Posted by MikeT23 on 1/18/2013 8:29:00 AM (view original):
Despite your garbled wording, I think I see what you're saying.

She was some chick he talked to online.   And, possibly, he played her up as his GF after she "died". 

That would make some sense. 
Could have even been before - especially with his parents, given the way they seemed to have bought in.  Wouldn't be the first person to make up a relationship to appease his mom.  Of course, incidents of this are probably much lower with star football players at Notre Dame, which plays into the point of your next post.

Of course, there's also an easy leap from this to him being involved in the hoax.  He made up a girl for his folks, had a friend pretend to be her online to aid in the story, realized he couldn't get any further without them meeting her, has her "killed", and there you go.
1/18/2013 9:29 AM
I'm trying to think "Was I that naive when I was 21-22?" and I just don't think so.    Of course, we didn't have internet "relationships" back then so I guess it's hard to say.

Gotta go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.
1/18/2013 10:01 AM
I think it is a combination of several things and also possible he was trying to mask being gay.

1. I do think originally he did meet this fake girl online and probably had an online relationship with her for an extended period of time.
2. At some point one of his room mates or team mates probably asked who in the heck he was chatting with all the time online and in order to cover up embarassment he told them she was his girlfriend.
3. At some point the entire situation spun out of control and he didn't know how to manage it and was also too embarrassed to say anything to anyone else.

This is where I think he could also be gay and used this to mask it.  Being a star football player at Notre Dame there are going to be a decent amount of girls on campus that are going to make themselves available.  I realize he is morman which makes it even tougher if he is gay.  So it was convenient to tell girls and team mates that he had a girl friend back home.

4. Once this girl supposedly died people started asking questions and wanted to talk to her family to ask them about their thoughts about Manti Teo.  Someone sniffed this out early on and has convered it up along with Te'o.  Somewhere during winter break he went home for the holidays and somebody in his family or circle of friends started asking questions because someone else had been sniffing around and they wanted Manti to tell them what the heck was going on. 

5. So it was right before Christmas this entire thing blew up.

I agree it is possible Manti might be using this to mask him being gay.  I also think this started out as an innocent situation in which he played along with because it was a good story for him to use. 

There is no FREAKING WAY Manti Teo is innocent in this.  He knew at some point this was a made up person that he was so called dating. 

The more I think about it the more I think he might be gay.  Just his mannerism and the way he presents himself.  Something does not add up
1/18/2013 12:05 PM
As I posted in the College football forum, it's also possible this was just a Heisman campaign hype.  Promo departments have done stuff like this for years.  Theismann used to pronounce his name THEES-man before he went to ND.  John Cappelletti's kid brother.

This may just be the promo stuff taken to an extreme, like Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods.  These days, lots of people lie on their resume.  That may be all this is, in a very public forum.

What if Swarbrick is lying, too, and Notre Dame was in on it?  God knows a university admin, like say, at Penn State, wouldn't lie in public, right?



1/18/2013 12:06 PM
I'd be very surprised if Notre Dame was in on it - not because I think a university wouldn't be willing to stoop to this level, but because in this day and age I can't imagine anyone who is running an athletic department would be dumb enough to think they could pull it off and get away with it.  And if it was something university was in on, I don't think it would have been nearly this sloppy.  It wasn't like there was this cleverly crafted deception that took months of investigation to unravel.  The only reason it lasted as long as it did was because apparently no one even bothered to wonder about it until a few weeks ago.
1/18/2013 12:27 PM
I don't think ND had anything to do with this and they are being taken to the cleaners by Manti Teo.  Maybe Notre Dame knows he is gay and doesn't want that coming out because it is "The Catholic" school in this country and having a gay football player would be a nuclear issue for a school like Notre Dame
1/18/2013 12:46 PM

All these things are possibly true.

I keep thinking back to the old Survivor show with Johnny Fairplay... if anyone remembers the gambit...

"Dude, how's Grandma?"

"Dude, you didn't hear... Grandma's dead."

 

1/18/2013 1:22 PM
Heh.  Funny you should say that.  Former survivor contestant Rob Cesternino runs a pretty popular Survivor/Big Brother/Amazing Race podcast, and right now I'm listening to an "emergency" podcast interview he just did with Fairplay as his coverage of the Te'o story.
1/18/2013 1:29 PM
BINGO!

Did Johnny by any chance say, "If you ain't lyin', you ain't tryin'?"
1/18/2013 1:44 PM
I can't see a thread talking about Survivor (the best show ever created) and not say something.  With that said, the two stories are very similar.
1/18/2013 11:54 PM
his actual girlfriend is pretty damn hot.  TMZ has a bunch of stuff on her and actual pictures of him and her together around christmas.  Makes the gay story a bit hard to believe. Has to be 1 of the first 2.
1/19/2013 8:25 AM
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