If you’re not currently knee deep in the murky schadenfreude moat surrounding the most ridiculous sports story in the history of ridiculous sports stories – the one involving a college football star and his fake dead internet girlfriend – then let us break it down for you.
WHO THE FUCK IS MANTI T’EO?
Manti T’eo (above) is a 21 year old linebacker from Hawaii and projected first round NFL draft pick who played for the University of Notre Dame in Indiana (read: he’s an award winning defensive specialist for one of the most storied football programs in America, and by most accounts, their best player). In 2008 he was named Sporting News High School Athlete of the Year and won the inaugural high school Butkus Award, making him the best high school aged linebacker in the country. From there, compelled in part by religious reasons (he is a devout Mormon and active member of the Latter Day Saints) T’eo enrolled at the Catholic affiliated University of Notre Dame, and, by extension, their ass-kicking football program, which has spawned eleven national championships and 62 members of the College Football Hall of Fame.
He is famous because he is historically good at tackling people.
YOU MENTIONED A FAKE DEAD INTERNET GIRLFRIEND?
Yep. This is where the story takes on the convoluted identity of a D Grade Japanese psychological thriller. First though, you won’t comprehend how jarring this story is to America unless you understand the grander personal narrative surrounding the 2012-13 Notre Dame college football season, which revolved this around one monolithic thing, Manti T’eo’s ability to play dominant, hard nosed, match-winning football despite being under immeasurable emotional duress.
On September 11th, 2012 T’eo announced the death of both his grandmother and his girlfriend, the latter being a terminally ill 22 year old Stanford student named Lennay Kekua, who had allegedly died of leukemia. Afterwards, T’eo would publicly draw strength from her memory. He would mention her in interviews and on various social media channels, dedicate victories to her memory, and, crucially, considering his position in a relentlessly high profile/pressure culture which covets winning above all else, play the type of transcendent defensive football that would place him firmly in the 2012 Heisman Trophy conversation (college football’s most valuable player award) and his very own real life Lifetime sports movie. There was only one problem: Lennay Kekua never existed.
As Deadline reported last week: “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.”
SOMETHING SMELLS CATFISHY…
It certainly does. College football star mourns fake dead internet girlfriend? There are four prevailing theories explaining how something so ridiculous could happen to an adult human being in the year 2012.
1) He actually fell in love with someone he met on the internet? Enough so that he considered them his girlfriend even though they communicated exclusively through social media and telephone calls and never met in real life. He was duped by a third party.
2) He was complicit the entire time and invented (or at least was aware of) the fake girlfriend scenario to create a favourable sob story to increase his Heisman Trophy chances.
3) He was duped initially, then ran with the farce until it blew up in his face.
4) He is gay and fabricated a girlfriend to hide that fact.
OK, out of all the scenarios, number four almost instantly absolves him of being the most gullible human being on the planet and actually makes the most sense from a feasible motivation point of view – if it were to be true. It also magically turns him from psychotically unstable college football star with fabricated dead internet girlfriend into a highly sympathetic battler who was just desperate and oppressed. Options 1-3 involve him being various permutations of nefariously ambitious or worryingly gullible, and neither really looks good on anyone.
SO HOW DOES HE EXPLAIN HAVING A DEAD GIRLFRIEND THAT HE’D NEVER MET BEFORE?
Very poorly. Here’s Manti’s statement:
“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.”
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
Yep.
HOW IS AMERICA RESPONDING TO THIS?
With gusto. This is the biggest thing to happen to the sanctity of American college sport since the Sandusky scandal (a despicable child abuse scandal in which the staff of Pennsylvania State University’s college football program willingly covered up or failed to report instances of child sex abuse by former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky), but unlike that travesty, this is so much easier to poke fun at.
For example this…
And this…
The continues to unravel as we speak. We hope you’re as confused as we are…
