Publicity stunt ?

[TheLionKing]

http://www.tsn.ca/ncaa/story/?id=413712

Te'o is backpedalling

[WestCoastJoe]

At least two possibilities ...

1 Manti is really, really, really naïve. And inexperienced in the ways of romance and love. Hard to believe, with all the opportunities that come the way of top athletes (and with teammates saying that he had dated a number of girls on campus). In this scenario, he is played for a dupe in a hoax.

2 Manti was desperate for the Heisman. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo might be the one who cooked up the idea of the internet, fantasy, not real girl friend. It could even have been a joke in the beginning. It got started, seemingly under control, but it escalated, gained momentum, and he couldn't back out. Or he followed through with it, not wishing to weaken in any way, his chances for the Heisman. In this scenario he is fully involved in perpetrating the hoax.

Fantasy, reality, deception, reputation (of a player, of a university).

This story has legs ...

http://www.sportsnet.ca/more/2013/01/17 ... g_of_hoax/

Te'o spoke of 'girlfriend' twice knowing of hoax

An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview on Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 11.

January 17, 2013, 7:10 pm

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never even existed, Notre Dame All-American linebacker Manti Te'o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.

An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview on Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 11. He and the university said Wednesday that he learned on Dec. 6 that it was all a hoax, that not only wasn't she dead, she wasn't real.

On Thursday, a day after Te'o's inspiring, playing-through-heartache story was exposed as a bizarre lie, Te'o and Notre Dame faced questions from sports writers and fans about whether he really was duped, as he claimed, or whether he and the university were complicit in the hoax and misled the public, perhaps to improve his chances of winning the Heisman.

Yahoo sports columnist Dan Wetzel said the case has "left everyone wondering whether this was really the case of a naive football player done wrong by friends or a fabrication that has yet to play to its conclusion."

Gregg Doyel, national columnist for CBSSports.com, was more direct.

"Nothing about this story has been comprehensible, or logical, and that extends to what happens next," he wrote. "I cannot comprehend Manti Te'o saying anything that could make me believe he was a victim."

On Wednesday, Te'o and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the player was drawn into a virtual romance with a woman who used the phoney name Lennay Kekua, and was fooled into believing she died of leukemia in September. They said his only contact with the woman was via the Internet and telephone.

Te'o also lost his grandmother -- for real -- the same day his girlfriend supposedly died, and his role in leading Notre Dame to its best season in decades endeared him to fans and put him at the centre of college football's biggest feel-good story of the year.

Relying on information provided by Te'o's family members, the South Bend Tribune reported in October that Te'o and Kekua first met, in person, in 2009, and that the two had also gotten together in Hawaii, where Te'o grew up.

Sports Illustrated posted a previously unpublished transcript of a one-on-one interview with Te'o from Sept. 23. In it, he goes into great detail about his relationship with Kekua and her physical ailments. He also mentioned meeting her for the first time after a game in California.

"We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular," he told SI.

Among the outstanding questions Thursday: Why didn't Te'o ever clarify the nature of his relationship as the story took on a life of its own?

Te'o's agent, Tom Condon, said the athlete had no plans to make any public statements Thursday in Bradenton, Fla., where he has been training with other NFL hopefuls at the IMG Academy.

Notre Dame said Te'o found out that Kekua was not a real person through a phone call he received at an awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 6. He told Notre Dame coaches about the situation on Dec. 26.

The AP's media review turned up two instances during that gap when the football star mentioned Kekua in public.

Te'o was in New York for the Heisman presentation on Dec. 8 and, during an interview before the ceremony that ran on the WSBT.com, the website for a South Bend TV station, Te'o said: "I mean, I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. So I've really tried to go to children's hospitals and see, you know, children."

In a column that first ran in The Los Angeles Times, on Dec. 10, Te'o recounted why he played a few days after he found out Kekua died in September, and the day she was supposedly buried.

"She made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play," he said on Dec. 9 while attending a ceremony in Newport Beach, Calif., for the Lott Impact Awards.

On Wednesday, when Deadspin.com broke the story, Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not go public with its findings sooner because it expected the Te'o family to come forward first.

