86 replies to this topic

[Projekt]

My twitter feed is full of people not believing Te'o, but I do. I think he's just incredibly stupid and naive. Flashback to National Signing Day in 2009 and there's his first boneheaded mistake.

[Projekt]

Wow....

Again, he was more absent than his fake girlfriend.

[West Coast]

Tweet of the night... Lol

RT @netw3rk: Prediction: Te'o will be the first guy to get a negative Wonderlic score after eating his pencil and paper.

RT @BFeldmanCBS: RT @ChiTribHamilton Why didn't Te'o visit GF in hospital? Te'o to ESPN: "It never really crossed my mind. I don't know. I was in school."

Wow....

Unreal.

[Projekt]

If there was EVER a time to lie, that would have been the appropriate time.

[Gotrings?]

Notre Dame's Manti Te'o finally answered questions Friday night about the Lennay Kekua girlfriend hoax, saying in an exclusive interview with ESPN that he wasn't part of it – although he "tailored" his accounts of meeting the woman – and that the alleged mastermind of the hoax apologized to him.
The Fighting Irish linebacker and Heisman Trophy finalist at the center of a fake girlfriend controversy that has captivated the sports world for three days spoke to the network's Jeremy Schaap. Te'o gave the interview with a lawyer seated next to him in a conference room at the IMG Training Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where he is preparing for the NFL draft. There were no TV cameras at the 2½-hour interview, which was recorded.

Although Te'o came to Notre Dame officials about the hoax in late December, he said a group of people connected to the perpetrators of the hoax showed up at the team hotel in the days leading up to the BCS Championship game in Miami. Te'o told Schaap the incident affected his play in the game, which the Irish lost 42-14.
Before that encounter, Te'o said he got a call from someone claiming to be Kekua on Dec. 6, even though that was more than two months after her supposed death.
"I just got mad," Te'o said. "I went on a rampage … the Lennay I knew died on September 12."
Te'o denied using the hoax to bolster his Heisman candidacy.
"Well, when they hear the facts, they'll know," Te'o told ESPN. "They'll know that there is no way that I could be part of this."
Te'o said the relationship with the fake girlfriend began on Facebook. He admitted to lying to his father about having met Kekua, prompting his father to tell reporters that the two had met. Several media stories indicated that he and Kekua had met. Te'o insisted they never did.

[Related: Pictures of Te'o's fake girlfriend were of real woman]

Schaap reported there were "occasional contacts" over the following year, and Te'o said he contacted people who said they knew Kekua.
The relationship escalated after Notre Dame's game against Purdue in 2011. It got even more "intense," according to Schaap, on April 25 of last year when Te'o learned Kekua had been involved in a truck crash.
From April until September, Schaap reported, Te'o and Kekua were "inseparable" by phone. It did occur to Te'o that it was strange that they had never met. "I even thought it was crazy that I was with somebody I didn't meet," Schaap reported Te'o as saying.
Te'o admitted lying to his father, Brian, about the relationship., and confessed to embellishing details of their romance.
One of the most pressing questions over the last few days was why Te'o didn't visit the supposedly ailing Kekua in the hospital. Schaap posed that to Te'o, who said, "It never really crossed my mind. I don't know. I was in school."
Schaap said the interview was conducted without cameras because Te'o wanted the discussion to be in a "more intimate setting" and the lack of lights and cameras "probably made him more comfortable."

[Dr. Saturday: Too many questions left unanswered after Manti Te'o's interview]

Te'o told Schaap he still wasn't completely sure Kekua was fake until Wednesday, when Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the reported mastermind behind the hoax, called him to confess and apologize."This person, whoever it was, made an emotional connection that drew him in," Schaap said.
Te'o met Tuiasosopo for the first and only time when Notre Dame played USC in 2012. He thought he was meeting one of Kekua's sisters, but Tuiasosopo showed up with a child who Te'o thought was Kekua's niece.
Te'o told Schaap he tried to speak with Kekua via Skype and FaceTime on numerous occasions, but the person at the other end of the line was in what he called a "black box."
Schaap said Te'o showed him documentation of online exchanges between himself and Kekua, and called Te'o "very convincing." However, he also said Te'o was "utterly confused" by the ordeal.
Te'o did take issue with one part of the Deadspin.com story that revealed the hoax, a point that alleged a source was "80 percent sure" Te'o was involved in the hoax. Te'o strongly denied this, saying he "never" was part of the ruse.
Te'o said he "catered" his stories so people would think he "met her before she passed away."
[Related: Where does the Manti Te'o girlfriend story rank among sports hoaxes?
"I knew that – I even knew that it was crazy that I was with somebody that I didn't meet," he said. "And that alone people find out that this girl who died I was so invested in, and I didn't meet her as well."
Te'o was asked what he thought should happen to Tuiasosopo.
"I hope he learns," Te'o said. "I hope he understands what he's done. I don't wish an ill thing to somebody. I just hope he learns. I think embarrassment is big enough."
He added: "Two guys and a girl are responsible for the whole thing." Asked who they are, he said: "I don't know. According to Ronaiah, Ronaiah's one."
Te'o also shed light on the events of Sept. 12, the day his grandmother died.
"[Me and Lennay] got in an argument. She was saying, you know, I'm trying to be here for you. I didn't want to be bothered. I wanted to be left alone. I just wanted to be by myself.
"Last thing she told me was 'Just know I love you.' "
Later that day, Te'o was informed Kekua had died.On Wednesday, Deadspin broke the story that Te'o's girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, did not exist. That story set off a national wave of questions, as Kekua's supposed death from leukemia had been a major storyline in Te'o's Heisman campaign and Notre Dame's run to the BCS championship game.

