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 12:48 PM ^
I think its very possible he wasn't "in on it" but was guilty of taking what he knew to be a small Twitter flirtation and playing it up 1000 fold. As I posted in one of the other threads, its entirely possible that he didn't know he was being duped but when the girl "died" he over dramatized it to those around him, not realizing that the media would become tipped off and start asking about "the girlfriend that died." At that point he elected to not come clean, and played the matter up, figuring he'd get some milage out of it from the MSM before it fell off the radar. As unexpected momentum built, he did so many interviews about the topic that he had to come up with "new material," so he invented late night phone calls that never happened, a "first meeting" in Palo Alto that never happened, visits to Hawaii that he told his family about (who then relayed them to the media) that never happened and so on... I'm sure the "shocking" Dec. 6 phone call from "the perpetrator" never happened either. There was no girl, just Tuiasosopo, some picks of a hot girl he obtained and some Tweets/messaging. The whole Dec. 6 call "from a girl I thought was dead" is another fabrication; it was Te'o's way of trying to come clean with the least amount of egg on his face.
At some point he must have figured out he was being messed with, and may have even heard whispers that journalists were investigating this "girl friend" of his. In a panic he took the matter to the school and together they went into damage control (which apparently means do nothing until forced to, then have the AD cry). Notre Dame administrators know he was embelishing, so part of damage control is to try and keep the focus on the fact that he had been tricked and draw attention away from the fact that this only happened because Te'o took a benign Twitter flirtation and tried to spin it into Love Story.
Now he's stuck: he's being accused of being "in on" the hoax, but the only way to prove he wasn't would be to admit that he embellished everything to begin with which, frankly, might be just as bad.
("Love means never having to say you're sorry!")
January 18th, 2013 at 1:00 PM ^
Good stuff. That is a very interesting and compelling narrative that fits with the way life works and humans are. We want to put Te'o in one of two boxes (or three if you include the gay theory): Either he is a sociopath or a naive saint. However, people don't generally fall on those extremes. As many have said, no way he is that stupid and no way he is that creative/manipulative. It's realistic that he found himself in a snowball of lies that turned into an avalanche that he never saw coming.
He made many many mistakes that I don't expect people to forgive him for, no matter what the outcome. He played up the death of a girl and played on people's emotions surrounding cancer like a harp. My mother lost my father to Leukemia in their 20s and I fell for his story and got wrapped up in it. I am mad and mad at him and those involved and I can't be alone.
Nonetheless, I am still really hoping this was a big Te'o/ND conspiracy because that would just be too rich and a lot more fun to direct my anger.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:05 PM ^
I think my theory has a pretty good chance of being close to the reality... but I'd rather he was just in on it from the beginning too. Makes the whole thing more simple and more delicious.
January 18th, 2013 at 6:58 PM ^
People who are both that manipulative and skilled enough to pull it off are rare, and he clearly lied about some details and deliberately strung some people along so he isn't a pure naive innocent. The previous poster's theory makes him somewhat naive and somewhat manipulative, which is far more believable especially for a young guy who's used to having people suck up to him.
January 18th, 2013 at 12:55 PM ^
Now the Irish boards are blowing up with "ZOMG Te'o is off teh hook!!!!!11!!" because people came forward alleging they were duped by "Lennay" as well.
Uh, nice logic, guys.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:03 PM ^
it does lend some credibility to the fact that this Tuiasosopo is the guy behind it all and Te'o didn't know. Again, to me, there needs to be more focus on the idea that Te'o overplayed this relationship and allowed it to blow up. If he basically exploited the memory of (what he thought was) a dead girl for publicity and sympathy, that seems to me to be worse then the whole thing being a sham to begin with.
In my opinion, that's the ultimate cummupance. You exagerated the death of a girl you were barely acquainted with into some kind of "ultimate personal tragedy" and it turns out she was F'n fake!! WOW. That's poetry.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:07 PM ^
Wow... you're blowing my mind right now. I am starting to feel like I am looking at this all the wrong way. Maybe he is the sociopath I alluded to in my last post!
