Fishing For Answers

Like the rest of the world, I have spent the last day trying to wrap my head around this Manti T'eo/imaginary girlfriend story. For those of you who may have missed it, allow me to sum it up: T'eo, the star linebacker for the Fighting Irish, had spent most of the season drawing inspiration from adversity he was facing off the field. First, his grandmother died and then a couple hours later his girlfriend was said to also have passed away after fighting leukemia. T'eo went on to play very well against Michigan State that following weekend and many saw his will to play for his team despite his personal heartache as just the sort of thing college football needs more of. As the Irish continued to win the legend of Manti only grew, culminating in a second-place finish for the Heisman Trophy. Even though Notre Dame couldn't finish the season with a win over Alabama, it was still seen as a great season with Manti being the inspirational force. Then yesterday the website Deadspin (which I link to on the sidebar), published a report that the entire thing was a hoax. Not only had Manti's girlfriend never died of leukemia, she had never existed in the first place. There was no record of her anywhere. Now people are trying to figure out of Manti was the victim of some kind of elaborate scheme or had concocted the entire thing himself to help gain publicity.

Turns out the idea that this could just be someone on the internet who created an intricate online identity to mess with people for their own amusement is quite possible. (As an aside - good luck, parents.) There is even a term for it "Catfishing" and it happens so frequently MTV even has a show about it. [Sidebar: The fact that I had never heard of this show until yesterday saddened me. Not because it shows just how many messed up people are out there, but because it makes me feel old. I was thinking about it after this story came out and I realized I haven't watched MTV in like 8 years. Seriously, I couldn't even wager a guess as to where MTV is on my channel guide anymore. I'm so uncool.] Reportedly T'eo found out about the hoax in early December and told school officials about it a couple weeks later, which would explain his poor play in the National Championship Game (which is really the only thing from this story I actually care about). However, that particular narrative gets a little harder to believe given the number of times T'eo gave interviews in which he talked about this girlfriend and their deep love. Also, he references talking to her for hours on the phone as well as initially meeting her at a game. That sort of blows the 'innocent rube' theory into little pieces.

Anyway, Notre Dame officials are totally backing Manti, going so far as to hire their own private investigators to look into the matter and they are satisfied with the finding, saying the kid's only crime was being too trusting. I'm not really sure that helps him because it makes him look super naive, which is not what you want people to be talking about in the months leading up to the NFL Draft, as it could drop him a few dozen spots and cost him millions of dollars. (But, on the bright side, it lessens the chances he has to play for a terrible franchise.) Admittedly, I'd rather be naive than a sociopath, which is what a person who would make up and then killed an imaginary girlfriend just to try and win a Heisman would be. I'm going to guess that the answer to this particular riddle will be found (as it always is), somewhere in the middle. I'm thinking T'eo may have met this "girl" online, sent a lot of emails back and forth and then when he heard she died figured it would get him some attention and sympathy if he played up the "dead girlfriend" angle. He did it a little too much and now he is paying the price for it. It doesn't make him innocent in all of it but it doesn't make him a criminal mastermind, either.

Obviously, the internet has been having a lot of fun with T'eo for the last 24 hours and you can't turn in any direction without reading a new theory, such as T'eo is gay and created the fake girlfriend to throw people off the scent. (I can only assume the happiest person on the planet is Lance Armstrong, because no one has been talking about his upcoming tell-all doping interview with Oprah since the T'eo story broke.) The only good news for him is that for as much of a beating as he is taking at the moment, it will pass fairly quickly. He is hardly the first high-profile athlete to engage in some bizarre behavior and they all seem to come out the other side (and he didn't actually break any laws). For example, Dirk Nowitzki was 'engaged' to a woman with a history of scamming other professional athletes who faked a pregnancy and as soon as he won a championship no one was talking about that any more. Fortunately, for T'eo he is only about to begin his pro career, which means he has a decade to change public perception about him. I would just advise that going forward he keep his private life private and only talk about the things which happen on the field, where everyone can see that they are real.