LONG OVERDUE
OT- Today's Manti Te'O thread; Katie Couric
"that he didn't immediately confess that he was duped when asked about his non-existent-girlfriend before the bowl game?"
Imagine how long you'd wait if dude really knew it was a dude. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"Damn, dude, thats a dude, dude!"
"Do not disturb my circles."
whenever he answers a questions his eyes go away from KC and move down and to the side. Not a sign of high veracity...
What if there was a cake there? Would it be a sign of his high voracity?
Say what you will, but I would still give Katie Couric a shot at the champ.
/That's kid-speak for have the S with her.
or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
how is notre dame plausibly culpable if they didn't create the hoax in concert with te'o? given that it appears that te'o didn't create the hoax, what is their responsibility? nd's hype machine surely played this up, but that's not morally problematic, because they believed it was true. do you think that the michigan/ohio/alabama hype machine would have behaved differently? they were wrong, as it turns out, but that doesn't meant that there was anything remotely under-handed here. what were they supposed to do, investigate it themselves? they had no reason to doubt that it was true.
one of the many aspects of this story that i find absurd is that the social media/blog/24 hour newscycle universe forces people to prove their innocence. te'o has had to prove that he didn't pull the hoax, when there was never any evidence that he did in the first place. now, notre dame has to prove that they didn't do something under-handed when there is literally no evidence of that assertion? more ridiculously, under no account did anything criminal happen here. just something really weird in the personal life of a college linebacker.
i don't think that opposing fan bases think about this subject particularly fairly. imagine that a michigan player was similarly duped (it apparently happened to a handful of nfl players as well). i highly doubt the judgements would be so fast or furious. instead, i imagine there would be outrage that some relatively small exagerrations/lies from the admittedly weird private life of a college football player were used to drag them through the muck, humiliate them and force them to apologize. this is particularly problematic given that those lies were or no consequence and in the context of salacious accusations that were completely unsupported by evidence and have turned out to be mostly false. (i.e. that te'o created the hoax)
Why are you assuming Teo wasn't in on the hoax...because he said so with big sad eyes?
ND and their AD could have just supported Manti, but not taken a position on the "hoax." Instead, they hold a press conference, say they independently investigated and Manti was only a victim. Now it turns out the investigation was beyond lame and Manti didn't know the voice was his close friend acting like a girl?
ND thought they could go with the cover-up and this would all go away, just like the rapes and their thorough "investigations."
1. the assumption of innocence. weirdly, if this were a legal matter these assertions of guilt would seem problematic. given that this is a much smaller thing, its somehow acceptable to assume that he's guilty...
2. hours of telephone records
3. text messages shown to schapp
4. flowers purchased
5. the similar duping of the arizona cardinals fullback about the same girl
6. the reported apology to te'o from the dude that supposedly did this
7. if there was a smoking gun that it would have come out by now. the absence of such a smoking gun increase the odds of a duping.
8. the absence of any evidence whatsoever that he did know
9. he denies it. there is nobody on the other side calling him out on that.
10. the plausible alternative hypothesis that he's just a naive, nice sucker who grew up in an incredibly sheltered, incredibly religious universe in a tiny tight-knit community on an island and who has spent the last 4 years on a similar tight-knit and very small island in northern indiana.
so, there is some evidence that he was not in on it and literally none that he was. why do you assume that he was in on it? what would he have to do to prove himself to you? isn't it profoundly unfair that he has to prove his innocence?
I agree there was a relationship, but probably with his boyfriend.
1. He's innocent...it's not illegal to be gay
2. The calls are real, just to his boyfriend
3. The texts are real, just to his boyfriend or for the cover-up (Lennay)
4. He sent his guy flowers
5. I thought the fullback met the girl in person? How?
6. Boyfriend sends a cover-up apology, big deal.
7. The smoke detector is blaring.
8. Evidence? Why not release the real phone records instead of a summary?
9. He denies it....well, golly, you got me there.
10. He not drooling in the corner, hard to believe he's this dumb.
ok. fine by me. i suspect you're wrong. i know that you have no evidence whatsoever to support your position. feel free to assume the worse of a person on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. that's a lovely standard to apply.
you mocked everything that you couldn't disprove and didn't answer the question about standard of evidence. well done, indeed.
He lied about meeting this girl (in person) after a game against Stanford, even going so far as to describe her physically and did not correct it when that account was printed in the newspaper.
Unless he has some hallucination creating mental illness or was on psychoactive drugs, he made up a story to further this bullshit long before the "hoax" was exposed.
It is spelled HOKEAMANIA. Our coach is an ass-kicking American citizen, not one of the Beatles, for Christ's sake!
