ND's investigators, if they ever actually existed, are ultimately working for the university - it was in the university's best interest to cover it up.
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Deadspin: (Notre Dame football player) Manti Teos Dead Girlfriend is a hoax
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ND's investigators, if they ever actually existed, are ultimately working for the university - it was in the university's best interest to cover it up.
Black Mamba
Member
They can't throw him under the bus now. They knew on the 26th and did nothing to stop it. Now they're stuck because they probably told him to keep his mouth shut and if they try and throw him under the bus, he will claim they made him keep silent.
Now, back on the 26th Notre Dame, assuming they had the heads not up their own asses, should have come out with the story. The fact that they tried to cover this up then seems stupid as all hell. Something like this doesn't stay covered up. In a post-Sandusky world you'd think they'd have learn.
The only thing that worries me is that these are generally smart people (granted even smart people are stupid in common sense a lot of the time). So I wonder how much is it just ego and stupidity or is it that these universities cover up a fuck ton of stuff and only few pieces every escape...
No doubt. I'm just saying if Te'o is telling the truth (a big IF), then that phone number will be his best alibi. If he can prove he talked to a woman every night for a hour or so, then he probably was duped. No one would do that to keep up appearances. But the fact that ND didn't even seem to comment on that or assure they know who the woman perpetrator was makes me believe they're lying out their ass.
It's Notre Dame. Arrogance and ego is everything.
I watched that news conference in total disbelief.
Don't get me wrong, I love to hate on Notre Dame as much as the next guy (maybe a bit more) but for fuck's sake, it's a very respected academic institution with a long and storied history, and seeing their athletic fucking director crying because some ex-student embarrassed himself on twitter?
The only thing they should have said is "listen, what did you want us to do? start a press conference and embarrass our student for this crap?" and be fucking done with it.
But no, they had to go with the whole 40 minutes ice tea crying approach.
My mind is just filled with fuck to the brim.
"I did not have sex with that woman".
I think Lance paid deadspin to break the story now. Coincidence? Some attention deflected, and very few people even know there's an Oprah network.
nVidiot_Whore
Banned
He might just be an idiot who fell for an elaborate hoax. And he exaggerated various aspects of his relationship with someone he'd never met in person.
It IS possible. ND has no reason to throw the poor kid under the bus if all he did was exagerate whether or not he'd "met" some girl. He could be a schmuck who really was in love with someone messing with him online.
But either way, they'll have to explain why they all knew about it and he continued to talk in interviews about his girlfriend and her family, etc.
possible? yes. but probable? a relationship over 2 years where you never even see the person you're with?
nVidiot_Whore
Banned
They could be exaggerating the extent of their investigation. It's not like there's some guarantee you are going to be able to trace a cell phone without a warrant, and they certainly didn't contact the police.
There are tweets online that show people laughing about it, and those tweets from December do not implicate Manti. They are making fun of him and claiming he got tricked. So that could have been the extent of their investigation. To confirm that he was hoaxed.
Of course, after realizing he was going to be outted Manti and his accomplices could have helped create the "evidence" that he was hoaxed.. could be somehow in on the tweets that claim he was the victim, etc.
But, it's plausible that:
- He was hoaxed, and that included phone calls
- ND's "investigation" was merely to confirm that, which December tweets sort of do
- They didn't do anything to track down some cell phone number that called him, what would they have accomplished?
Lots of possibilities. I certainly don't see anyone lining up facts that prove ND was actually lying in their press conference.
However, they all are claiming now that they knew for a month.. and then continued to be interviewed about it.. which is in fact a "cover up" on it's own. But it's not so shady if Manti actually was hoaxed.. still weird as shit..
And unless people show some clear change in his demeanor pre-him supposedly finding out, and post.. IMO could be evidence that he was acting the entire time.
Black Mamba
Member
If Manti was hoaxed, there is absolutely no way the ND investigators did not find out who was on the other end of the phone conversations. You don't think Manti and the school want to know who perpetuated the thing? Come on, now...
In this day, you do not need a warrant to figure it out. Look how much GAF detectives can find out on their own. FFS, GAF detectives tracked down a member's father he'd never met and didn't know the name of, really. And it didn't take long at all.
Any private investigator worth his salt that would be hired by a prominent university could easily take a phone number and figure out to whose account it belongs. If they can't, they're in the wrong line of work.
TJ Bennett
TJ Hooker
I think I solved the case.
The grandmother was also the girlfriend.
The grandmother was also the girlfriend.
I'm pretty sure it's legal to lie, you can trust me, I'm a supreme court justice.
"I just want to put that episode behind me".
I mean, if he's not totally retarded.
Black Mamba
Member
All he'd have to do is produce the phone bills. It will show how long and when he talked to her.
If I see 2 years and nearly every day 1 hour to the same phone number, I'm gonna believe he was duped. Of course, this would make him one of the dumbest people of all time, but at least duped.
And everyone can produce that with ease. Plus by discovering the girl, the media will figure the rest out.
SolidSnakex
Member
Yeah, he should have some very long phone calls since he said that they'd fall asleep talking with one another.
nVidiot_Whore
Banned
The story is they were just friends for over a year.
