The Briefing Room
General Category => Sports/Entertainment/MSM/Social Media => Topic started by: mountaineer on January 16, 2013, 11:07:35 pm
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and Notre Dame knew it ... (http://deadspin.com/5976517/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking-and-inspirational-story-of-the-college-football-season-is-a-hoax?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_twitter&utm_source=deadspin_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow)
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Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax
Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey
Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school's football program back to glory, Te'o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua.
Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI's Pete Thamel described how Te'o would phone her in her hospital room and stay on the line with her as he slept through the night. "Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice," Thamel wrote.
Upon receiving the news of the two deaths, Te'o went out and led the Fighting Irish to a 20-3 upset of Michigan State, racking up 12 tackles. It was heartbreaking and inspirational. Te'o would appear on ESPN's College GameDay to talk about the letters Kekua had written him during her illness. He would send a heartfelt letter to the parents of a sick child, discussing his experience with disease and grief. The South Bend Tribune wrote an article describing the young couple's fairytale meeting—she, a Stanford student; he, a Notre Dame star—after a football game outside Palo Alto.
Did you enjoy the uplifiting story, the tale of a man who responded to adversity by becoming one of the top players of the game? If so, stop reading.
Manti Te'o did lose his grandmother this past fall. Annette Santiago died on Sept. 11, 2012, at the age of 72, according to Social Security Administration records in Nexis. But there is no SSA record there of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper.
Nor is there any report of a severe auto accident involving a Lennay Kekua. Background checks turn up nothing. The Stanford registrar's office has no record that a Lennay Kekua ever enrolled. There is no record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there's no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.
The photographs identified as Kekua—in online tributes and on TV news reports—are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te'o. ...
Lengthy - click for rest of story at Deadspin.com (http://deadspin.com/5976517/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking-and-inspirational-story-of-the-college-football-season-is-a-hoax)
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What a long, entangeled story - what does this guy's pastor father say about all this? Goes to show you that you can't rely on the MSM to get their facts straight even in the realm of college football.
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The only reason Te'o ended up in the second in the Heisman voting was because of his sob story. Without that, he would not have even been invited to New York.
Funny, the media tried to take out Manziel because of his arrest for fighting, but they never bothered to even look into all of the inconsistencies in Te'o's girlfriend story.
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The only reason Te'o ended up in the second in the Heisman voting was because of his sob story. Without that, he would not have even been invited to New York.
I agree. Looks like Teo is trying to act like he didn't know his girlfriend didn't exist. How does that happen? If their so-called relationship was 100% online, then she wasn't exactly his girlfriend, was she (apart from the reports mentioned by Deadspin that she had visited him in Hawaii).
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I agree. Looks like Teo is trying to act like he didn't know his girlfriend didn't exist. How does that happen? If their so-called relationship was 100% online, then she wasn't exactly his girlfriend, was she (apart from the reports mentioned by Deadspin that she had visited him in Hawaii).
Well, they claimed she visited him in Hawaii, but later they also said they had never met her before. Something is really fishy.
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This self-inflicted nonsense will dog him for the rest of his career and life. His kids will know about it. Idio't.
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Who cares?
16 oz. coffee is still $1.54 at the local 7-11.
Too many other things to worry about.
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This self-inflicted nonsense will dog him for the rest of his career and life. His kids will know about it. Idio't.
If it turns out (as friends suspect and it certainly appears) he was a willing participant in the hoax, NFL teams hoping to draft him may have some questions about his character and mental stability.
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John Hayward @Doc_0
Last night, I dreamed Manti Te'o's imaginary girlfriend had a superhuman kung fu battle with "Julia" and her endless army of clones.
Retweeted by Jonah Goldberg
:silly:
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(https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/150053_4548774590708_1985253530_n.jpg)
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Don't laugh. Glenn Beck was talking on his radio program this morning about what is coming in the very near future.... virtual everything, including creating your own virtual girlfriend who loves everything about you and includes virtual sex... they claim this is so real that no one would be able to have or maintain a human to human relationship once they have had the "virtual" experience because no human is as perfect at the virtual person you would have created... he warned this is another of those many slippery slopes that is destroying society.
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Don't laugh. Glenn Beck was talking on his radio program this morning about what is coming in the very near future.... virtual everything, including creating your own virtual girlfriend who loves everything about you and includes virtual sex... they claim this is so real that no one would be able to have or maintain a human to human relationship once they have had the "virtual" experience because no human is as perfect at the virtual person you would have created... he warned this is another of those many slippery slopes that is destroying society.
It’s madness on hyper drive. From the garbage people are watching on TV and seeing in the show, to the violent video games they find entertaining, to what they search for on the web when nobody is looking. It is a slippery slope, and only the few are warning humanity to stop the slide. And those few like Beck are called crazy.