Asked if the NCAA was monitoring the Te'o story for possible rules violations, NCAA President Mark Emmert said:

"We don't know anything more than you do," he told reporters at the organization's convention in Dallas. "We're learning about this through the stories just the same as you are. But we have to wait and see what really transpired there. It's obviously (a) very disturbing story and it's hard to tell where the facts lie at this point.

"But Notre Dame is obviously looking into it and there will be a lot more to come forward. Right now, it just looks ... well, we don't know what the facts are, so I shouldn't comment beyond that."

Reporters were turned away at the main gate of IMG's sprawling, secure complex. Te'o remained on the grounds, said a person familiar with situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because neither Te'o nor IMG authorized the release of the information.

"This whole thing is so nutsy that I believe it only could have happened at Notre Dame, where mythology trumps common sense on a daily basis. ... Given the choice between reality and fiction, Notre Dame always will choose fiction," sports writer Rick Telander said in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Which brings me to what I believe is the real reason Te'o and apparently his father, at least went along with this scheme: the Heisman Trophy.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass blasted both Te'o and Notre Dame.

"When your girlfriend dying of leukemia after suffering a car crash tells you she loves you, even if it might help you win the Heisman Trophy, you check it out," he said.

He said the university's failure to call a news conference and go public sooner means "Notre Dame is complicit in the lie."

"The school fell in love with the Te'o girlfriend myth," he wrote.

[TheLionKing]

Might we next see Te'o on Oprah Winfrey ?

[WestCoastJoe]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/sto ... riend-hoax

Friend: Tuiasosopo admitted to hoax

Updated: January 18, 2013, 6:19 PM ET
By Shelley Smith | ESPN

Source: Te'o Not First To Be Duped By Tuiasosopo

Shelley Smith reports that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the man identified as being behind the Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax, has pulled a similar hoax before, according to a source.

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the man who has been publicly identified as being behind the Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax, called a church friend in early December crying and admitted to duping the Heisman finalist, the friend told "Outside the Lines" Thursday.

The friend, a woman in her mid-20s, agreed to be interviewed under the condition that she not be identified, saying she was fearful for her family's safety because of the overwhelming publicity the story has generated. In the interview, she did allow for her voice to be recorded.

Is Manti Te'o a world-class liar or the victim of a cruel hoax? A schemer or prey? We all await his version of the truth, Gene Wojciechowski writes. Story

She said Tuiasosopo gave her the tearful confession and account of how he played what he said was at first a game on the unsuspecting Te'o. And, she said, he told her that it wasn't the first time he had done it.

"He (Ronaiah) told me that Manti was not involved at all, he was a victim. ... The girlfriend was a lie, the accident was a lie, the leukemia was a lie," said the woman. "He was crying, he was literally crying, he's like 'I know, I know what I have to do.'

"It's not only Manti, but he was telling me that it's a lot of other people they had done this to."

Notre Dame issued a news release Wednesday after Deadspin.com reported it could find no record of Lennay Kekua, Te'o's supposed girlfriend, existing.

Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said in a news conference Wednesday night that coaches were informed by Te'o and his parents on Dec. 26 that Te'o had been the victim of what appeared to be a hoax. Someone using a fictitious name "apparently ingratiated herself" with Te'o, the school said, then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had died of leukemia.

Swarbrick said that the relationship took place online and over the phone. Te'o had described staying on the phone with whom he thought was Kekua for hours each night over many months. Tuiasosopo's friend from church told ESPN that Tuiasosopo admitted to having his female cousin speak to Te'o over the phone.

Te'o told Notre Dame officials that he received a phone call Dec. 6, while in attendance at an ESPN awards show in Orlando, from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Kekua. The woman on the line during that phone call told Te'o she had to fake her own death in order to elude drug dealers, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports, citing a source close to Te'o's family. The woman then tried to restart her relationship with Te'o.

Te'o asked for a photo with a date stamp to verify her identity, the paper reports, but wasn't convinced and later went to his family and school officials to describe the hoax.

Meanwhile, on Friday, an adviser to Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap that the linebacker has been huddling Friday morning with family members and a team of advisers, who are trying to determine the best way for him to address the controversy. The adviser, who's been part of the discussions, also said that all of the advisers are thoroughly convinced that Te'o is telling the truth in saying that he was a victim of a hoax.

OTL also interviewed two other people who said they have a cousin who had the same online hoax pulled on them by Tuiasosopo.