Te'o released a statement Wednesday evening, saying he was the victim of a hoax. Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick followed that with a news conference, announcing Te'o had come to school representatives in late December with the suspicion that someone pretending to be Kekua had duped him.

Swarbrick deferred to Te'o to answer specifics about the relationship, and reporters gathered at the IMG Academy. Thursday came and went without any word from Te'o as speculation grew about when he would break his silence. Then, Friday evening after 10 p.m. ET, an ESPN PR representative tweeted that Schaap was speaking with Te'o without cameras recording the interview.

What a joke of a boyfriend

Edited by Gotrings?, January 19, 2013 - 08:28 AM.

[Instigator]

Still confused why he's claiming he's been catfished, didnt he say he met his "girlfriend" at a stanford game?

[Instigator]

They had met in 2009 after the Stanford-Notre Dame football game, the beautiful Stanford coed "with the warm smile and soulful eyes" and the star linebacker from the legendary Fighting Irish, when "their stares got pleasantly tangled." Their long-distance love led to all-night phone calls three years later, as she lay dying of leukemia in a California hospital and he chased an undefeated season and built an unforgettable narrative for a Heisman Trophy, college football's player of the year.

http://www.mercurynews.com/stanford-cardinal/ci_22398271/manti-teo-stanford-link-fake-girlfriend

no way he was catfished

^ Exactly. This guy's still full of some crap. He's seemingly trying to make himself out to be as innocent as possible when he's not.

[West Coast]

http://www.mercuryne...fake-girlfriend

no way he was catfished

This is what he said about it last night:

A South Bend Tribune report described Te'o and Kekua touching hands during an in-person meeting in 2009 at Stanford, but Te'o said that never happened and he didn't know Kekua until 2010.
"I'd never told anybody that I've touched her hand," he said.

Yet it was his dad who told the South Bend Tribune that the two had met at the Stanford game. How does a father tell a newspaper that story without being told that type of story by someone?

[Projekt]

I think it's becoming pretty clear he had nothing to do with this. I read the majority of the transcript and I believe him.

^ You may be right to some degree, but at the same time, you're failing to mention that he at the very least lied several times after knowing it was already a hoax further pushing the story and in a way seemingly enjoying it. He can say sure he was too embarrassed to come out with the truth already so he just kept it going, but that still doesn't excuse it. You don't keep the lie going and keep benefitting from fooling tons of people into feeling sorry for you and rooting for you.

[Projekt]

^ You may be right to some degree, but at the same time, you're failing to mention that he at the very least lied several times after knowing it was already a hoax further pushing the story and in a way seemingly enjoying it. He can say sure he was too embarrassed to come out with the truth already so he just kept it going, but that still doesn't excuse it. You don't keep the lie going and keep benefitting from fooling tons of people into feeling sorry for you and rooting for you.

Read the transcript. He wasn't completely sure everything was a hoax until he was contacted by the guy involved. He didn't understand what was going on. I think people want to believe he was involved because it's a better story, but it seems to be that he's extremely blind and stupid.

[West Coast]

Read the transcript. He wasn't completely sure everything was a hoax until he was contacted by the guy involved. He didn't understand what was going on. I think people want to believe he was involved because it's a better story, but it seems to be that he's extremely blind and stupid.

Just don't see how someone, who is a student at the University of Notre Dame, could go more than a year without realizing this was a hoax. If this was a situation where Te'o had a two month relationship online, then yeah I believe him. But three years? At some point, an educated human being would question what the hell is going on.

I mean how many times does it take for you to "try and meet" someone, to be stood up more than once to question the situation?

My guess, that kid Ronaiah was given a nice little pay day to take all the blame. Idk, being a journalist really has me asking a lot more questions after the interview, which was a controlled interview off camera. Also Jeremy Schaap saying he believes Te'o on tv.... Yeah as a journalist you are not supposed to do that, you're suppose to present the story and leave your personal opinion out of a situation like this. ESPN did a good job of presenting Te'o as the victim but there's more to this story which will ultimately go away over the next couple of weeks.

[Warren2ThaG]

[fedefox]

If he wasnt in it, poor guy man, a month ago dude was probably a top 5 draft pick, now after the BCS game and all this, I would be surprised if he's even in the top 15, he'll have to work his behind off at draft combine

This whole story is nuts, he's a kid, I get that but at some point you have to make a decision, you either lie or you dont, he lied when he said he met her, in fear of coming out and saying "yeah I had an online relationship, never met my girlfriend" he chose the lie, he said he met her and blah blah blah. I think in this day and age, world would be OK with you having an online relationship with someone, he would get clowned either way, but at least he wouldnt be considered a lying cheat who deceived us all with a cute story.

Supposed to be doing an interview with Katie Couric that'll air this Thursday they say...

[Gotrings?]

^ That [expletive] is hilarious and this comment made me laugh as well:

LOL, I didn't realize anyone from Taiwan would give a [expletive] about American college football.

[fedefox]

After reading everything, I believe him, he's stupid, but I believe him