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Maybe Te'o has stumbled across a new method of birth control or safe sex here...
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Comments on an ex-Mormon discussion board seem to lean toward Manti trying to cover up a same-sex attraction by means of a fake girlfriend.
Perhaps all of this explains why he played so poorly in the BCS championship game.
:whistle:
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Comments on an ex-Mormon discussion board seem to lean toward Manti trying to cover up a same-sex attraction by means of a fake girlfriend.
Perhaps all of this explains why he played so poorly in the BCS championship game.
:whistle:
I hope that if this lie was perpetuated to cover up a sexual orientation....that he doesn't kill himself over this.
His father gave an interview that claimed the two met at a Stanford football game back in 2009. IOW, that was the 'official' story told by the young man himself.
Just don't see why this becomes "THE" story. Nobody died.....no crime was committed. MYOB!
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It's all a lie. Why shouldn't we discuss it?
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I hope that if this lie was perpetuated to cover up a sexual orientation....that he doesn't kill himself over this.
His father gave an interview that claimed the two met at a Stanford football game back in 2009. IOW, that was the 'official' story told by the young man himself.
Just don't see why this becomes "THE" story. Nobody died.....no crime was committed. MYOB!
Here's the deal as I see it. These guys are all marketing a brand at some point, and the brand is... them. Once they reach the NFL, they have endorsement opportunities, paid appearances, etc. Then, we become the consumer. And we, as the consumer, have a right to know (within reason) how the brand was built.
This is not unlike Lance Armstrong. He built a profitable brand by duping us, the consumer.
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Here's the deal as I see it. These guys are all marketing a brand at some point, and the brand is... them. Once they reach the NFL, they have endorsement opportunities, paid appearances, etc. Then, we become the consumer. And we, as the consumer, have a right to know (within reason) how the brand was built.
This is not unlike Lance Armstrong. He built a profitable brand by duping us, the consumer.
This was nothing like doping.
Furthermore, his football field resume numbers say those aren't fake. He played and was the leader on an undefeated Notre Dame team.
So what if he became a chronic liar over this? He's young and was trying desperately to cover something up.
I do understand the branding efforts and agree with you....but his football prowess isn't imaginary.
And, if he lied over this and is culpable....I hope it ends well.
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ND wasn't undefeated.
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He is incoherent:
The inconsistencies surrounding Manti Te’o’s non-existent dead girlfriend are even more convoluted than originally thought.
In an interview, now published in full by Sports Illustrated, the Notre Dame linebacker could provide few details about how he met Lennay Kekua or the circumstances of her death, which occurred six hours after his grandmother’s on Sept. 13. What Te’o could recall were letters that her family member read to him before each game, even some that occurred after her death.
In the article, Te’o claimed to have known Kekua for four years and been dating for her one.
"We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular," Te’o said.
After that, Te’o said that Kekua — who was from Hawaii, "but was always in California" — went to Notre Dame’s game at USC on Nov. 27, 2010 during his sophomore season.
"But she saw me at the USC game of my sophomore year. We were still just friends, we were acquaintances," Te’o said.
But this has now all been proven false with a Deadspin report published on Wednesday which established that Kekua never existed. They claim that her identity was made up through a Twitter account by a family friend named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. The pictures on the account belong to a high school classmate of Tuiasosopo, who "Inside Edition" reported Thursday goes by the name of Diane O’Meara.
Te’o and Notre Dame claim he was the victim of a hoax and not trying to garner buzz for his Heisman campaign. They allege that Te’o was suspicious that Kekua was made up on Dec. 6 and that he told school officials the day after Christmas.
Yet, Te’o continued to speak freely about his deceased girlfriend on Dec. 8 during the Heisman ceremony.
"I think I’ll never forget the time when I found out that, you know, my girlfriend passed away and the first person to run to my aid was my defensive coordinator, Coach [Bob] Diaco, and you know he said something very profound to me, he said ‘this is where your faith is tested.’" he told ESPN’s Chris Fowler, according to Awful Announcing.
"Right after that, I ran into the players’ lounge and I got on the phone with my parents – and I opened my eyes and my head coach was sitting right there. And so, you know, there are a hundred-plus people on our team and the defensive coordinator and our head coach took time to just go get one [of those players]. You know I think that was the most meaningful to me."
But when asked by SI how Kekua died he had no information.
"It was just so sudden. I don't know the details of it. It was just a surprise," Te’o said.
Te’o did provide descriptions about how he spent each night on the phone with her, while she recovered from an April 28 car accident. While she was healing, doctors discovered that she had leukemia. It seems now that someone either went to great means to fool Te’o or the Heisman runner-up made up the story.