January 18th, 2013 at 1:41 PM ^
Using the death of what he thought was a real person would be much worse than simply making it all up. Saying that a real young woman was the "love of (his) life" when, per his teammates, he had other girls and publicizing that young woman's death when, for all he knew, there was a family out their who just lost their daughter would be significantly scummier than perpetuating what he knew was a hoax.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:01 PM ^
Even if he was not in on it, I don't get how someone would be able to get THAT emotional over someone they've never seen before.
Personally, I think he WAS in on it, but I don't think he is the one that orchestrated it and came up with it. He eventually went with it, which makes him pathetic.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:04 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 1:08 PM ^
ESPN now has a story claiming the guy in Cali, Tuiosso.....or whatever, confessed to a friend the hoax and Teo had nothing to do with it. Fall guy if I've ever seen one.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:13 PM ^
Numerous ND teammates have come out and said they suspected something was wrong in September. They've also said he had lots of women around him at ND. So was he cheating on his fake Internet girlfriend who was in a car accident and then dying of leukemia?
Way to many holes in Te'o story. Numerous accounts provided by Te'o and his family of them meeting in person. . Said to have met numerous times in person. Never using skype. Kept telling the story after Dec.6. And watching that pep rally with his teammates rolling their eyes and laughing. They knew something was up.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:13 PM ^
Numerous ND teammates have come out and said they suspected something was wrong in September. They've also said he had lots of women around him at ND. So was he cheating on his fake Internet girlfriend who was in a car accident and then dying of leukemia?
Way to many holes in Te'o story. Numerous accounts provided by Te'o and his family of them meeting in person. . Said to have met numerous times in person. Never using skype. Kept telling the story after Dec.6. And watching that pep rally with his teammates rolling their eyes and laughing. They knew something was up.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:15 PM ^
Maybe we are all just on a witch hunt but something really seems off about the ESPN story and the people coming forward. Why hasn't Tuiasosopo come forward if he is so tearful and sorry and has been for over a month? Why has Te'o waited so long to speak and answer questions? It seems like there is a good ol' fashioned cover up going on here. Well played, people responsible for Te'o.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:20 PM ^
Yeah, all the info. in this story is mostly 2nd or 3rd person. Still smells.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:20 PM ^
Once Tuiaososopo takes "the fall" he's going to start talking and we'll find out that he was duping a few people, Te'o among them, but that there were no 8 hour phone calls, and, frankly, nothing really all that "intimate" between his Lenaay persona and Te'o at all. He'll probably end up saying that he knew he would eventually have to end the charade, so he invented the lukemia angle and, eventually, killed her off, thinking that would be the end of it. He'll say he was just as shocked as anyone when, all of the sudden, Te'o started saying that this invented internet girl was the love his life, and started talking about a bunch of things that obviously never happened. But what was Tuiasosopo supposed to do? Come clean and admit what he'd been doing and embarrass his friend and the poster boy for ND football? So he stayed quiet... then ND makes the championship game, the narrative is WAY out of control, and HE somehow gets word to Te'o that it was all a put on, trying to get him to shut up about it, not knowing that Deadspin was already all over it.
If it goes down like this, Te'o will have some serious 'splanin to do.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:27 PM ^
It's to the point that without some unforeseen silver bullet, there's no way he comes out of this not looking like an a-hole. How big of an a-hole is to be determined.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:10 PM ^
He was NOT duped. This is simply too implausable given all of the information that has been presented. What I really wonder is which NFL team and/or journalist will nail him with the "smoking gun" and give definitave proof of his involvement.
January 18th, 2013 at 4:07 PM ^
without having some personal involvement. The "information" we have can be be interpreted a few ways.
