Open Friday Manti Te'o Thread: What would convince you that Te'o was duped? [New info]
For me it's pretty simple: the receipt for those white roses and his phone records. They should be pretty easy to produce. In fact, I bet he has already done so for that independent investigation paid for by Notre Dame. Either that or we can't trust Jack Swarbrick any more and that's just incomprehensible to me.
[ED - PGB: Put all of your Manti Te'o related comments here rather than starting new threads and bumping other content off the front page. Thanks!]
Mod edit two: BILG found this new piece on ESPN. I'd say it's big enough to go in the OP up here, but falls just short of needing a new one. If Te'o or ND has something to say, that should be a new thread; try to keep anything else in here. JGB
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8857057/friend-says-ronai...
January 18th, 2013 at 11:45 AM ^
The other day I went back and looked at some old RDT posts. After which, I'm a firm believer that he was just using info from sec premium boards. He gets a lot of flack for Ty Isaac (deservedly so) but he was right about just about everything else. Which leads me to believe he was posting premium info. Not having access to any sec premium boards, I obviously can't check.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:51 AM ^
Yeah, I think he was duped...but he knew it was a scam or prank long ago and perpetuated it anyway. I don't care how embarrassed you are about it; you don't falsify a cancer-stricken girlfriend who then dies at the same time as your grandmother.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:36 AM ^
Dan Tudesco, a 2006 graduate who now works in public relations in New York, set up an online account at fundraising website indiegogo.com on Jan. 9 to solicit $5,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Inc. The initial pitch said donations would go to the society in memory of Lennay Kekua and in honor of Te'o, "two individuals who have been an inspiration to us through an iconic season."
Tudesco said he and three friends got the fundraising idea after seeing a video that went viral of Te'o holding his head in dismay during the Irish's 42-14 loss to Alabama in the national championship game.
The goal was to turn the loss -- and the player's sudden popularity -- into something positive.
"I think we were all kind of disappointed in the result of the game ... and the Manti story was very inspirational," Tudesco told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Notre Dame took notice of Tudesco's tweets about the fund drive and sent a university videographer to shoot an interview with him. The video was posted on the Notre Dame athletics YouTube channel Tuesday.
Tudesco said he didn't believe Notre Dame was aware of the hoax when it promoted his fundraiser.
"It would surprise me that Notre Dame would want to promote this if they knew something like this was going on," Tudesco said.
The university is letting this continue even after the title game despite knowing about the hoax on the 26th. Everyone is full of shit.
*Sorry I tried blockquoting but couldn't figure it out.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:43 AM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 12:07 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 12:26 PM ^
But, don't you think the AD would (or should) be particularly worried about ND continuing to play along with a myth? He should have been closing tracking anything ND was doing or tied to regarding this story. He should have made sure that ND didn't throw its support behind anythign that perpetuated the myth or used it as a means of getting money (here money to charity).
January 18th, 2013 at 9:53 PM ^
That video probably wasn't in the forefront of his mind, given the circumstances. I could easily see something like this getting overlooked with the hand wringing that's happening in South Bend right meow.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:27 PM ^
click on "switch to plain text editor"
type:
<blockquote> [paste whatever you want blockquoted here. </blockquote>
January 18th, 2013 at 12:47 PM ^
Thank you very much! I'll remember that going forward.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:01 PM ^
I'm a noob, I wonder if I did this right.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:02 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 6:02 PM ^
"
Old dog, new trick"
January 18th, 2013 at 1:22 PM ^
is MAYBE where an element of fraud might enter into this mess, but someone would come off as a bit of a dick to sue over a donation to a charity because they feel the agent for their contribution wasn't representing the cause legitimately.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:32 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 11:36 AM ^
Why didn't Te'o attend the funeral? Or did he? Was it a closed casket?
January 18th, 2013 at 11:39 AM ^
I cannot remember if it was Michigan or MSU, but the reports said the funeral was on the day of a game.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:19 PM ^
I think his "girlfriends" dying wishes were for him to honor her in the way that he played.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:07 PM ^
supposedly she wanted him to play for her rather than attend her funeral, which I think I read was closed casket.