"It was harder than it was the previous week," said Te’o, who was wearing a ring at the time of the September interview to remember Kekua. "I was rolling. The feeling of it settling in that, she's not physically here no more. You just can't call her. I talked to my girlfriend every single day. I slept on the phone with her every single day. When she was going though chemo, she would have all these pains and the doctors were saying they were trying to give her medicine to make her sleep. She still couldn't sleep. She would say, ‘Just call my boyfriend and have him on the phone with me, and I can sleep.’ I slept on the phone with her every single night."
There are still many holes to this story that people are waiting for Te’o to explain. There were reports that he was going to do an interview with ESPN on Thursday, but that has yet to come to fruition. He is reportedly working out in Tampa for the NFL Draft, but before his future can begin he has to fill in the details of the past year.
NY Post (http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/football/released_tale_takes_turn_for_the_lzirp8FP8NquEulcfAPAQJ)
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Te'o's account does not add up: Deadspin writer
By MICHAEL BLAUSTEIN
Posted: 10:35 AM, January 17, 2013
The explanation by Notre Dame and Manti Te'o's that claims he was a victim of an "elaborate hoax" has some holes in it.
According to the timeline of events that Te'o and Notre Dame have stuck to so far, Te'o became aware that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, was a hoax on December 6th.
However, Te'o gave an interview on Jan. 3 where he did not deny that the relationship existed.
"He was asked about the turmoil with his girlfriend and he said, 'The team is special to him and they've been there for him through all the hard times.' He did not correct the questioner, so he's somewhat implicit in that," Timothy Burke, the author of the Deadspin article which uncovered the hoax, told NBCSports.
Beyond merely continuing the myth in the run up to the BSC National Championship on Jan. 7, there are multiple inconsistencies in Te'o's supposed online relationship with Kekua that need to be accounted for. Te'o is expected to meet with the media or give a one-on-one interview in the coming days.
The lies that both he claimed on multiple occasions to have met Kekua in person. [Huh?]
Chief among these encounters was the origin story of Te'o and Kekua's relationship when, "Their stares got pleasantly tangled, then Manti Te'o extended his hand to the stranger with a warm smile and soulful eyes," according to a South Bend Tribune account of the pair's first meeting after Notre Dame's game against Stanford on November 28th, 2009.
"The whole story about them meeting at the Stanford game in 2009, somebody had to have told that story to a reporter for it to become news," Burke said.
"Manti T'eo said, 'I can't wait to see her again.' See her? You never saw her for the first time. How could you see her again?" Burke continued.
In another account of Te'o and Kekua supposedly meeting, Brian Te'o told the South Bend Tribune in October 2012 that, "Every once in a while, she would travel to Hawaii, and that happened to be the time Manti was home, so he would meet with her there."
"Where'd that story come from?" Burke wondered, "Did it come from Te'o? Did it come from his dad? It originated someplace."
NY Post (http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/collegesports/te_is_not_innoncent_pxycRQsz9r31GEkfUi81AK#ixzz2IHgppqBg)
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On O'Reilly right now.
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There three possibilities that make sense.
- He is extremely naive, and was fooled by someone. When he found out, he tried to keep it a secret, eventually "killing" her off to try and end it.
- He was behind the whole thing, trying to develop a good sob story to help his Heisman stock.
- He's homosexual and trying to hide it.
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If it turns out (as friends suspect and it certainly appears) he was a willing participant in the hoax, NFL teams hoping to draft him may have some questions about his character and mental stability.
OJ Simpson, Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong?
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One of the things they said on Bill O'Reilly is he possibly was trying to garner sympathy so he could win the Heisman Trophy because it would up his starting salary in the NFL.
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The only reason Te'o ended up in the second in the Heisman voting was because of his sob story. Without that, he would not have even been invited to New York.
I would put the blame then on the Heisman voting commission, not Te’o. If human interest angles are even a small part of their Heisman voting criteria, then there is a huge problem with how they select candidates. It’s an embarrassing situation for Mati, for sure, but that is all it should be. There should be no impact on where he falls into the NFL Draft, unless the media’s overreaction makes it happen. Compare this with the dozens of players arrested for DUI, domestic violence, drugs or assault, and Mati’s situation is small potatoes.
And my tall blond hair, blue eyed Swedish Victoria’s Secret super model on- line girl friend agrees with me, - so there.
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Don't laugh. Glenn Beck was talking on his radio program this morning about what is coming in the very near future.... virtual everything, including creating your own virtual girlfriend who loves everything about you and includes virtual sex... they claim this is so real that no one would be able to have or maintain a human to human relationship once they have had the "virtual" experience because no human is as perfect at the virtual person you would have created... he warned this is another of those many slippery slopes that is destroying society.
Try as they might, they could never develop a better political discussion correspondent than you, Rap. Please, please tell me you're real.
