OT- Today's Manti Te'O thread; Katie Couric

How don't you realize that your girlfriend was really a man? I feel like you would be able to recognize a man trying to impersonate a woman if you heard that voice enough.

1. Te'o's agency is the same as Couric's. His people didn't call hers to set up the interview, they're the same people. If you don't think this interview is going to paint him in the best light possible... I've got a cliche to sell you

2. Since the interview was recorded a few days ago, it's come out that Tuiasosopo (sp?) the man behind the hoax, was on the phone with Te'o all that time. What?

I don't really care what comes of this, but it's totally a weird situation. I don't understand why Teo's agents want him to keep talking (unless to help their client Couric). NFL teams are going to grill him in the interviews, and that's what is going to get him drafted (or let him fall), not any interviews he does on daytime TV.

All I know is it's over a week later...and I'm even more confused than when this fucking thing started.

story for me on the Te'o story is not social media, but media in general, and how the media comes to influence peoples opinions and beliefs with such considerations as source and agenda, and what constitutes "truth" and how we as a country/society can possibly believe that we are receiving "truth" from any media outlet regarding content that they have a vested interest in.  The take-away from the Te'o story is what you see on TV/Internet/Media may be true, it may not be true, it may be partially true, and it may be false but presented to you in such a method that you would be dubbed inhumane to question even if the content itself is not objectively believable.  It put on full display how deficient the channels of mass information and communication are in this country.

It's funny how many media outlets published a list of holes in the story, yet in two interviews, neither interviewer has followed up with questions on the holes and Te'o has failed to address them. It seems like the PR strategy of "say a bunch of nice, feel-sorry-for-me things over a long period of time and everyone will forget about it" worked.

It's worked on me to be honest because it has become apparent that this story is going to die quickly and the vast majority of people have latched on to the Te'o/ND created narrative. I cared about this story at first because the use of tragedy for media attention really bothered me. I still think Te'o and ND used the death of a girl (fake or otherwise) to hype Te'o for the Heisman and the ND brand going forward. It just seems that mainstream media and the public no longer care about that and have allowed Te'o/ND to dictate the message.

He's a liar and a disgrace to football fans. He got all the attention and glory everywhere from his lies and now he is still lying to cover up the original lies.

whenever he answers a questions his eyes go away from KC and move down and to the side.  Not a sign of high veracity...

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.

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)

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. 

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/

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.

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.

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.

Te'o says in the interview "Yes, I lied, but what would you do if someone brought the subject up?"  The problem with that is that he brought it up twice.   Chris Fowler asked him at the Heisman ceremony what the most memorable part of the season was, and Te'o told him a story about his girlfriend's death.  Fowler did not say, "So, it must have been hard when your girlfriend died." 

He's gay, next story.

1) yes, he's a pretty dumb and repressed kid who hails from a sexually repressed family climate (this makes me sympathetic, others critical); 2) yeah, he milked it and he lied; 3) yeah, ND milked it and yeah the media milked it and no milking it angle is going to be criticized by the media now; and 4) it's a net PR loss for ND anyway and that is good because this level of stupid deserves to be a net PR loss. 

I don't care if Teo was "duped" or not anymore...because its irrelevant. He lied and/or embellished the story to further his image in some way, "duped" or not. When you look at what Teo said of the course of the season and the stories written, it's hard NOT to come to that conclusion, hoaxed or not. And the level of "investigation" that ND performed is laughable at best, and totally looks like a transparent attempt at a cover up. Which...when paired with other recent ND stories that were swept under the rug, is not surprising at all. And the media...well, just confirms what I already kinda knew about them. They lack substance and integrity.

Also, I now hate the word "duped". Thanks, internet.

b/c however you spin it, Te'o is pathetic.

I hope the NCAA takes a look at the fact that it appears Te'o had Tom Condon as an agent before the national title game.  Also what happened to Swarbrick's claim of multiple people being involved?