Now me, I have my own theories, but I'm not positive about anything at this point. If Tuiasosopo comes out and fully admits to everything, says everything Manti is claiming is true, that he did fully dupe him, that they did have an intimate cyber relationship all under the guise that he was a girl, that they did exchange words of love and devotion and committment, then, I'm sorry but Te'o walks away fairly clean in my book. I'm not going to start screaming "coersion!" without proof of it just because it doesn't comport with what I may WANT the story to be.
Now, I don't see it happening quite this cleanly, of course, but I remain open to the possibility. It seems clear, right now at least, that Te'o is guilty of embelishing the relationship and perhaps exploiting the situation... but I'm not absolutely "convinced" of any one answer. Most of the evidence that people are pointing to to claim that he was "in on" the hoax is actually just evidence that he was exaggerating the depth of the relationship. Those are not one in the same (although they may be equally bad).
January 18th, 2013 at 1:14 PM ^
1) Te'o was involved from the beginning in creating Lennay either as a prank, a publicity ploy, or a beard.
2) Te'o never knew until "Lennay" called him in December. He was "duped" but it was relatively easy because he greatly exaggerated the seriousness of his relationship with Lennay.
3) Te'o was initially fooled but found out Lennay was fake at some point last year. He didnt reveal it because he was too invested at that point, ultimately the media picked up the story and things got out of control.
To me, all are possible but 3 seems most likely. Even in the best case scenario (from Te'o's perspective), it seems like he definitely exaggerated the relationship to gain attention.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:37 PM ^
Three isn't plausible to me because, if he knew Lenaay was fake well before she died he wouldn't have carried on with the Twitter flirts with a DUDE for another year, and wouldn't have let the dead girlfriend narrative get out of control like he did. It's one thing to make up interractions to the media that occurred with a girl who is dead and therefore cannot verify them; its another to make shit up about a girl who was invented by a guy, who you know, and who could bust you at any time. I don't buy that. I think he exploited what he thought was a real death, and THEN found out she wasn't real.
And then he went "DOH!"
January 18th, 2013 at 1:52 PM ^
I mean he either a) didn't give a damn about this girl who he claimed was the love of his life and therefore never bothered to try to see her when she was dying or go to her funeral or b) he would have gotten really damn suspicious when his desire to see her or go to the funeral was rebuffed.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:24 PM ^
What if I told you a Heisman finalist fooled us into thinking he could tackle? "Manti Te'o: The Lyin' Hawaiian." A new film from ESPN and 30 for 30.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:28 PM ^
Guys, we need to realize that more and more evidence will eventually come out and tell more of the story. However, this is:
January 18th, 2013 at 4:02 PM ^
And has been undead all along. Makes so much sense. Although you would think she'd be able to attend the night games.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:29 PM ^
Teo's uncle says he thinks Tuiaoscopo may have hired a girl to meet Teo. So Teo couldn't tell the difference between the proven fake twitter picture and another women. The Teo family proved a week before how nuts they are when his father wanted people to boycott a Hawaii newspaper because they printed a picture of Te'o missing a tackle (what other photo of him would you print of him in the title game exactly).
January 18th, 2013 at 1:35 PM ^
Te'o himself, via Swarbrick, has already said it was exclusively an internet relationship and they never actually met in person...
...which contradicts things he said before, yes... which leads me to believe he was exagerating before about the relationship when he thought Lenaay had been a real girl, and is trying to back off those statement now that it turns out she was an invention of some guy he knows.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:31 PM ^
ol JC to be like "Yeah dude, it's true! He was duped!"
And then under his breath "Don't tell anyone I'm actually a Michigan fan...."
January 18th, 2013 at 1:54 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 2:02 PM ^
None of them like ND.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:43 PM ^
Looks like he got scammed and it was too big to back out of once the media ran with the story.
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8857057/friend-says-ronai...
