Forget about the supposed timeline. Forget about who may or may not have created the Twitter account for Lennay Marie Kekua. We're getting WAY too bogged down in the details of this scandal folks.
So let's take a step back and ask two basic questions: Why does Manti Te'o NEED a girlfriend? And how does a football powerhouse like Notre Dame REALLY react when someone messes with one of its players?
First about Manti. This guy has been a stud since high school. And, Mormon on not, he knows he can get whatever he wants from . . . someone . . . just by asking. That's how big time college sports works. So, let's assume he didn't want girls for one night stands or a full time, in-your-face, "pre-wife" girlfriend. If all he needed was a tall, volleyball playing Hawaiian Mormon girl to talk to at night, Notre Dame would have found him one. Or bought one. Or built one from scratch. But there was no reason he had to go looking for someone like. It's like saying he had to go out and look for food to eat or someone to write his term papers. So it gets back to the other option: the thing was made up to either enhance his resume in his senior season or to cover something in his personal life.
The other, more telling question has to do with how Notre Dame responded to the announcement from Te'o that he had been scammed. According to AD Jack "Trust Me" Swarbrick, they were told on December 26 about the scam, hired investigators, and eventually decided they believed Te'o's story. End of story, right?
Really? Messing with a star athlete at a major college program (worth billions) is like stealing from the mob. You just don't do it, and if you do and they find out, they make an example of you, so no one else tries it again. (You should see the hate mail I get for just reporting on some small town high school hazing incident.) The thing people overlook is that this "dead girlfriend" play could have gone the other way and Te'o could have been distracted and played worse, and the team lose. Or the hoax could have been uncovered during the season, sending the surging Irish into the swirling media circus you see going on now. Head coaches and athletic directors are paid big money to think about those other outcomes and make sure they don't happen.
Sorry folks, if Notre Dame actually hired real private investigators who did their jobs even HALF as well as the guys at Deadspin.com, it would have lead them to this Ronaiah Tuiasosopo guy that everyone else is talking about and he would either be in jail, beaten to a pulp, or some kind of fatal "accident" would have befallen him. If you're ND and Te'o is a complete victim in this thing, you don't let this just go. That leads you to only one other option: Te'o--and possibly the university--were in on the whole thing and making him the victim deflects blame from them. But if Notre Dame really knew about this hoax BEFORE the national championship game, why did they let him attend another fundraiser for the cancer charity in Kekau's name while in Miami, as has been alleged? I'm not a lawyer, but isn't that fraud? Did the school not have the responsibility to at least tell Te'o to stop what he was doing or they would go to the public with the story?
No, if you look at the bottom line questions the current story from Te'o, and supported by Notre Dame, does not hold water. Come on guys, the truth is going to come out eventually, so let's just get it out there and get it over with so we can get back to what's important: the NFL playoffs.