January 18th, 2013 at 4:09 PM ^
Or "empty casket" as it were...
January 18th, 2013 at 12:33 PM ^
Well, if he wasn't going to visit her after she was recovering from her car accident, OR when she was going through chemo, why would he bother visiting her grave? His own version of events makes him sound like a pretty crappy boyfriend.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:38 AM ^
Of all the "Return to Glory" years since 1988, this one is by far the most entertaining.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:43 AM ^
THIS IS A MICHIGAN BLOG.
Before you think you're smart, I clicked the link to state my opinion, not read anything about this overly talked about topic.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:52 AM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 11:44 AM ^
theory: this story started to implode during the runup to the heisman ceremony. i posit that the heisman committee wanted to fly in te'o's family and probably the family of his dead girlfriend for the ceremony (you often see large family contingents at these events) as it would have been a heartwarming story (especially if he had won). committee either reaches out themselves or asks teo to get in touch. thats when everything unraveled. the "mystery phone call" from his dead girlfriend's number on dec. 6th was probably a fabrication to deflect attention from what really caused this to come to light
January 18th, 2013 at 12:03 PM ^
makes a lot of sense to me
January 18th, 2013 at 11:44 AM ^
If he had a 3 year record of electronic communications with a "Lennay Kekua" that would be pretty compelling. The records could even be heavily redacted as long as it demonstrated a sincere communication with Lennay.
If Teo is telling the truth he has the evidence to prove it.
January 18th, 2013 at 11:47 AM ^
When ND produces the aliens who fogged his brain, and they explain how they did it, I will believe he was in the dark.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:05 PM ^
The big question for me now is how long did the ND administration, athletic and otherwise, know about this canard? The confluence of forces here suggest that we have something like the Penn State scandal with regard to the higher-ups. Not as large or harmful as the PSU scandal for sure, but of the same species (lying and coveringup for something deemed too big to criticize or discipline).
January 18th, 2013 at 12:05 PM ^
There is a ton of information out there and the narrative seems to shift around a bit. I have also seen a number of stories which seem to quote other stories where the information gets slightly altered.
I can only assume Pete Thamel has not altered his notes from his SI piece on Teo and his girlfriend since he should have a record of it. The amount of detail is staggering considering this person did not exist. Back to knowing her for 4 years, starting to date in Oct 2011, details of her life, etc, it is simply hard to comprend the extent of the lie that Teo promoted and his current explanation of being duped.
Yes, the guy did not commit a crime, but to manufacture such an elaborate tale involving severe injury, cancer and his heroic involvement requires a pretty twisted mind. After reading the detailed notes, there should be no further questions regarding what he did, only why the "high character guy" was such a fraud.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football/news/20130117/manti-te...
January 18th, 2013 at 12:09 PM ^
On Sunday, Sept. 23, I sat down with Manti Te'o for a story that was due two hours after the interview concluded and would appear on SI's cover later that week.If this is SI's M.O., then they give their reporters no real chance to digest (and fact-check) what they've heard in the interview. They basically have to pre-write their story before the interview happens. I imagine that isn't uncommon, but it's pretty lousy journalism.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:38 PM ^
On the Dan Patrick Show yesterday, Thamel stated that ND did not make Te'o available until Sunday. Thamel was on campus from Wednesday to Sunday. He asked to interview Te'o earlier, but was not given access until Sunday. He spent Wednesday-Saturday interviewing everyone else. He then wrote his entire story and submitted it to SI. Then he had his interview with Te'o on Sunday and filled his story out with some of this informaiton.
Here is the link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJEz6wwVWQA&feature=player_embedded&list=PLJxLLAD6f6BRqFv3EVUXnuIZ6mg7W9jkr
January 18th, 2013 at 6:48 PM ^
Agree, that was far too much detail for him to have just made it up on the spot, but I also think it would have been hard for him to rehearse it all before the interview. I suspect that he might have been getting suckered up until to the point she "died", and only found out the whole thing was a joke after he had publicized it. At that point it would have been too embarrassing to admit the truth, so he made up a bunch of extra BS about meeting her at Stanford, etc. I think the other details he shared were probably things "Lennay" had told him before he found out the truth, and found them easier to remember because he was still emotionally invested at the time he heard them.
