By now I'm sure everybody has heard that Notre Dame's star linebacker Manti Te'o's girlfriend, who tragically died from leukemia, never existed. The whole story is one of the craziest we've heard in a long time. I'm not here to discuss that. But in short, Te'o had a relationship with a girl (Lennay Kekua) he met online. Kekua had been diagnosed with leukemia and supposedly died in early September, around the same time Te'o's grandmother passed away as well. Te'o proceeded to play with a heavy heart all season, finishing 2nd in Heisman voting and leading Notre Dame to the BCS title game.
Now we find out the whole story of his girlfriend was a hoax, first reported by Deadspin.com. I suggest you read the Deadspin article as it is very in-depth and even gives you a timeline of the "couple". But like I said, I'm not here to talk about that. What I don't understand is how ESPN, CBS, Sports Illustrated and other highly credible outlets would run story after story about how tragic the situation was and how Manti Te'o played so great under these circumstances without knowing the facts. The number one rule in journalism is only report what is true. You find this out by doing the research yourself, not by using facts that are word of mouth. To see and hear so many stories that were published in newspapers and shown on TV is unbelievable. It took a cult site like Deadspin, which I'm sure most people never heard of before now, to break the news of the hoax girlfriend. So you're telling me that for four months none of these other major news sources thought to find out the validity of this girl's death? It's not like it would have been hard to find if it was true. Apparently, she was a student at Stanford, had been in a car crash, had leukemia and died from it. I'm sure there had to have been some sort of record of these events.
This situation shows the power of the media. The media reported false information and blew Manti Te'o up to be something greater than he is. Don't get me wrong, I believe he is a good football player, but not great, definitely not 2nd in Heisman voting great. Every Heisman trophy winner has at least one memorable play from a big game, but nothing sticks out to me for Te'o. Yes, he was among the leaders in interceptions, but where was his game changing defensive touchdown or sack/fumble? ESPN and Sports Illustrated's continuous press of Te'o almost allowed him to steal the Heisman trophy from Johnny Manziel. ESPN is the biggest culprit of creating stories or players that people should follow because they are the leader in sports coverage. I'll be honest, I watch ESPN more than any other channel. I love watching SportsCenter for their highlights, but their news coverage I take with a grain of salt.
Another story on Deadspin talks about an interview former ESPN Radio host Doug Gottlieb had on "The Dan Patrick Show" saying that he was told he couldn't talk about Tim Tebow enough while on air. Tebow is the prime example of what continuous coverage on ESPN will do and it all started while he was at Florida. Tebow was a great college player and deserving of the Heisman but all the extra talk about his personal life and religion was overbearing. ESPN ran so many stories this year about him as a backup quarterback that I didn't even want to turn ESPN on. This has nothing to do with Tebow, his football ability or his religion. It has everything to do with ESPN thinking we want to hear about a QB that threw 8 passes all year.
Manti Te'o says he was a part of somebody's "sick joke" and he thought Lennay was a real person. I'm not faulting the guy for having an online relationship because with Facebook, Twitter and online dating sites it's how a lot of people meet each other nowadays. However, it is crazy for me to think he could be so deeply in love with someone that he's never seen in person but the MTV show "Catfish" proves that this happens more than we think. Some think Te'o was involved in creating the hoax for publicity reasons and even fellow teammates have said he knew she wasn't real. My first inclination was that he was involved. Stephen A. Smith made a good point that if he had such strong feels for Kekua how could he not go see her once after she was in a serious car accident, fighting cancer, or even at her funeral?
But the truth is we don't know the definitive answer to whether he was involved or not. What we do know is that all this could have been killed early on if the proper research was done by any one of many news outlets. Instead, the lie of Manti's fake girlfriend snowballed throughout the entire college football season and now he is in his current situation. If his poor performance in the BCS title game didn't hurt his draft stock enough, this will only make it worse.
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