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Try as they might, they could never develop a better political discussion correspondent than you, Rap. Please, please tell me you're real.
~LOL~ massadjv... you're funny.
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....that he doesn't kill himself over this.
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Why not? There's a lot to be said for shame as a method of behavior modification.
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Letterman's Top Ten Signs You Have an Imaginary Girlfriend (http://www.cbs.com/shows/late_show/top_ten/136457/). :laugh:
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I would put the blame then on the Heisman voting commission, not Te’o. If human interest angles are even a small part of their Heisman voting criteria, then there is a huge problem with how they select candidates. It’s an embarrassing situation for Mati, for sure, but that is all it should be. There should be no impact on where he falls into the NFL Draft, unless the media’s overreaction makes it happen. Compare this with the dozens of players arrested for DUI, domestic violence, drugs or assault, and Mati’s situation is small potatoes.
And my tall blond hair, blue eyed Swedish Victoria’s Secret super model on- line girl friend agrees with me, - so there.
goopo
OK, due to my lack of interest in a lot of news these days, I avoided this story until I got caught up here. Great thread.
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ND wasn't undefeated.
The Alabama-Notre Dame game was NOT football. :laugh:
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(https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/23763_10151226977898775_225840147_n.jpg)
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This boy strikes me as being dumb as a box of rocks.
Te'o tells Couric he briefly lied about girlfriend
By DAVID K. LI
January 23, 2013
Humiliated football star Manti Te’o insisted he had no choice but to keep lying about his phony gal pal -- even after she called him from the virtual grave and revealed the huge hoax.
The Notre Dame great repeated his version of the wild tale, telling Katie Couric about a Dec. 6 phone call from the woman he knew as Lennay Kekua, the girlfriend who he had told the world had died of cancer on Sept. 12.
Kekua never existed and her phony death -- in addition to the real passing of Teo’s grandmother a day before -- became the emotional narrative of Notre Dame’s great football season.
Even after the call, Te’o said he had to keep talking up Lennay in interviews, leading up to Notre Dame’s national championship game on Jan. 7
"Now I get a phone call on Dec. 6, saying that she's alive and then I'm going be put on national TV two days later. And to ask me about the same question. You know, what would you do?" Te'o told Couric, in his first on-camera interview that’s set to air tomorrow.
Segments of Couric’s chat with the Heisman Trophy runner-up and his parents aired on “Good Morning America” today.
"Katie, put yourself in my situation. I, my whole world told me that she died on Sept. 12. Everybody knew that. This girl, who I committed myself to, died on Sept. 12," Te'o said.
Even though Lennay’s widely reported death was once a PR boon for the now-humiliated grid star, dad Brian Te’o said his son didn’t lie for publicity.
Manti Te’o has admitted he never met Lennay in person and “tailored” remarkable details about his fake girlfriend that he fed to fans. Te’o and his family, before Dec. 6, had spoken at length about the couple’s romantic vacations in Hawaii and dreamy, first meeting after the 2009 Notre Dame-Stanford football game.
"People can speculate about what they think he is. I've known him 21 years of his life. And he's not a liar. He's a kid," Brian Te'o said with tears in his eyes.
The hoax, first reported a week ago today by sports Web site Deadspin, has been traced to Te’o acquaintance Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, a Christian musician from Southern California.
Tuiasosopo used the picture of a former high school classmate for the hoax, without telling her.
That pretty face of Lennay, Los Angeles marketing executive Diane O'Meara, saidl her head is still spinning from her unwitting role in the scam.
“Even today, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. I mean, I have my own boyfriend of five years, committed relationship, so to hear that you’re the face of a separate relationship, it’s hard to see,” O’Meara told NBC’s “Today” show.
O’Meara said she identifies with Te’o, as a hoax victim who feels “the same emotions: frustration, anger, confusion.”
O’Meara said she gave Tuiasosopo a picture of herself after he reached her via Facebook and spun a tale about his cousin’s poor health.
“We’re raised to have a kind heart,” she said. “He repeatedly reached out to me on Facebook. And I almost felt guilty not sending a photo with this sign for this photo slideshow.
“He went as far as sending me a photo of his cousin with head trauma, bandages in the hospital. Out of the kindness of my heart, I thought I was just comforting somebody that I knew of.”
Tuiasosopo has not yet commented publicly about his role in the Te’o hoax.
Although Tuiasosopo never played big-time college or pro football, he comes from a long line of grid greats. Dad Titus Tuiasosopo played at USC and is now is the pastor of Oasis Christian Church of the Antelope Valley in Lancaster, Calif.
NY Post (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/te_tells_couric_he_briefly_lied_XcpnChn3hBOjCV9bwu2cGK#ixzz2Ipu5ewoj)