This could be someone he met online.. that he told stories about for 2 years to his Father. "Have you met a girl yet son?" "Yeah Dad, blah blah, a friend I'm interested in."
According to Deadspin, she became his girlfriend in "early 2012."
The media certainly wasn't paying attention to it until 2012. So it could be he was hoaxed, and was in a pattern of exaggeration that he'd met the person to his family... which turned into an exaggeration of other aspects once she allegedly died. He's asked questions, he doesn't really want to admit it was just someone he knew online, because he did care about the person, etc.
But unless he was just blatantly exaggerating under this theory, he did talk to SOMEONE on the phone a lot. But it could be some girl who was in fact having an online friendship/love affair with him over time.. and he might have been manipulated into never meeting her simply because he was highly religious, and not very experienced with such things.. and had already been exageratting the idea that he'd met her in the first place.
Or he's in on it all.. I'm just playing devil's advocate and saying it's POSSIBLE.
I also don't quite think it's as improbable as most of you seem to do. The combination of being hoaxed + exaggerating leads to a lot of the same weird inconsistencies as him outright making it all up.
nVidiot_Whore
Banned
And you might also run into a cell phone you can't trace.
The University said:
The University Initiated an investigation.
Where did they claim they hired PI's?
You guys are making statements that just aren't true. Yes, sometimes even the smallest bits of info can lead to a mountain of evidence, in particular when crowd attacked by a forum like neogaf.
That doesn't mean that Notre Dame claiming they "launched an investigation" would 100% figure out who a cell phone number belongs too.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. It's just not a 100% given. Their investigation could easily have been just a little bit of googling.. finding the tweets that were claiming he was hoaxed, etc. They were in the middle of an important football season, and were probably more concerned with whether or not Te'o was behind it all. They found enough evidence to satisfy the idea that he was duped, and then decided to try to hide it by riding it out at least until the season was over. That's basically what they are claiming at this point.
It's possible.
Why no Skype tho.
Black Mamba
Member
It's true it might not be traceable, but if this was a hoax (with his friend we know being involved), I don't think they would be that sophisticated as to pull that off (we're talking college kids, here). That said, it is theoretically possible.
As to the 2 years, it was really a few months I suppose. But even 3 months of nightly conversations would be enough for me. The story is they talked nightly since April. Just produce those records.
Did you watch the presser? The guy said they hired PIs.
Here, I can source that: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf...manti-te-o-says-perfect-012348590--ncaaf.html
Maybe the cell phone isn't traceable but I doubt it in this case. Nevertheless, you do agree manti could at least provide proof he called this woman every night since April and called her in the hospital as he claimed and stayed with her for 8 hours at a time? His own cell phone bills can prove this.
nVidiot_Whore
Banned
Thanks. I read several articles but saw no PI mention.
That certainly makes it seem far more probable they would have revealed the entire hoax.
But it depends on their goals and what they even hired PI's to do. They may have also felt tracking the person down was getting into territory that would make ND look bad.
Partly playing devil's advocate.. either way, thanks for the fact check on the PI bit.
Black Mamba
Member
No worries, I understand.
I'm willing to give Manti the chance to prove himself. I was just indicating the ND presser didn't assure me that he could.
All I need is his own cell phone records. If he talked even for 4 months nightly with her, I'm going to believe he was duped. I just can't believe someone would fake over 160 hours of phone conversations. Now, maybe he figured out he got duped and then continues on with the lie because he didn't know how to handle it. But at least the phone stuff would make me believe he originally got duped.
Personally, I have a feeling he and his friend made her up for whatever personal reason and they didn't think it would get to be a big deal and didn't know what to do and eventually got her sick and killed her off hoping it would end the talk about it. I don't think it was completely a PR stunt for the Heisman and NFL. Maybe he is gay and made her up for that reason or maybe another reason and it just spiraled out of control.
Now on to Notre Damn, they should have mentioned this when they found out on the 26th. To allow him to talk about it just for the BCS title game is ridiculous.
nVidiot_Whore
Banned
Well my devil's advocate theory is he'd been exaggerating the nature of the relationship either way.
But people who create fake personas online often do invent illnesses, deaths, etc. It's REALLY common for that type of behavior. He could have been suckered into just about anything. And again, could also have exaggerated how often they spoke, etc. The persona he portrays is in fact someone who probably would be trusting of anyone who "needs help."
A person being encouraged to act like a hero by his role on a football team, by his Mormon background, by his parents who idolize him and tell stories of how awesome and good he is.. suckered into caring about someone online who was pretending to get into car accidents and get sick.. and this also fed into his ego of portraying himself as this amazing guy. The impossible man.. so devoted to a gril he barely has a chance to meet, because he's not pre-occupied with sex or anything besides being heroic. (the white lie being that they had in fact, never met)
Of course that same persona is how he paints himself, and the hoax could have been designed to hype that fake persona up.
But again, both "fit" IMO.
A well meaning exagerator and the hoaxer who tricked him.
