Pepper On Sports - The sports world suffered a twitter-breaking case of shock and awe today with Deadspin’s piece detailing what appears to be the phony story concocted about the late girlfriend of Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o. While the American public and the media sure felt duped, one of Te’o’s teammates wasn’t surprised, telling PepperOnSports.com that the players on the Fighting Irish football team smelled something fishy back in September 2012.
The Notre Dame football player, who asked for anonymity, told Pepper On Sports, “No we all knew he had only seen her once. But when the media was saying how he went through both deaths we knew,” said the source, referring to the back-to-back deaths of Te’o’s grandmother and girlfriend Lennay Kekua, who allegedly died of Leukemia.
In defense of the Heisman Trophy candidate, the source said he believes the lie may have indeed started with somebody duping Te’o using a phony twitter account, and eventually, faking their own death.
Early in my conversation with the source, the Notre Dame player said, “He lied, but the media blew it up.” In response to my follow-up question asking if the source thought that Te’o kept the story going because of the media attention, the player replied, “Yeah. Right after the Michigan [State] game. He should have never brought her in the media. His grandma passing was enough.”
Notre Dame’s victory over Michigan State and subsequent media explosion appears to have been the turning point for the source and many of his teammates. The source said while the players discussed their suspicions amongst themselves, they never confronted Te’o. “We would never bring it up. But we would look at him when he would get all emotional during media about his girl,” the player said. When asked if he thought Te’o was a good actor, the player replied, “Very good.”
Listen I’m not going to put too much stock into a story with one anonymous source. I’m not a journalist but I’m not an idiot either. I don’t change my opinions based on an unnamed player featured in a blog post during a huge breaking story. But the fact that Te’o has some questions to answer is the understatement of the century because the way I see it is this. Either you’re A) a total manipulative opportunistic scumbag playing off the emotions of others for a Heisman push or B) a total moron of the highest order. Personally I don’t even know which one is worse at this point. Being a dick or being a total idiot. Seriously you know you’re at rock bottom when the best case scenario for your public image is that people believe you’re just completely retarded. Like that was Swarbrick’s whole defense during the press conference last night. That was his “getting Manti’s back.” By basically saying if you know Manti, if you REALLY know him, you’ll know he’s a completely naive sucker who is open to being pranked and extorted and humiliated by anybody with a sob story and a telephone connection. Or as he called it “telephonica.” That the more tragic your situation is the more Manti will reach out to you and long term date you until you fake die. As if that was the best compliment ever.
Look I really wanted to give Manti a little bit of the benefit of the doubt here. I don’t know the guy. Maybe there’s a chance he’s just one big dumbass and got hoaxed the shit out of and didn’t know anything about it? Problem is when there are so many weird unanswered questions (how do you get a call on your cell phone from your dead girlfriend who proceeds to tell you she’s not dead and was just joking and not report it to the police? How do you date for 1 year without Facetiming or Skyping once? How do you not visit when she is diagnosed with cancer or go to her fucking funeral?) it’s real fucking tough to do that without sounding like a naive dick myself. No worse feeling than giving sympathy to someone who doesn’t deserve it and it’s pretty obvious Te’o doesn’t deserve it. So to say I’m waiting on the edge of my seat for the smoking gun to come out with Te’o plotting his Heisman media push featuring his fake dead girlfriend with fake cancer would be underselling it.
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