SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never even existed, Notre Dame All-America linebacker Manti Te’o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.
An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a web interview Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 11. He and the university said Wednesday that he learned Dec. 6 that it was all a hoax, that not only was she not dead, she wasn’t real.
On Thursday, a day after Te’o’s inspiring, playingthrough-heartache story was exposed as a bizarre lie, Te’o and Notre Dame faced questions about whether he really was duped, as he claimed, or whether he and the university were complicit in the hoax and misled the public, perhaps to improve his chances of winning the Heisman.
“Nothing about this story has been comprehensible, or logical, and that extends to what happens next,” wrote Gregg Doyel, a national columnist for CBSSports.com. “I cannot comprehend Manti Te’o saying anything that could make me believe he was a victim.”
Te’o’s agent, Tom Condon, said the linebacker had no plans to make any public statements Thursday in Bradenton, Fla., where he has been training with other NFL hopefuls at IMG Academy.
Reporters were turned away at the main gate of IMG’s sprawling, secure complex. Te’o remained on the grounds, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because neither Te’o nor IMG authorized the release of the information.
Te’o and Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said Wednesday that the linebacker was drawn into a virtual romance with a woman who used the phony name Lennay Kekua, and was fooled into believing she died of leukemia in September. They said his only contact with the woman was through the Internet and by telephone.
Te’o also lost his grandmother the same day his girlfriend supposedly died, and his role in leading Notre Dame to its best season in decades endeared him to fans and put him at the center of college football’s biggest feelgood story of the year.
Relying on information provided by Te’o’s family members, the South Bend Tribune reported in October that Te’o and Kekua first met, in person, in 2009 and that the two also had gotten together in Hawaii, where Te’o grew up.
Sports Illustrated posted on its website a previously unpublished transcript of a 1-on-1 interview with Te’o from Sept. 23, during which he went into great detail about his relationship with Kekua and her physical ailments. He also mentioned meeting her for the first time after a game in California.
“We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular,” he told Sports Illustrated.
Among the remaining questions Thursday was why didn’t Te’o ever clarify the nature of his relationship as the story took on a life of its own.
Notre Dame said Te’o found out that Kekua was not a real person through a phone call he received Dec. 6 at an awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla. He told Notre Dame coaches about the situation Dec. 26.
The AP’s media review turned up two instances during that gap when the football star mentioned Kekua in public.
Te’o was in New York for the Heisman presentation Dec. 8 and, during an interview before the ceremony that ran on the WSBT.com, the website for a South Bend TV station, Te’o said: “I mean, I don’t like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. So I’ve really tried to go to children’s hospitals and see, you know, children.”
In a column that first ran Dec. 10 in The Los Angeles Times, Te’o recounted why he played a few days after he found out Kekua died in September, and the day she was supposedly buried.
“She made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play,” he said Dec. 9 while attending a ceremony in Newport Beach, Calif., for the Lott IMPACT Trophy.
Swarbrick said Wednesday that Notre Dame did not go public with its findings sooner because it expected the Te’o family to come forward first, but deadspin.com broke the story Wednesday.
“This whole thing is so nutsy that I believe it only could have happened at Notre Dame, where mythology trumps common sense on a daily basis. ... Given the choice between reality and fiction, Notre Dame always will choose fiction,” sportswriter Rick Telander wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Which brings me to what I believe is the real reason Te’o and apparently his father, at least went along with this scheme: the Heisman Trophy.”
Sports, Pages 19 on 01/18/2013