J.R. Vaosa, 28, of Torrance, Calif., and Celeste Tuioti-Mariner, 21, of Whittier, Calif., said that in 2008 their cousin began an online romance with a woman who portrayed herself as a model. Vaosa said the cousin showed Vaosa a picture on MySpace of a woman from a Victoria's Secret catalog that he said was Kekua. Vaosa said that the online Kekua would agree to meet his cousin at certain places. Vaosa said he went with the cousin to meet her.

"When Lennay said she was gonna be at this park one day, we'd go to the park and Ronaiah pops up and then we go to the gym in Orange County where the kids have volleyball tournaments, Ronaiah's there," Vaosa said.

Finally, the family convinced Vaosa's cousin that something wasn't right and he needed to cut things off not only with Kekua, but Tuiasosopo, whom they were convinced was the real Kekua, Tuioti-Mariner said.

"I just knew that my cousin would invite her to certain events and Lennay would always say she would go to those things, but she would never end up going and instead of her going we would see Ronaiah," Tuioti-Mariner said.

Then this fall, Vaosa and Tuioti-Mariner saw the story of Te'o's dying girlfriend.

"When I found out about the Samoan football player (and) his girlfriend, his Grandma died the same day, I was like, 'Whoa this is crazy,' I feel so bad for him, so I just looked him up," Vaosa said. "I found out his girlfriend's name was Lennay Kekua. And right when I read the name Lennay Kekua, I immediately thought of Ronaiah. Then I thought of my cousin -- that this has to be the same person."

The cousins said they were convinced Te'o was being victimized, but they were uncertain of what to do. They said they began tweeting their suspicions. Many of their tweets were laced with sarcasm including claims that they were the real Lennay Kekua. After Deadspin.com broke the story on Te'o and Swarbrick held a news conference, Vaosa and Tuioti-Mariner found reporters at their door and said threats were made to them and their families on Twitter.

Another person involved in the hoax has come forward as well. The woman whose photos were portrayed as Kekua was identified by "Inside Edition" as Diane O'Meara. Her lawyer told the program that her client is also a victim and that her photos were stolen and used to create the illusion of Te'o's girlfriend.

Deadspin.com reported in its original story that the woman whose images were used as Kekua's was actually a former high school classmate of Tuiasosopo and that he used a ruse to get her to send him at least one photo.

Meanwhile, the woman who says Tuiasosopo confessed to her said she has urged Tuiasosopo to take responsibility for his actions.

She said he called her Wednesday as the news of the hoax was breaking. She said he sounded calm but she worries about his guilt over what he did to Te'o and what he did to his family name, one of the most prominent in all of Polynesian sports. She worries what he might do to himself.

"I (still) am worried for him (Ronaiah), not just him and his family but I know that you can't judge people like that and that's why I continue to just encourage (him) to come out and tell the truth," she said.

This report supports the view that Manti was an unwitting victim of the hoax.

[Toppy Vann]

It is not a publicity stunt. That would be something that the perps don't mind coming out as a bit of a fraud.

This is an hoax that suggests in a perverse way they thought it would help win a Heisman and build his story. Too many like his own dad and him in on to. Speaks to the family's character.

This really shows this young man's character is deficient. ND cover story that he was a victim of the hoax is just plain stupid of them. When the guy is caught that red handed best to either shut up if you are Notre Dame or get the guy to come clean and apologize.

I see the other perp's dad Titus on FB thanking his followers for the love. If you are a Manti guy he can do no wrong given where he was from blah blah blah.

[South Pender]

So, is it now becoming clear that Manti Te'o orchestrated the whole thing himself? Rather being the unwitting subject of a hoax by others? Jeez, that's pretty dismal if true. Does honesty and honour not count for anything at all anymore? I suppose, as with Ray Lewis, this lapse in integrity will be completely overshadowed by his football skills and be quickly forgotten. Sad....

[KnowItAll]

So, is it now becoming clear that Manti Te'o orchestrated the whole thing himself? ....

based on what?

[Toppy Vann]

I think it started with his friend, didn't it? Ronanaih something or other.

But it is clear that he was in on this and helped keep the story moving. Now he has tossed that pal under the bus. Nice friend.

It is not the worst thing but yes, speaks to the character of him and I assume his family members who helped keep the story alive - making up stuff along the way.