January 18th, 2013 at 1:48 PM ^
He seems to have exaggerated the nature of the relationship to gain attention, and (as mentioned throughout this thread), he made at least two public references to her after learning of the hoax...Apparently multiple teammates have said that Te'o knew it was a hoax and went along with it anyway.
January 18th, 2013 at 2:07 PM ^
January 18th, 2013 at 2:18 PM ^
Why do that if (as ND players have apparently said) you've got other girls right there with you at ND? I hear what you're saying, but Te'o was not the nerdy kid who can't get a date and makes up a girlfriend who you guys don't know b/c she goes to another school. And why make two references to her death to the media (including at the Heisman ceremony) two days after learning that it was a hoax? Why describe to Chris Fowler a moment that was related to her death as the most meaningful moment of the season?
This describes what he said to Fowler a couple of days after he supposedly learned that it was all fake:
January 18th, 2013 at 2:49 PM ^
How do you know that Teo is not that socially awkward nerdy kid?
Being anj athlete doesn't make you comfortable or good around girls or people in general. teo has always come off as far from extroverted in the interviews I have seen. Very reserved and kind of weird would be a good description.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:03 PM ^
way too many people who know him have said he's not. He's social, he likes attention, he has no problem with drawing the attention of women and paying attention to them. In his interviews he doesn't come accros as socially awkward or shy at all. He's reserved in an interview, but there is nothing out there that leads us to the conclusion that, when it comes to socializing with peers, he isn't at least on par with the average mega watt star college athlete. It's exceedingly rare for high profile athletes who are at the top of their game to not have the ego and confidence to match. It happens on occassion (say Ricky Williams) but he freely gave a ton of interviews about his life and spoke freely at a hundred awards shows. He's not a social introvert.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:08 PM ^
If you are a star middle linebacker at a major college program, you need literally zero people skills to meet girls. They will introduce themselves to you.
There are only two explanations I could buy that would explain why he'd find it necessary to go online: 1) that he is insistent on dating only Mormon girls and there weren't any at ND or 2) he's gay.
January 18th, 2013 at 4:18 PM ^
that he needs to justify "going on line" to get a woman... I think that's misplaced. He didn't meet this chick on the Mormon equivalent of J-date or E-harmony or something. The story is that they basically met over social media via mutual acquaintances and kept up with each other via twitter and what not. That's not the same as resorting to some kind of online dating service to "meet". The relationship was "online" in the sense that this is how they primarily communicated given the distance and her supposed medical situations, but this isn't the same as saying he "went" on line to meet women. Most of the under 25 set these days have a social circle comprised of "face to face" acquaintances and people they know in a strictly cyber context. That, in and of itself, isn't strange to me. Now, star athlete claiming an undying devotion to an online chick and not one of the flesh and blood girls that are throwing themselves at him on a daily basis? Yes, that I find less plausible. I think we'd all gravitate towards the flesh and blood co-ed you can actually spoon over some cyber hottie that apparently only has three pictures of herself.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:22 PM ^
This op-ed by an ND student says that it was "well known" that he had other girls on campus. That is what I was relying on.
January 18th, 2013 at 4:25 PM ^
only lends more credence to the theory that he was "playing up" the Lennay angle after the death, but wasn't really involved in some elaborate hoax that was, apparently, a year or more in the making. She went from "this chic I'm tight with on line" to "love of my life" after she "died" and the media ran with it.
If he wanted to perpetrate a hoax that he had this longstanding, deep, spiritual, meaningful relationship for months and months with some online girl, he wouldn't have been all over campus with various co-eds. "Lennay" didn't become important until she died, he dramatized its effect on him, and this caught the attention of the MSM. He then perpetuated it. Again, THEORY.
January 18th, 2013 at 1:57 PM ^
Let's toss all other evidence and damning holes out the window! A friend of Tuiasosopo said it was a hoax and Te'o didn't know! Well that clears EVERYTHING up. CASE CLOSED.
January 18th, 2013 at 2:58 PM ^
The word payoff comes to mind.
