The Curious Case of Notre Dame Football Star Manti Te'o's Fake Dead Girlfriend

beyond weird

http://deadspin.com/5976517/

I was just reading this, it's just crazy

i know, this is like the weirdest shit

this is insane

i wonder if this was something that snowballed and he just kept lying or if it was planned from the start? feel like it's got to be the former. either that or he's incredibly stupid.

not that he wasn't stupid in both cases, but the former option strikes me as something being wrong w/him.

goddamn

idk I am sure the fake gf thing happens all the time, the only remarkable thing is that he turned into a national celebrity while this was going on

weird that a football star for notre dame would cockblock himself w/a fictional dying gf.

Makes for a good story/possible book deal.

i feel like the film should have a tone not dissimilar to 'the informant'

he's mormon, god is cockblocking him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKDus7QjJ_w&feature=youtu.be

conflicted here

is it still tacky to speculate about someone's sexuality once evidence comes to light that they invented an imaginary dying gf, because I hella wanna speculate about these dudes; like, this is super Catfish material

I feel like this is the kind of thing that would make him undraftable, right? I mean, the Bengals will still take him as a free agent, obvs, but his draft prospects are pretty much history at this point.

does this work?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKDus7QjJ_w&feature=youtu.be

no? okay http://youtu.be/HKDus7QjJ_w

fake dead girlfriend should post here

I was hoping that it would turn out he was gay and the fake gf was cover for a real bf.

mcsuchnsuch 3 months ago

What a class act. Wish some of these "super stars" were at least half as humble.

Sports Illustrated never thought to fact check the dead girlfriend story? Seems like pretty shoddy reporting.

if there's one thing that I'm not surprised by in the 2010s, it's shoddy reporting

well anyway, rip manti te'o's dead girlfriend story

Also, and I guess this a weird thing to think but, he's a really good player. He didn't NEED that story, surely.

i wonder if they're gonna try and spin this as him getting catfished or whether he'll just come out and admit that he was in on it

my guess is the former

"Kekua" means God in Hawaiian iirc... trying to find some googlage for some support but not helping...

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/291665871707971584

Luna Kekua

Sports Illustrated never thought to fact check the dead girlfriend story? Seems like pretty shoddy reporting.

― Solange and thanks for all the fish (Nicole), Wednesday, January 16, 2013 9:53 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what i was thinking too

it's not like she had an ungooglable name

i guess there are three scenarios

1. he was in on it from the beginning
2. he got catfished and never knew it
3. he got catfished but started making things up on his own

Okay found an online Hawaiian dictionary:

kua
6. Var. of akua , god, image, especially after the -a (cf. hoa kua). Cf. also Ke-ala-ke-kua (place name), the pathway of the Gods.

It's 1 or 3, because they never met in person and he's claimed that they did.

what's "catfished"?

right. i guess if it's 3, then it becomes a question of if he was too embarrassed to admit the truth and made up small details to cover himself

xp

what's "catfished"?

― whose black line is it anyway? (how's life), Wednesday, January 16, 2013 5:06 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfish_(film)

he could have just "dumped" her and never mentioned her again, is the thing

it didn't need to turn into a "oh she died the same day as my grandmother, now everyone go support her imaginary sister" deal

thing is we all say oh this is nuts and weird but i feel like i've been reading a variant on this over and over again lately

a few weeks ago a friend linked to this on twitter, for instance http://www.52firstdates.com/2012/11/sebastian-pritchard-jones-strikes-back.html

is this guy properly famous in the football world? idk how you'd ever think you get get away with this if you had any kind of celebrity

2m Daniel Walters ‏@danieltwalters
In a way, we are all Manti Te'o's girlfriend, our faith in college sports killed by the leukemia of deception. #ThinkPiece
Expand

Lance Armstrong suddenly a huge Manti Te'o fan...

is this guy properly famous in the football world?

In college/university football, yes. He was the runner up for the Heisman trophy (prestigious!) and played in the national title game.

I remember kids making up weird, drawn-out, unsustainable stories in grade school and even middle school

http://i.imgur.com/lpK2s.jpg?1

Still not a peep about this at ESPN

if I were te'o I would have come clean yesterday like 10 minutes after lance's oprah interview

he's saying he was catfished

how is that even possible

http://i.imgur.com/5RjRG.jpg

Undraftable, though? really?