He never said that they met in 2009 after the Stanford game, that was a fabrication by the Tuiasasopo crew.
The 2009 Stanford stuff is reported to have come from the Te'o family.
I just marked that comment overrated. It felt good on numerous levels.
or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
Mike Florio, founder of profootballtalk.com and a lawyer, has written a lot on Te'o and one of his points was that in court once you prove someone has lied about one thing it becomes alot easier to believe they lied about other stuff. I've lost count of how many lies Te'o has told.
Said it before, will say it again (but not on this blog because that's redundant):
Ronaiah Tuiasosopo is/was/will be Manti Te'o's boyfirend. Lennay Kekua was a beard.
Finkle and Einhorn, Einhorn and Finkle, Finkle is Einhorn, Einhorn is Finkle! Einhorn is a MAN!
They only part I disagree with is the "will be" boyfriend. There has to be some serious strain on that relationship now. They will be so famous, they will get a name just like Bennifer, TomKat and Brangelina. Hmm, let see: Ro-Ti? ManSopo? Tuia-Te'o?
Your parents taught you to always be there for someone when they need help. That's why you never tried to see your girlfriend even though tragic things kept happening to her over and over.
Every time he talks, he seems like he's half asleep. Either he really is the dumbest person on the planet or he's the best actor in the world, playing the dumb angle to perfection to get out of all the lies he told for so long that drove his hype.
I've been watching and laughing at this story since day one but I don't know if I even want to watch this interview. All the focus is going to be turned into a PSA announcement to show the public how to avoid being victims of an invisible online love interest, when in reality, you won't fall victim to it as long as you have an IQ of over 70.
Go Blue! Always!
The puzzle pieces are finally starting to fit. If the person he was talking to for all those hours was his buddy, it makes sense that they would only allow Schaap to view a summary of his phone call records and just the area code. If they released the full number, it would probably just be his buddy's regular and Manti would have known who it was for sure.
I have a hard time believing his good friend could fool him with a fake female voice for hours and hours.
Just come out of the closet, Manti. You already will be treated differently in the lockerroom after this drama.
Manti Te'o Joins Notre Dame's Long Tradition Of Bullshit: http://deadspin.com/manti-te.o/
"You accidentally stare into a helium-argon laser. Lose 1 turn and a retina."
I hope at the end of her interview she closes with... "Thank you for your time today Manti; now I want to be perfectly clear that just because we sat down and talked today... we are NOT dating!"
Not Buying what you are Selling!!!! If he's that dumb, he shouldn't be able to even pass a basket weaving class.
I can see the NFL combine questions now... "So, Manti... the TE tells you he's not going to run a route, and stay in and block... do you believe him????"
Go Blue, glad we're not trying to defend this Kid... who I am now pissed about actually feeling sorry for in the past!
I PULL MY GIRLFRIENDS FROM THE AIR SOMETIMES SAYIN A-YO I'M MANTI TE'O
I'm no conspiracy theorist whatsoever, but in the voicemails Katie Couric just released today...there's not one mention of "Manti," "Notre Dame," "Football," etc.
These are very generic audio messages.
As anyone who has seen the "Catfish" movie can attest to, it's not hard to manufacture these.
She says "I miss you" a couple times, which, how can you miss someone you HAVE NEVER MET IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE! I think to "miss" a person you have to have been in the same room at least once.
It is spelled HOKEAMANIA. Our coach is an ass-kicking American citizen, not one of the Beatles, for Christ's sake!
At this point, I'm still on the side that believes that Te'O was hoaxed. Most of the people I talk to about it seem to say "How can he 'date' someone for so long and not even see her? Does he even know what skype is? He never saw pictures of her? How can he fall for a man's voice on the phone?"
Well yeah, maybe for YOU this whole thing sounds absolutely ridiculous and absurd and something that YOU would never fall for. It sounds pretty absurd to me as well. Not many people I know would fall for something like this. But I don't know anything about Manti Te'O's personal life. I don't know what he was raised to believe, what his morals are, what he thinks is right and what he thinks is "dating". It seems like a lot of people think that the reason this all had to happen was because Te'O had some master plan behind it. Maybe he was a 22 year old who did not make wise decisions? Funny how some people can be different and not do something that you may have otherwise done.
Photography Facebook Page. Lots of Michigan sports photos. And planes, lots of planes:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Barron-Photography/13379
What percentage of the college-aged male population would fall for this?
1%? That might be a bit too generous. I'd say closer to 0.5%. Now what are the odds that the one person that this "hoaxer" goes after is in this 0.5%?
Seems pretty unlikely.
a bunch of eagles apparently fell for a similar thing. the fullback from the cardinals swore that the very same girl that he believed that the very same girl that te'o fell for was real...even after being told that she wasn't.
its easy to call people idiots in retrospect.