The story of Lizzy Seeberg is something that is more of a shock. This is all compounded as after her ND football player rape claim she committed suicide and thus no charges but these headlines speak to the problems of the culture in some of these sports teams if the tone is not set right at the top.

If this were to happen today post Penn State I am sure this young women would be heard. It is ironic now that in the Penn State debacle the former loyal Ass't Coach who first reported is being treated like a dog these days and no doubt is blacklisted in some places.

Notre Dame Response To Lizzy Seeberg Suicide Contrasts With Manti Te'o Girlfriend Hoax

Posted: 01/17/2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/1 ... ostpopular

More Tears For Notre Dame's 'Fake Tragedy' Than A Real Girl's Death?

by Mark Memmott
January 18, 2013

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/201 ... irls-death

[TheLionKing]

Wonder if it affect his draft status ?

[KnowItAll]

I think it started with his friend, didn't it? Ronanaih something or other.

But it is clear that he was in on this and helped keep the story moving. Now he has tossed that pal under the bus. Nice friend.

No, it is NOT clear at all.


where is the proof.

[South Pender]

So, is it now becoming clear that Manti Te'o orchestrated the whole thing himself? ....

based on what?

I'm asking the question, KnowItAll, not making a claim!

[KnowItAll]

So, is it now becoming clear that Manti Te'o orchestrated the whole thing himself? ....

based on what?

I'm asking the question, KnowItAll, not making a claim!

me too

[South Pender]

Notre Dame's knee-jerk response designed to defend Te'o (and, I guess, ND football in general) is somewhat disappointing. You would think that at a Catholic university virtues like honesty and integrity would prevail, but that clearly is not the case at ND. It reminds me of the case of Joe Theismann back in his ND days. Evidently, the family name was really pronounced "Thees'-man," but ND flacks decided to get Joe to change that pronunciation to rhyme with Heisman ("Hise-man") to improve his chances of winning the trophy. The "anything to win," "anything to promote ND football" mentality would seem to me to be at odds with Christian values, values presumably embraced in the university's founding and mission statements. We shouldn't be surprised to see this win-at-all-costs mindset at other football factories, but I find it surprising and hypocritical at ND, and yet there it is, big as life, and evidently always has been!

[KnowItAll]

Notre Dame's knee-jerk response designed to defend Te'o (and, I guess, ND football in general) is somewhat disappointing. You would think that at a Catholic university virtues like honesty and integrity would prevail, but that clearly is not the case at ND. It reminds me of the case of Joe Theismann back in his ND days. Evidently, the family name was really pronounced "Thees'-man," but ND flacks decided to get Joe to change that pronunciation to rhyme with Heisman ("Hise-man") to improve his chances of winning the trophy. The "anything to win," "anything to promote ND football" mentality would seem to me to be at odds with Christian values, values presumably embraced in the university's founding and mission statements. We shouldn't be surprised to see this win-at-all-costs mindset at other football factories, but I find it surprising and hypocritical at ND, and yet there it is, big as life, and evidently always has been!

you seem to be making a claim of guilty now

[South Pender]

Notre Dame's knee-jerk response designed to defend Te'o (and, I guess, ND football in general) is somewhat disappointing. You would think that at a Catholic university virtues like honesty and integrity would prevail, but that clearly is not the case at ND. It reminds me of the case of Joe Theismann back in his ND days. Evidently, the family name was really pronounced "Thees'-man," but ND flacks decided to get Joe to change that pronunciation to rhyme with Heisman ("Hise-man") to improve his chances of winning the trophy. The "anything to win," "anything to promote ND football" mentality would seem to me to be at odds with Christian values, values presumably embraced in the university's founding and mission statements. We shouldn't be surprised to see this win-at-all-costs mindset at other football factories, but I find it surprising and hypocritical at ND, and yet there it is, big as life, and evidently always has been!

you seem to be making a claim of guilty now

Not on all counts (yet), but we now know that Te'o has admitted to carrying on with his story after learning that it was a hoax. And that is giving him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't in on the hoax. We cannot be sure of that at this point. ND's position, in my opinion, should have been to articulate the desire to get to the bottom of the whole debacle as their first priority, rather than coming out right at the start playing defense. That would have shown integrity.