Or it's possible that he's just an unusually good actor and an unusually good liar. I'd like to see his e-mail history as well as his phone bills.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:08 PM ^
if somebody (or a group of somebodies) came out of the woodwork and explained how and why they duped MT in great, believable detail.
then, sure.
otherwise, he clearly was in on it.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:16 PM ^
We need to get one of those FBI or CIA human lie detector people to analyze all of those taped interviews. I saw we have him analyze the Swarbrick press confernce as well.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:31 PM ^
...I found out that he accidently gave himself a frontal lobotomy with a spoon while eating a bowl of cereal.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:28 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 12:32 PM ^
I would believe he was duped, if he took both a polygraph and an I.Q. test. The polygraph would have to show that he was being honest and his I.Q. test would have to come back with a score between 5-10.
January 18th, 2013 at 4:46 PM ^
I'm pretty sure sociopaths have the ability to beat polygraphs -- they simply believe that the reality they fabricated is true because it is what they want to be.
Or something like that.
I'm not a shrink, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:34 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 12:36 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 12:57 PM ^
this is just a case where the AD and a few other "higher ups" knew that the Te'o girlfriend thing was a hoax, but they were keeping it under wraps and the PR arm wasn't aware. These days, major colleges have PR guys that have a lot of discretion in terms of drumming up press, so the fact that the PR people might not have said anything to Swarbrick might not be that strange. It might be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand knows. 20 years ago this probably wouldn't have happened because the AD would probably clear a PR trip to New York and would have put the kibosh on it. Now a days, this may not be something they even run by the AD. Just a guess...
January 18th, 2013 at 12:46 PM ^
USA Today ran yet another story on some of the discrepancies here - (LINK)
One detail that I hadn't caught before showed up in this story. It seems that, back when he was interviewed by Kate Sullivan in the early December timeframe, Te'o talked about how Kekua would write letters to him and that the Stanford game was the last one which was accompanied by a letter. It may not be so bad if that game had not been played on October 13th, a shade over a month AFTER Kekua supposedly died.
It still strikes me as very odd that someone who supposedly was deep in love with this "person" did not, in reality, consider that enough to physically meet them, or indeed attend their funeral. That's not an original revelation here, but it is one of the core inconsistencies that simply make me tend to believe that Te'o had knowledge of what was going on here, and even if not at the genesis of the plan, certainly later on.
The article in the South Bend Tribune, I believe, mentioned that allegedly meetings were set up where Kekua never showed, but I would think that, if this is the case, doesn't that raise a gigantic red flag, even to someone like Te'o? I have difficulty believing that he could really be that naive and not see the glaring inequity there in this "relationship".
These things, in combination with the fact that Te'o continued to talk about Kekua as if were dead after he knew this story was coming unglued in early December, tend to make me believe that an elaborate duping is not what this is. If it was, then I would seriously worry about sending a man who has no ability to think critically and problem solve into a professional workforce of any kind.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:46 PM ^
Dude, faith is believing in something you can't necessarily see.
/s (just in case)
January 18th, 2013 at 3:39 PM ^
The absolute irony of your "/s" when coupled with your statement has had me chuckling for quite a bit now.
Apparently you have little "faith" the readers will "get it".
January 18th, 2013 at 2:38 PM ^
I read that as saying that she wrote these pre-game letters in advance knowing that she was going to die. Much like dying parents write letters for their children to read on birthdays/major milestones. Stanford was the last one she had completed upon her "death."
January 18th, 2013 at 5:16 PM ^
Those letters were supposedly found on this girls ipad, after death, by her family and sent to Manti for every game.
Have none of you guys seen the links to the clown who has all but admitted to doing this?
January 18th, 2013 at 5:39 PM ^
You mean the reports of someone who refuses to give her name saying that the guy called her and admitted it? I'm sorry, but that's not much evidence of anything.
January 19th, 2013 at 10:38 AM ^
Hows this then?
