Deadspin is saying Te'o's girlfriend's death was a hoax created for publicity

selmaborntidefan

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Most of us had imaginary friends when we were children, but most of us left them at home when we went to kindergarten. In this case, she made it all the way to Stanford and Teo still sleeps with a night light.

Has anyone else had passing thoughts of Elaine Benes and her fake funeral for Suzie? If you've not seen it, it's hysterical. (For those who have never seen it, Suzie doesn't exist. At the funeral both Jerry and Elaine's boss claim to have been intimate with the nonexistent girl).
 

IH8Orange

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More information from playerwives:

http://www.playerwives.com/miscellaneous-sports/ncaa/manti-teos-girlfriend-lennay-kekua/

PlayerWives.com had our own run in with the individual posing as Uilani Rae Kekua after receiving the following emails in rapid fire succession in the late hours of December 6, 2012:

11:02 PM, EST:Please, on behalf of our family... Take down the page of our sister Lennay Lekua*. We ask that you please respect our privacy as we still mourn the loss of our sister. We trust that you understand. Thank you & God bless! If you have any further concerns or questions please e-mail @ uilanirae@yahoo.com
*Our first sign that this may not be legit came at the misspelling of her own last name. Our eyebrows continued to raise at the email received minutes later:

11:17 PM, EST
Please take this page about Lennay down. Our family has already requested for the media to please respect our privacy and the memory of our Lennay. Please remove this page ASAP, thank you. -Kekua Family
Urgent requests to handle changes have come to us in the past, but rarely increasingly agitated emails within 20 minutes of the prior. Minutes later, we received a third email from her, which was an exact copy and paste version of the first email noted above.
Isn't December 6 the same day that Manti claims he received the call where someone with "the same voice" as Lennay told him that they were still alive? However, he doesn't tell anybody about this call for weeks?

December is also when the girl whose picture had been used for Lennay's social media profiles found out and made the call to Rohaiah Tuiasosopo about her pictures being used. It appears that this may have spooked him and began the rapid deconstruction of the social media presence of Lennay. If Manti was really the "victim" of the hoax, why call him at all to tell him that Lennay was still alive? Why wouldn't the hoaxster just clean up their mess and not worry about Manti? They had to know that this would be embarrassing to him and that he would never reveal it on his own.
 

ValuJet

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Video after the MSU game, where Manti says in an interview he states "I couldn't do it without the support of my family, without the support of my girlfriends family"....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKDus7QjJ_w&feature=youtube_gdata_player

So who was her pretend family? Were they "online only" support too? This was one heckuva elaborate orchestrated hoax that required numerous people keeping the secret, or Manti has just simply lied over the course of a season and continued to perpetuate the lies.


And the tweets don't prove anything, at least the one's I've seen...just proves/points to the possibility that someone knew/figured out that it was obviously a hoax and was joking about it, but doesn't prove Te'o wasn't part of it.
Exactly! As well as the gut wrenching tale of him on the phone all night, every night, for four months with her.

I am shocked this wasn't exposed sooner. He wasn't duped. Will be interesting to see if the media ever holds him accountable for his comments on the "relationship" and timeline of his statements. Since there's no more money (ad revenues) to be made off him from his college career, they may go after him with a vengeance. Then again, maybe not. Unconditional forgiveness seems to be the order of the day with athletes regardless of the debris left in their wake.
 

IH8Orange

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I don't blame the media for all this. I mean, if someone says their girlfriend died, why would you have to check that out? Not going to the funeral was a bit odd, but he said she didn't want him to miss a game for it and given the distance to Hawaii, that seems plausible he wouldn't go.
The funeral was supposedly in Carson, CA.
 

Ole Man Dan

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Let's look at the advantages of Manti's 'Girlfriend'...

1. Cheap date (Gets into theaters free)
2. Hardly eats at all
3. She wasn't a clothes 'Horse'
4. Free airfare

I don't know what Manti 'Saw' in her. Seems rather 'Transparent' to me... ;)

This reminds me of an old TV show. 'TOPPER' with Leo G. Carol...
 

IH8Orange

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Let's look at the advantages of Manti's 'Girlfriend'...

1. Cheap date (Gets into theaters free)
2. Hardly eats at all
3. She wasn't a clothes 'Horse'
4. Free airfare

I don't know what Manti 'Saw' in her. Seems rather 'Transparent' to me... ;)

This reminds me of an old TV show. 'TOPPER' with Leo G. Carol...
Don't forget... All-night phone calls with heavy breathing. :p
 

DzynKingRTR

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the whole story stinks. he never asked to go to the funeral of someone he called his girlfriend? hell as much as the media loves to cover stories until someone wants to puke and not one person thought to interview the parents of this "girlfriend" to get their opinion of Teo's dedication of his season to her?
 

TidefaninOS

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Let's look at the advantages of Manti's 'Girlfriend'...

1. Cheap date (Gets into theaters free)
2. Hardly eats at all
3. She wasn't a clothes 'Horse'
4. Free airfare

I don't know what Manti 'Saw' in her. Seems rather 'Transparent' to me... ;)

This reminds me of an old TV show. 'TOPPER' with Leo G. Carol...
Wow! And I thought I was old - just how old are you?:smile:
 

92tide

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Jon

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Good to see the media isn't just rolling over: http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...able-part-of-teo-saga-swarbricks-trust-in-him

I suspect most writers are ticked about being lied to and will make this painful for No Dame and manti.
There has been speculation on the last few pages that the media will do their best to brush this under the carpet for ND. I disagree. 20 years ago that is exactly what would happen. Now? No way. They were just massively scooped by deadspin and you know that just can't sit well in news rooms across the country. I'm no fan of Gawker Media and their crap reporting but they nailed this one and you know it's just eating the mainstream medias soul to have to keep saying "first reported on Deadspin.com". No way any major media (outside of NBC News for obvious self serving reasons) holds back and gets scooped again. I just can't see it
 
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jps1983

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There has been speculation on the last few pages that the media will do their best to brush this under the carpet for ND. I disagree. 20 years ago that is exactly what would happen. Now? No way. They were just massively scooped by deadspin and you know that just can't sit well in news rooms across the country. I'm no fan of Gawker Media and their crap reporting but they nailed this one and you know it's just eating the mainstream medias soul to have to keep saying "first reported on Deadspin.com". No way any major media (outside of NBC News for obvious self serving reasons) holds back and gets scooped again. I just can't see it
I don't want to start a thread within this one since the main gist of this thread is so captivating, but the fringe media (deadspin, tmz, drudge, etc) are usually more reliable in their factual checks than the big news groups like cnn, msn, foxnews, or espn, who just take stories and run with them without much background checks. Some sites like drudge are politically motivated and take gigantic leaps, but still break a lot of of legit stories. Throw in the absolute facts that ND knew about this on 12/26 and ESPN knew 10 days ago, and I smell bad journalism (if not something more sinister).


I heard a deadspin editor this morning on the radio say that after they got the tip, they just googled the girl's name and didn't find obits or funeral notices (big red flags). Any 10 year old could google a name; ESPN just saw a "heartfelt" piece, took Manti at his word, and ran with it.
 

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