Actually it was the Redskins, and they didn't fall for it, they caught onto the scheme once the "catfish" didn't show up to in-person meetings.
I mean I'm sure people like Tuiasosopo try this scheme all the time, but most people would realize it's a farce when the culprit keeps cancelling in-person meetings. Most people would realize it's a farce when the culprit's skype "doesn't work." Most people would realize it's a farce by googling the "character's" name.
It's pretty implausible to defend somebody that believes such a person could exist.
the reason that it wasn't inplausbile at the time is because the reality was more increcible than the fiction that te'o believed — who would have believed that somebody who knows you well enough to be able to push your buttons would create a fake online identify, endlessly fake phone calls, send you fake pictures, have fake scriptual exchanges etc.
you have to determine which is more incredible: that somebody would create an entirely fake person, in great detail, just to mess with you or that a person who you've never physically met is real. you have to decide which of these improbabilities is less improbable...and only through the retrospectoscope is that obvious.
furthermore, a huge proportion of our society belives in the literal truth of the bible — improbability is not a good guide to whether people might hold a belief or not.
He can be both the victim of a hoax and someone who lied about what was happening, though.
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. -- Yogi Berra
Te'o is the one who described the meeting that never happened after the Stanford game. Te'o is the one who described this girl as the "love of his life" without ever actually having been in the same room as her, nor has he explained how that could have been possible solely based on some texts/tweets/calls, nor has he explained how this charade could have carried on for three years. Te'o is the one who didn't even consider visiting the "love of his life" at any moment as she got into fictitious car accidents and battled fictitious cancer and was fictitiously kidnapped by fictitious drug dealers.
This stuff sounds like a much bigger hoax than some dude on the internet pretending to be a pretty lady.
It is spelled HOKEAMANIA. Our coach is an ass-kicking American citizen, not one of the Beatles, for Christ's sake!
He really believed there was a girl out there but also added to the fiction himself out of some combination of shame and a desire for attention and sympathy. Specifically, he lied for attention and sympathy on the weekend of the Heisman ceremony...I believe, arguably, in the worst of both worlds for him: he appears to be both a liar and a dullard.
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. -- Yogi Berra
Even assuming Te'o sincerely believed he was in an important relationship with some chick he never met or saw, his actions/statements are nutty and inconsistent. Either he turned some online chatting into "true love" for media attention or he genuinely fell in love with an empty internet profile but couldn't be bothered to make any effort to contact this special person (nor did he even consider it, if he's to be believed) as she suffered through a series of improbable awful events. Throw in the lying to and/or by his family about the relationship's backstory and you get a lot of shit that doesn't add up.
I find it pretty hard to digest that Te'o is just the one unlucky bastard who lied/embellished about an internet girlfriend who he did sincerely think was real and in a legitimate relationship with him, only to later find out she actually didn't exist at all.
It is spelled HOKEAMANIA. Our coach is an ass-kicking American citizen, not one of the Beatles, for Christ's sake!
My theory involves him being both a contemptibly lazy boyfriend and a singularly notable dunce, so it very much might be wrong.
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. -- Yogi Berra
It honestly seems like Te'o could have some sort of mental illness. I can certainly understand chatting with someone over the phone or online for a few months. At that point it seems like you would want to meet in person before things progressed any further. If this person constantly makes excuses to not show up and meet you it is time to move on.
"But in the tire fire that was last year's secondary he showed a little spark." - Brian Cook
Notre Dame: where a Catfish story garners more press/investigation than a rape-suicide story and a possible manslaughter story. They play the houlier than thou shtick more than any entity I've ever seen and it couldn't be further than the truth.
Fuck Notre Dame.
2011 Nebraska State Champ "We're Michigan." @tannerwooten not that funny, though.



he's a liar. fantastic. his lie was what? that he didn't immediately confess that he was duped when asked about his non-existent-girlfriend before the bowl game? becaue, i surely would have been waiting for the opportunity to tell the world that i was a giant sucker. moreover, i'm pretty sure that i'd want to avoid the mediafest that would be sure to follow if i disclosed that three days before the bowl game.
or the lie that he exagerrated his relationship with a girl that he believed was dying from cancer and who he believed was drawing strength from their relationship. i can't imagine a more horrifice "disgrace to football fans".
te'o is a naive sucker. but, his lies were pecadillos. they were the sorts of lies that it would be stranger not to tell than to tell. the strange part was that he fell for it. but, he did. and, i have no idea what any of us are entitled to know the first thing about that...
te'o may be an impressive dupe, but he's a pretty lame liar.