I unravaled a 10-year long forum hoaxer from TeamXbox as well as other forums.. and "she" had pretended to be sick multiple times online.. turned out to be a guy who had invented numerous personas online at variosu times over almost 15 years.. many of which seemed based on a fake cartoon girl band he'd invented. Serious. lol
Black Mamba
Member
Problem for me is, if he only knew her online, it means he lied about talking to her nightly.
In which case he lied about that (because if you saw the stories and read about them) he did that explicitly to prop his own heroic image up, as you said.
So even if he was duped, he'd still a turdbucket because he made shit up for personal gain. I understand making up that fact that he really met her and fell in love, but the constant talking about him conversing all night long while she was in the hospital crosses the line.
Oh, and I'm well aware people do that as you figured out a hoaxter. Which is why I give Manti the chance to prove himself. Without those phone records, he definitely lied. With it, he might have lied but also was originally duped and only lied to not be humiliated.
*dead*
nVidiot_Whore
Banned
The hoaxer could have been a female who he did speak with on the phone.
If he lied about that, online hoax or not, yeah.. the level of douchbaggery is huge.
And even in my very forgiving devil's advocate theory.. where he was hoaxed by online and phone, and merely told some white lies, probably to his father early on, that he then had to continue to back up that he had "met her"..
He still played pretend in the media, and continued to talk about the entire thing in the self-glorifying while attempting to sound humble way he tended to do about it all.
I guess my point boils down too: him being really eager to appear to be a hero could explain him being behind the hoax, but it also could help explain how he was hoaxed so bad, and why it APPEARS like he was behind the hoax. Caught up in hero-dom he exagerated and outright lied a few times.
About done for the night.. thanks for the conversation.
I'm fascinated by stuff like this. lol
not psycho
Member
What the... That's it! Manti is Lennay! Lennay is Manti! Manti is a woman!
rofl
I don't follow college football so I never heard of this guy. So his e-girlfriend, who never existed, and who he said he may or may not have met, fake died in a plan to make Te'o more popular? This reminds me of that King of the Hill episode where the school purposefully passes their star football player despite him being dumb as a rock.
SolidSnakex
Member
Damnit, Mike Golic isn't on Mike and Mike this morning. :/ Although this was pre-planned as he's with his son at some football camp.
Edit: They're going to have him on the phone later in the show.
Edit: They're going to have him on the phone later in the show.
MightyHealthy
Banned
Guess I'm the only other Slipknot listener on tonight. lol
The bigger story here is that big and small media passed these stories around and no one ever questioned them.
Supposedly, Te'o was grieving the death of his girlfriend when he played in the Notre Dame-Michigan foot ball game. Media built the story up, especially after ND won.
Then ND was undefeated, this guy came in second in Heisman Trophy voting, and the story was played up even more.
Also you have a big university cashing in on the story, much like they have always played up Knute Rockne and then Rudy.
ND supposedly found out 12/26, two weeks before the national championship game and kept the story going to cash in on the glory of ND returning as a champion. I imagine they hoped it would just go away after he graduated.
Te'o could lose millions of dollars if he drops a round or two in the NFL draft.
So a crazy person, big media, a big university with a historic reputation, and big money all wrapped up in a fascinating story played out across the internet.
We win, they all lose. What do we win? I have no idea.
We win at least a month's worth of photoshops, a future ESPN 30 for 30 in which we can tell our kids"I was there to see the guy go crazy," and another reason to trash modern day media and journalism.
The photoshops are becoming less entertaining as time goes by, ESPN is becoming a symptom of what ails us, and yellow journalism has been going on since the printing press was invented.
I say we lose.
perfectchaos007
Member
It should have. ND got the news supposedly on Dec. 26
Everything in my closet is seersucker. So, no. That's not me.Spill it, mre. This is you isn't it.
"When you have someone that you talk to every single day, that you sleep with on the phone because she's going through a lot of things and the only way she can sleep is if she knows you're on the other side of the phone, and you do that every single night, every single night for the next four months, and all of a sudden it's … silence. That silence really eats at you. It's eating at me and it continues to eat at me, but, that's where faith comes in." - T'eo in the Gene Wojciechowski interview from October.
and then how this whole thing from Swarbick yesterday:
"On the morning of Dec. 26, very early morning, Manti called his coaches to inform them that while he was in attendance at the ESPN awards show in Orlando, he received a phone call from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Lennay Kekua," Swarbrick said. "When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person he had talked to, who told him that she was, in fact, not dead. Manti was very unnerved by that, as you might imagine."
If this was a hoax it was the hoax of the century. And then how ND was informed of how all of this was a hoax? Out of the blue 3 months later he gets a call?
and then how this whole thing from Swarbick yesterday:
"On the morning of Dec. 26, very early morning, Manti called his coaches to inform them that while he was in attendance at the ESPN awards show in Orlando, he received a phone call from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Lennay Kekua," Swarbrick said. "When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person he had talked to, who told him that she was, in fact, not dead. Manti was very unnerved by that, as you might imagine."
If this was a hoax it was the hoax of the century. And then how ND was informed of how all of this was a hoax? Out of the blue 3 months later he gets a call?
Feels very much like he's making at least 90% of this shit up on his own.
GitarooMan
Member
Him and his buddy in Hawaii Tsuiasasopo.
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