarbrick made it clear throughout Wednesday’s press conference that Te’o has the University’s full trust and support. “There's a lot of tragedy here,” Swarbrick said. “There's a lot of sorrow here. But the thing I am most sad of, sad about is … that the single most trusting human being I've ever met will never be able to trust in the same way again in his life. That's an incredible tragedy.”
I don't know, but I've heard of stranger things. We will find out soon enough how or if that happened. I do find it as plausible, if not more plausible, than Te'o having fabricated this thing from the beginning with the intent on getting Heisman sympathy votes years later.
If we want to give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps that is the story he told his dad about their meeting to cover up embarassment for having met the girl online and never in real life, and his dad was just recounting the story based on what he was told. The lack of skype, facetime, or any other video chat over what was reported to be three years is hard to imagine. I can see perhaps a month or so of flirting with someone based on their pictures. It's harder to imagine a serious relationship for multiple years and not meeting up or video chatting even once? Maybe 10 years ago that would have been plauseable, but right now it is hard to imagine. If you love someone and they are possibly dieing, wouldn't you go to visit them in the hospital at least once? Of course if you believe he was hoaxed, her excuse was probably that she didn't want him to see her that way... If we choose to believe that Manti is one of the most gullible people on the earth then perhaps these accidents or lukemia were just excuses by who ever this girl is to avoid having to meet up. The other angle that hasn't been explored that closely is that this wasn't a hoax meant to gain attention or publicity, but rather some significantly less attractive girl was hitting on Manti because she really did like him, but knew that they could never meet in person or her lie would be discovered. It's still pretty unbelieveable that Manti wouldn't insist on at least video chat at some point if the three year relationship time table was correct. All details that point to the sources for the time of death perhaps being different people. Obviously there was no official time of death to confirm, but it's not that surprising to think that reporters would take their various source's word on the time of death as there was no reason at that time to expect the whole thing to be a fake. Another weird detail. If they were just trying to prank him then why call him and let him in on it before the rest of the world? Three years is a long time for a prank, especially one that so far doesn't have any apparent financial benefit or even publicity for the prankster so far. Especially if they really did talk on the phone for hours every morning and night. It would be pretty challenging to keep up that charade for multiple years, and to top it off the girl still had to have a personality that caused Te'o to fall for this fake person just based on online and phone interaction. It does still leave open the possibility of some unattractive girl using a fake photo and really liking Manti, but getting in too deep with her lies. Still requires alot of gullibility on Te'o's part for it to go on so long. If he was in on it, it's possible that he didn't let it rest in peace because deadspin called him to comment on the story before they published it, or during their research for the story, which would be a fairly standard thing to do. Weird regardless of what else comes of it since it has been pretty conclusively proven that the person who's picture was posted as Lennay has never met him. It's possible I suppose that he met the person who's photos were stolen, but that doesn't make sense because if he was "close" to her family he would know that isn't her name. It's also kind of weird that Notre Dame would spend resources hiring someone to investigate this prior to it going public when they had no intention of making the results of the investigation public. Regardless of who was behind it, it does seem that multiple people were involved. Unless the all night phone calls never happened, just like the first meeting at the football game and meeting in Hawaii never happened. Even if he wanted to humiliate his friend as a prank or for whatever other motive, how did he find a girl that was willing to spend that much time on the phone with Te'o and feed him those lies? What was HER motivation? It couldn't just be any girl either, it had to be one that Te'o would fall for. Which goes back to the possibility that some girl that felt she had no chance with Te'o using her real pictures might have created the whole story in a genuine attempt to flirt with him, but had to make up elaborate lies in order to keep them from ever meeting in person to keep the relationship going or he would know she was a liar. Which would seem to be more plausible if the relationship didn't supposedly go on for 3 years with no video chat or meeting of any kind.