January 18th, 2013 at 3:22 PM ^
have had 48 hours to find a solution (ie, scapegoat).
His avoidance of an interview sent off alarm bells that "the big boys" were creating a BS story to support his claims.
We're about to hear the 3rd hoax in this story . . .
January 18th, 2013 at 1:50 PM ^
From NCAA Pres. Emmert:
January 18th, 2013 at 1:51 PM ^
Everyone has that friend from high school or somewhere, who plays up his or her relationship with every acquaintance that dies. Everyone remembers the kid in high school that hardly knew the kid who died, but is most tearful and wants all of the attention, and acts like they were best friends. That was Manti Te'o here. He turned a rather meaningless online relationship into a classic tragic love story all for the attention he received. At least that's becoming my take.
January 18th, 2013 at 2:00 PM ^
Seriously, what developmentally delayed freak has an exclusively online relationship with someone and acts like they are Romeo and Juliet?
Though I usually do not quote the good gospel of Colin Cohwerd on these hallowed pages, he did make an excellent point yesterday on the Herd: "I dont understand how someone can fall in love over the phone..I am a man..I need face time.. I want to spoon" Manti Te'o must be a very very strange dude to fall in love with a woman without one of the most basic and primal elements of love, touch, involved.
Even if he is completley innocent, which I am not sure he is, I hope he goes down in ND lore as the most socially akward human to ever put on a Golden dome.
{my rant of the week}
January 18th, 2013 at 2:01 PM ^
There is no way to sort through it all and come out with the rationalization that at some point Te'o was complicit in the whole thing. Whether or not he was the orchestrator or the perpetuator of the mythos, he was definitely running with the narrative knowing full well he was feeding everyone a line of complete bullshit.
The only mystery is the motivation at this point. Hopefully it comes out that he is "only" gay and the whole thing was orchestrated as a cover-up due to societal/religious/football cultural fears regarding persecution over an alternative lifestyle. if it's anything else, there's just no way the guy comes off as looking like anything more than either a manipulative scumbag or a stone-cold sociopath.
January 18th, 2013 at 7:09 PM ^
If he made up an online girlfriend just to deflect suspicion that he's gay, why would he invite scrutiny by faking her death and making a big scene over it? If people started to get suspicious because they never saw her, he could just say that they broke up.
January 18th, 2013 at 7:59 PM ^
Maybe he figured the trauma of being involved in such a fatal relationship would be sufficient enough to buy him some more time away from women..."she was the only one for me, I can't even begin to think about another woman after losing her" (which ironically would be the first truth to come out of the whole thing). Does that really sound like any less of a drama queen move to pull than what we know he's already actually said?
Or maybe the only thinking on his feet he's capable of is when he's on a football field. As much as I dislike ND, I'd really like to think that they wouldn't recruit a guy who's actually that dumb.
January 18th, 2013 at 2:03 PM ^
The questions for Te'o are only beginning. He acted as though he and this Lenaay bonded over hours and hours of communication. It's not plausible to me that Tuiasosopo spent HOURS perpetrating this hoax to the point that he had somehow gotten Te'o to fall in love with this girl he created. NO WAY. Teammates have already said the same thing; that this girl was hardly anything until she died, THEN all of the sudden she was this big thing to him. Clearly, most of what made this story compelling, beyond the death itself, were fabrications by Manti.
People keep making the comparison to the Catfish documentary but there are a lot of distinctions there. The guy in Catfish was certainly becoming very "interested" in the girl duping him, but he started putting the truth together long before he fell in love with her. He also wasn't a high profile athlete with any number of women at his beck and call. I just don't buy that a guy in Manti Te'o's position in life falls head over heals in love with a girl he's never met in person. Regular schmos might "fall in love" with any chic who looks that good and pays attention to them on-line, but Te'o is no regular schmo. I'm sure he cared for Lenaay on some level, but the reality is that he mostly exploited her story and it backfired on him.