Manti Te'o's Situation Shouldn't Have Reached This Point

     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.

Bo vs Deion

     I have always been a big fan of ESPN's series 30 for 30 and about a month ago came "You Don't Know Bo".  It discussed the career of Bo Jackson from college at Auburn, to the NFL, MLB, and his "Bo Knows" marketing campaign with Nike.  My excitement for it mostly stemmed from being too young to actually remember watching him play but remembering how unstoppable he was in Tecmo Bowl.  While watching I'm thinking Bo Jackson has to be the greatest athlete ever.  To be able to play two sports professionally at a high level is something unheard of, not even the Michael Jordan could do it.  However, Deion Sanders could.  Over the holiday I found myself in a debate, who is the better two sport athlete, Bo or Deion?
     Most professional athletes play multiple sports growing up but by the time they hit college they chose one and go with it.  These guys were able to play in the NFL and MLB.  But while Deion was able to have full careers in both sports, Bo suffered a serious hip injury when he was 28.  He was able to come back to play two more years of baseball but it pretty much ended his career.  So it is difficult to fully compare the two athletes but the question needs to be answered.
     Let's take a look at football first.  Deion Sanders is arguably the best cover corner the NFL has ever seen and because of that he was selected to 8 Pro-Bowls and inducted into the Hall of Fame.  He had 53 career interceptions with nine touchdowns and was named Defensive Player of the Year in 1994.  Sanders was also a threat in the return game totaling nine touchdowns on kick/punt returns.  There wasn't much Deion couldn't do with his speed, quickness and ball hawking ability in 13 years in the NFL.  Bo Jackson on the other hand could only manage four abbreviated seasons in the NFL before his injury.  But in those four years he made a name for himself and left us wanting more.  Bo elected to commit fully to baseball before switching to football so he never played more than 11 games in a season.  However, he averaged 5.4 yards a carry for his career (Barry Sanders averaged 5.0) and in his first season he had 6.8 ypc.  Once Bo arrived to the Los Angeles Raiders after baseball the team moved him ahead of Hall of Famer Marcus Allen as the lead running back and in his best year he averaged 86.4 yards a game in a split backfield.  In three of his four seasons, Jackson had runs of 88, 91, and 92 yards.  Bo Jackson was a ridiculous combination of strength and speed that was unrivaled at the time.
     In baseball, Bo was able to play eight years but only four as a full-time starter before his injury.  He was selected to the All-Star game in 1989 and was also named the MVP of that game.  Jackson displayed he power and speed in baseball hitting over 20 homeruns and stealing 20 bases in two seasons including 32 HR's and 26 SB's in 1989.  For his career he only hit .250 and was always among the league leaders in strikeouts.  Bo could play defense too as he lead the AL in two years in assists by a left-fielder.  On the diamond, Deion was not as dominant as he was on the gridiron.  He was only a full-time starter for one season with the Cincinnati Reds in 1997 but during that year he was 2nd in the NL in steals with 56.  He also lead the NL in triples in 1992.  Sanders hit .263 for his career but that is skewed by three very poor seasons (.234, .158, .191) to start his career.  However, he did hit .533 in the 1992 World Series while the next best on the team was .296.
     It's really hard to argue against either athlete but I have to give my vote to Bo Jackson.  Even though we never saw his full potential in either sport you can't deny the impact that he made in such a short span.  Bo didn't have the career in the NFL that Deion did, but Sanders was just an average baseball player whereas Jackson was an elite player in both sports.  The thing I admire most about Bo Jackson though is not not his athletic ability, it's his character.  He was drafted #1 overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1986 but because he felt they ruined his Senior year in college because of shady dealings he turned them down and decided to play baseball.  If it wasn't for that we might not have ever seen Bo Jackson as a two sport athlete.