Victim of a hoax or not, Manti Te'o has already admitted that he is a serial liar.  He's already admitting lying profusely to his family, friends, and the media as a whole.   We just don't know the full extent of his lies. 

It's really too bad that the media have turned this into a circus.  Ultimately, a college kid got pranked.  And the prankster did a world-class job.  Many of the same people who routinely watch shows like Punk'd are suddenly indignant and surprised when a very clever young man decides to "try this at home."

Years ago, when people could laugh whenever they wanted to, this would have been seen as really funny.  Now, we see nothing but outrage.  Any outrage should be directed at the media for creating the angle they have used for this story.  

Imagine how the story would have been had a more responsible media decided to treat it as a harmless prank instead of calling a college kid's character and/or intellect into question.

Mantei needs some advice about the need to always inspect these anatomical areas when in doubt:

1. Adams apple

2. Wrists

3. Hips

4. CROTCH AREA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nuff said

My girl actually bought me that sweater he has on in the interview for Christmas.

The thing that I can't understand (aside from everything else about this story) is why Te'o would have ever responded to "her" of all "people." He has been a high-profile player for years, and must get random tweets all the time from hot (based on their thumbnail pic) women. Was it because she had a Hawaiian-sounding name?

Katie is asking some great questions. Manti looked a bit sad after she brought up the gay angle and the audience laughed.

He is simply the most naive person I have and will ever encounter in my whole life.

when everyone (not just ESPN, I am talking about you CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc) are so obesessed with the romantic snafoo of a 20 year-old kid. Come on CNN, can't you (expletive) cover something like -ohh, I don't know - Syria, Mali, Algeria, North Korea threatening us with nukes, Afghanistan, Iraq? This is really beyond ridiculous. Who the (expletive) cares whether some college kid was duped online by some dude. It really baffles me how much attention this is getting. A blip, fine, just because it was made into a big deal, the (fake) girlfriend dying, affecting his game, etc, etc, but come on news providers. I guess I should not be surprised by the likes of CNN when that trashy lady Kardashian's bump is one of the major headlines. BBC World and Al Jazeera (surprisingly) are the only decent news shows actually delivering local (national) US news and news from around the world.

I'll totally believe Manti was in on the hoax as long as someone can explain to me:

1. How you have a gay relationship with someone you've never met? If the theory is this was all a cover of him being gay with Tuiasosopo then how do you explain him never having met him until late November 2012? The only person pointing to them having a pre-existing relationship is the one unnamed Deadspin source who said they "were family" (which shows she obviously had no clue what she was talking about) "or at least family friends" (according to both sides completely untrue).

2. If this is a hoax for publicity, how did they mastermind this elaborate scheme starting back in 2008? Just walk me through how you would go about planning this with someone you don't know.

3. Explain why in either of the above scenarios Tuiasosopo would've also hoaxed AT LEAST 5 other people as reported by ABC. If this is all a cover for being gay or a part of a big publicity stunt plan, why is he hoaxing other people as Lennay?

4. Explain why Te'o would try to check out this person within the Polynesian community if he was complict and wanted to keep this going as a cover. Wouldn't you, in fact, want to draw as few questions as possible to your cover?

5. Explain why dozens of people have come forward after the story broke saying that Tuiasosopo either confessed to them or that Manti was not in on it or that they were hoaxed by "Lennay" or a combination.... but there has not been a single named on the record source with firsthand knowledge at any point that has said Manti was involved.

If you can answer those five questions, I'll believe whatever you want. But some of you want sooooooooooo badly for Te'o to be "in on it" you're willing to believe whatever conspiracy theory you want that Te'o MUST be involved. It's sickening.

The obvious, simplest answer is that Te'o got hoaxed and then lied a bunch after the fact. See how few crazy explanations and rationales are needed to justify that? SMH.

Yep he is gay.

The NYT liveblog is here and still updating with commentary actually. 

