The big emotional story of the college football season was Notre Dame's star linebacker Manti Te'o losing his grandmother and girlfriend within a 24 hour spell in September. Te'o's grandmother most certainly did pass away on September 11th 2012, but the news that his girlfriend Lennay Kekua did not die, and actually never even existed has come as a massive hoax, and has left everyone wondering how on Earth something like this could even happen.
The details are increasingly strange with every piece of information that comes out. The whole "meet-cute" story of Te'o and Kekua's eyes meeting across the room at a party following the Irish's game at Stanford in November 2009 (the game definitely happened by the way) was diminished to the two having a relationship purely over the phone and online when the hoax was broken by deadspin.com. The "relationship" began in early 2012 after being friends since the initial "meeting." The photos posted on Twitter and Instagram of "Lennay Kekua" have been ripped from the private Facebook of an unidentified California woman who has never attended Stanford, never had leukaemia and never met Te'o. The article at Deadspin goes into the details which we need not go into here.
The hoax appears to have been perpetrated by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a 22 year old musician, who was at the very least casually acquainted with Te'o. The main question is if Te'o was in on it? Was it a publicity stunt to drum up Heisman support? And if that was the case, would his grandmother dying not have been enough to gather any supposed sympathy vote. Te'o apparently found out about the hoax over the Christmas period and told the university on Boxing Day. Notre Dame's Vice President Dennis Brown released the following statement this week in response:
"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 leukaemia. 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."
Te'o later released his own statement which read:
"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. To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating. 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. I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been. In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was. Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I'm looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft."
Whether Te'o was in on the hoax or not is still up in the air. It seems unlikely that he could have been in the dark for such a long time over someone who he was supposedly in love with. But it also seems strange that in his first game following the "discovery," the BCS National Championship game, he had his worst game of the year, having played some of his best football after the "death." What is even stranger is that absolute no media outlets in the States checked any of the facts. Kekua's "death" was reported as gospel, as were funeral details and details of her student life. Details about a person that didn't exist. There's a bit of Stephen Glass about the whole thing.
There's something funny been afoot in the whole saga, and it looks like it may be some time before we find out exactly what. I still expect Te'o to be a first round draft pick, but this incident may have hurt his stock slightly if any teams have trust issues. I'm sure there’s more to come on this bizarre story.
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