Seems very plausible but the one thing that doesn't fit is the supposed meeting at the Stanford ND game in 2009? That also doesn't fit with the possibility that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo engineered it all.
Just because you didn't know about her until now (or possibly her death) doesn't mean that was the first time she "showed up." She had a bunch of twitter followers before she "died" - he didn't make her up in October.
And if Te'o was complicit, he deserves the embarrassing gay accusations. And if he covered up being gay because he was embarrassed about being gay, then he deserves no sympathy. He's either stupid, naive, a dip****, or some combination of all of them. If I was an NFL GM I wouldn't draft Gay Rudy.
There are definitely things that are hard to explain no matter what the real story is. But no matter how famous he was, if they met online and she wasn't attractive but she thought he was, then a fake photo would still be needed to get his attention. I can imagine some girl who was generally considered unattractive and thought this was a good idea to get attention or a relationship might persue a Notre Dame football player because she thought he was attractive, and had nothing to do with what he might become in the future. Maybe she created a fake relationship because she didn't think she would be accepted or given the time of day if she told the truth or used her real picture. She made up tragedies because it helped cover up why she couldn't go visit him and also gave her his sympathy and attention. I'm not saying this is definitely what happened, but if he is telling the truth it seems like a plauseable explanation more so than someone pranking him for 3 years, because like you said 3 years ago he wasn't famous. Manti's lies after the fact just being to cover his embarassment and to keep this story from becoming public. Meeting someone online who doesn't look anything like their picture isn't that uncommon. The problem is that these days it is so easy to get on skype or facetime or a webcam to chat. Not having done that ever over a 3 year relationship is pretty hard to imagine. Because you would think if they ever had he would have seen that the pictures don't match up with the person he is talking to. The length of the relationship is what is hard to explain and believe, more so than whether some one pretended to be some one they aren't online.
This is the best guess with what we have. I could see him embellishing about it being more than what it was until he got in too deep. Like D.M. said, you can't really assume everyone is going to react normally. I think even if we found out all the facts it still wouldn't make sense to normal people, motivations left unexplained etc. There are some real lunatics out there, sometimes unexpected.
If it happened the way I layed out then that meeting story was likely a lie that he told his parents due to embarassment over spending hours on the phone every day and falling in love with someone he has never met in person. Just a possible theory at this point though. The Tuiasosopo stuff does throw a wrench in it, depending on how much of it is true. But it's hard to imagine what Tuiasosopo's motivation would be, and just as importantly how he found a girl willing to spend THAT much time on a hoax without any personal motivation beyond a prank on someone who 3 years ago wasn't famous in any significant way.
No they wouldn't have; human interest stories like this are uniquely susceptible to this kind of fakery (Jayson Blair, remember?); I don't think any knowledgeable media critic would have criticized them from doing what used to be considered basic fact-checking like verifying names and dates etc.
I am not talking necessarily about knowledgeable media critics but college football fans particularly Notre Dame fans. Given how powerful Notre Dame is I can easily see a big backlash from them if ESPN, SI and etc.. had been investigating this story during ND's run for the National Championship. You have to consider that if everything that Manti Te'o said was actually true how much the media would've been blasted for looking into this.
Beat you to it. But seriously though, I think he faked her death to protect her from Brent Musburger.
I don't think they would have gotten blasted for confirming facts with official sources, all that takes to cover up is saying you want to make sure you got the times and dates correct for your story. At the same time I don't blame them for taking his word on it and not expecting that he was lieing about his girl friend. There was no reason to expect that at the time.
I'm not asking for fact checking even, but why didn't a single reporter try to find a friend of hers to get another side of the story? Confirm where she was buried so you could write about how beautiful the cemetery is in your piece? Write about the hospital where she was treated and the things they are doing for cancer? I mean SOMETHING. How did all these media sources not ever dig one step beyond Manti's story being regurgitated by each of them?
Please, as if the NYT has had problems pissing people off by being ultra-high minded to the point of obnoxiousness about the concept of journalistic integrity, so they're "afraid" of angry notre dame football internet superfans attackign them for doing j-school 101 level tasks. When you publish a wedding announcement in the Times, they extensively check every single thing (call employers, schools, the venue etc). I don't think you realize the way these people think and act, to higher-ups at the Times, the Blair scandal (a guy making up dumb quotes in stupid human interest stories) was probably the single worst thing to have ever occurred in their entire lifetime, much worse than allowing Judy Miller to help cheer-spin elite opinion in favor of the Iraq war. Basically your argument is that nobody should fault the SI editorial apparatus (they appear most at fault) for not doing J-school 101 tactics because a tragic death was allegedly involved; that's silly, nobody is taught to suspend the rules in this instance.
Under analyzed part of this. I've heard people talk about this being a hoax to do something to him because of the Heisman. Well, if he is a victim here, someone really must have hated him to spend 3 years doing this to him at a time when he wasn't famous, Notre Dame wasn't good and there wasn't a thought that a linebacker out of Notre Dame was going to be considered for the Heisman.
It could be a prank, or a hoax, but there's a siginficant distinction between the two. Prank = somebody did this with malicious intent Hoax = someone did this because they fit the "catfish" mold You don't have to hate somebody to get off on living a lie/psuedolife. They're just an innocent bystander in that person's messed up fantasy.
thamel's full transcript when he spoke with manti: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football/news/20130117/manti-teo-girlfriend-hoax-quotes/