They  did a pretty  thorough job of breaking this down, right to his reactions to various questions. It's a pretty good read if you want to go with an extensive summary of the interview rather than look for the video itself, especially since it seems only to appear in select snippets at the moment .

Just from reading their summary, it would appear that that there was at least some focus on the timing of the story versus when Te'o discovered that Kekua was not real, and they note that the question made Te'o visibly uncomfortable. 

It also appears that he was in the Bay Area at one point with the team when Lennay had lukemia, but when asked, he simply claimed that he couldn't bring himself to ask about being allowed to visit. Not sure what to make of that, but if this was someone you were in love with, why not ask?

The opinions overall  were pretty blunt on the NYT blog - for example: "Te’o isn’t doing much to come off as intelligent or mature. He actually said “I had my doubts” about Kekua and the leukemia twist, but veered off to say that he talked to a friend’s mother who was a cancer survivor and that made him understand what Kekua was going through."

In any case, for those who did not see it - like me - the basic gist appears to be here, but it is not without opinion inserted, of course. 

He's either a blatant liar or the the worst boyfriend in the history of ever.

Neither of those is a good place to be.

There are still enough ways to prove/disprove the current narrative that someone will take the time to investigate.  Te'o has delivered pieces of proof and they seem a concoction of the last week or so.

Enough people are conspiracy theorists and investigative hobbyists that someone will dig even further.

Deadspin shouldn't let this lie - they quoted folks of "80% sure Te'o was involved" and alluded to his continuing the hoax.  Where are they now?

NFL execs won't invite Katie to their interviews.  They'll hire PIs and others to determine if Te'o lies to them.

Te'o's angle for this story, whether true or not, may be technically possible, but not exactly plausible. We have been in an age of technology for 15-20 years. Just how the hell does Te'o come to date someone for 3 years without ever having used Skype/factime/Google hangout with "her"? Nobody is THAT naive. I cannot be expected to believe that.

Early on, an Arizona Cardinal former teammate (assuming Floyd) said that he saw Te'o multiple times with this "girlfriend". Other teammates said the same thing. He himself said that he met her after a Stanford game. So which truth or "story" is he going with this time? And even if he was seen with a girl, how does he explain to people that the girl in the "picture" doesn't match the person standing before him and/or others? Sorry, but I'm not buying the hoodwinked scholor athlete.

Is every single post where you correct someone who has their facts wrong or present anything that doesn't say "whatever I don't care what he says he was in on it" or "whatever he's gay" gets immediately down voted.

I was directed to this thread by a bunch of Michigan engineers I work with... none of whom think Manti was in on it because they've actually paid attention to what has come out since the initial Deadspin article and we talk about it daily in the office. They told me the message board world was still thoroughly convinced he was in on it. I asked why and they said they want him to be in on it so nothing that comes out will change theirs minds.

The logic that "well, I think his story isn't plausible so he MUST be in on it" makes no sense. Our legal system doesn't work that way for a reason. It's darn near impossible to prove a negative. As an experiment, trying proving he was in on it. Try proving the other side you want so badly to believe.

How did he concoct this thing starting 2008 with someone he didn't know and had never met until November 2012? Why is there not a single person with first hand kmowledge who has come out on record and said they think he was in on it? Why has there not been a single piece of evidence uncovered so far implicating him in it with all of the digging that is going on? How do you explain the other 5 people hoaxed by Lennay from 2008 to 2012? How do you have a gay relationship with someone that you need to create a cover for if you've never met them until November 2012? 

A large chunk of you already have your minds made up and that's your perogative. I hope at least a small portion of those who want to believe he was "in on it" take a step and try to be intellectually honest. You can still have your cake and eat it too... as Manti is clearly liar who lied about certain aspects of the relationship both during and after all of this... so he can still be a bad dude and shithead in your book.

But whatever, this is probably a waste of time as I'm sure this will just get downvoted and hidden too because it doesn't follow your desired narrative.