Notre Dame Statement: Manti Te’o

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 leukemia. 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.

Dennis Brown
University Spokesman | Assistant Vice President

Luna Kekua

sufjan is miss hawaii ftr

Are you then therefore gay?

ipso facto

"Dr. Phil McGraw"

he's a clinical psychologist iirc. not a physician, but he's got a phd

are we then therefore gay?

(not a fan of his by any stretch, lol)

For the record I never said dude was gay; I think he wants to bang everyone

A gender preference, that's that shit he don't like *bang bang*

bang bang, my non existent baby shot me down

Dr. Phil McGraw pressed Tuiasosopo to replicate the fake girlfriend's voice that spent countless hours talking to the Notre Dame star linebacker.

"Much of this relationship you had was on the phone...let me hear that voice," Dr. Phil demanded of Tuiasosopo. "If that is you on those voicemails, then prove it."

"I can't, even if I tried," Tuiasosopo said. "There's a whole lot that went into pushing me to do something like that..to go to that extreme consistently. Even if I tried, it doesn't come off right."

Tuiasosopo said it was "awkward and uncomfortable" and he had never done the voice in front of a person, doing it alone in a dark room every time.

Dr. Phil told Tuiasosopo that he was "very skeptical" and just wanted the truth.

serious kudos to dr phil for attempting to create a moment a epic, epic comedy though

*of

would've been so perfect if he'd tried to do the voice

shoulda done the voice in a little Texas twang

http://todaynews.today.com/_news/2013/01/31/16790189-teo-hoax-mastermind-im-recovering-from-homosexuality#.UQsxxH8j2Js.twitter

ronaiah is a "recovering homosexual"

god this is just getting worse and worse

orly

all parties just stfu and go away now. we were doing fine making up way better stories abt u

i didn't know the ex-gay peeps had adopted the 'recovering' language from alcoholics. that seems kind of... pessimistic of them

well ime they're all p much coerced into viewing it like that by super-xtian families

isn't the point that you're always a recovering alcoholic and never "ex-" anything?

no ex- it

using that language to mirror that of alcoholics/addicts is their way of pathologizing their feelings i think

yeah, def an attempt to medicalize their whole steez. but by implication, the power or prayer looks pretty limited!

(i say this w/o reading into what kind of group/therapy this kid got himself into, mind)

we need manti/roniah pics for the "this facial expression" thread

"McGraw said that a voice analysis done by experts who work with the FBI and Secret Service revealed that the chances of Tuiasosopo’s voice being the female-sounding one on voicemails revealed by Te’o is one in 10 million."

what the hell

hahaha this fucking story

So glad to hear the FBI have time to waste on this shit o_0

it prob took them like 5 minutes

less

hoping that the twist is that it's a different person's voice, but still a dude's voice

maybe.... MANTI'S

It's Ross Matthews

Dr. Phil galvanizing one dude to 'get real.'

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/media/USATODAY/gameon/2013/01/30/ap-tv-dr-phil-girlfriend-hoax-4_3_r536_c534.jpg?1b79b3da202957124496e3768cfb7b67cdb10c81

voice of the lady was:

CHRIS HANSEN

christopher walken dudes

dr phil show is ridic, they chop it up like a michael bay film & phils pacing of dialogue is tripping me out

theres like just a cut to where its phil saying "painfully, brutally raped"

Ronaiah stated that Manti broke up with "Lennay" after a big fight 2 weeks before she died.

I guess "my grandma and my EX-girlfriend died today" just doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

ronaiah w/ that voice has a career doing pixar voiceovers

uh characters i mean

RIP: https//twitter.com/MTeo_5

whoops http://twitter.com/MTeo_5

ahh 2013

A lighter time.

Forced myself to watch the netflix doc. Kept waiting for them to credit lagoon. Deadspin's "we didn't expect people to go after Manti. This was about big papers not checking facts" bit could use some fact checking.

they really will make a netflix doc about anything.

Hey hip hop nerds: The Mystery of Grim Reapah

It's part of a sports series somewhat similar to "30 for 30" but with narrower focus. Not so surprising given the original story's popularity.