All Things Notre Dame - The Clashmore Mike Memorial Thread

[Dr. Strangelove]

'I Was One Of Several People Duped,' Manti Te'o Tells Scarecrow Dressed As Katie Couric



NEW YORK?Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te?o admitted Thursday that he was one of several people duped by an elaborate hoax involving the death of his nonexistent girlfriend in a revealing interview with a scarecrow dressed as Katie Couric. ?It wasn?t just me?a lot of people got tricked,? said Te?o, who reportedly reached for the scarecrow?s straw hand and gazed longingly into the eyes drawn on the burlap sack face. ?You know, Katie, your beautiful face reminds me a lot of Lennay?s. You make me so comfortable, I feel like I?ve known you forever. I love how you?re always smiling.? At press time, sources confirmed that a panicked Te?o was frantically attempting to resuscitate the unresponsive Katie Couric scarecrow.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-was-one-of-several-people-duped-manti-teo-tells,31020/

[Clashmore Mike]

You see that as similar?

http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/story/2013-01-23/washington-redskins-catfishing-hoax-sidney-ackerman-cj-miles-manti-teo-kekua

http://www.wtop.com/1226/3204452/Love-on-the-Net

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-redskins-false-identity-manti-teo-20130123,0,7384664.story

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/washington-redskins-were-targeted-imposter-using-fake-female-181105506--nfl.html

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/01/23/former-skin-phillip-daniels-also-fell-victim-to-internet-hoax-warned-locker-room-in-december/

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342011

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000129949/article/washington-redskins-duped-by-woman-with-fake-online-identity

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1497859-washington-redskins-players-tried-to-meet-woman-with-fake-online-identity

http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon/2013/01/23/nfl-redskins-duped-online-hoax/1859021/

[WM Wolverine]

Sounds like he was duped pretty good and his story stands.

[Clashmore Mike]

That's because they haven't said anything of substance that can be disproven. They didn't investigate his phone records or ask him to produce all of his correspondences with this girlfriend who was supposedly the love of his life for three years. Who was never talked about as an internet-only girlfriend until after this blew up in everyone's faces. No financial records, like credit card bills showing that he bought flowers for her while she was sick. No plausible explanation for why he never met her after three years. No plausible explanation for why the South Bend Tribune described them as having met in person. Who told them that? Is anyone trying to trace the origin of that story? No plausible explanation for how this guy supposedly became enamored with somebody that he only had electronic communications with. No plausible explanation for why they never even video conferenced or used Facetime. I have never, in the entire age of the internet, heard of somebody carrying on a relationship for three years and not wanting to meet. Ever.

Was Manti Teo really talking to somebody for three years on the phone and not caring if he met her in person? Somebody genuinely put that kind of effort into a hoax? That's a full time job, for fucks sake. I'll bet that Nigerian e-mail scammers don't even work that hard. Isn't it funny how there is no investigation into this woman to see who she is? Has anyone even called the number? Did this person go through the effort of using an untraceable terrorist phone to talk to Teo every time? If not, it would take probably five minutes to find out who the actress is if there was one. There is about the same amount of effort being put into that as there was being put into finding the "real killers" of Nicole Simpson. Did Teo not ever see pictures of this woman with her friends, family, or pets? For most people who have bought Teo's story -- I don't think that it has occurred to them the magnitude of effort and false information that it would take to pull off a hoax like this. Not to mention -- it would have cost some money too.

What kind of cosmically unlikely occurrences would it take for Manti Teo to truly have been the victim of this incredibly dedicated and elaborate hoax for three years? That Teo is a lying, narcissistic attention whore is a much more likely explanation that fits all of the available data. Reference my previous statement about Occam's Razor.

A cluster of mostly irrelevant and unrelated questions, put into paragraph form and then characterized as ?analysis?? Occam?s Razor can be conveniently used as a basis for pretty much any preconceived notion within a complicated issue that is still coming to light.

Although Jack Swarbrick would never have said it in the presser, I would guarantee the first objective of the investigation was to ensure that Manti wasn?t in on it. After than to ensure that it wasn?t an extortion scam. After than to determine if any NCAA violations were applicable. After that, Notre Dame has exactly zero interest in digging through credit card bills, IP addresses and phone records to placate the whims of rival fans?not that ND has the legal authority to conduct such an investigation anyway.

For the last four months the entire national news media carried the Manti girlfriends bit without a hint of follow up or investigation?Why are you so concerned about a single story in the South Bend Tribune? It?s the same story that was highlighted on Jan. 16th when this broke?but you need to focus on it to maintain the Occam?s Razor bit and be willfully blind to the plethora of other information that has been published in the week since.

There are now at least six others who were duped by the online persona of Lennay Kekua, going back to 2008?so yes, somebody obviously put that much time, thought and effort into this hoax?

Also, the ?relationship? part of this as it applies to Teo has been going on for a bit over a year. That they were facebook friends and/or twitter followers for three years is a mis-characterization.

It?s a dramatic, bizarre and twisted story being played out in an over-hyped sensationalized society that is learning yet another aspect of how the internet and social media phenomena is changing our world. This story has dominated the headlines for over a week?yet your questions don?t involve a single bit of new insight. Your three paragraph laundry list could have been written into the original deadspin article.

Again, this is a humiliating mind-fuck for Teo. He very stupidly allowed his credibility to be questioned in addition to his glaring gullibility by overly exaggerating and dramatizing. But that is a pretty far cry from being a lying, narcissistic attention whore.

[hack]

http://aol.sportingnews.com/nfl/stor...anti-teo-kekua

http://www.wtop.com/1226/3204452/Love-on-the-Net

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-redskins-false-identity-manti-teo-20130123,0,7384664.story

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/washington-redskins-were-targeted-imposter-using-fake-female-181105506--nfl.html

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/01/23/former-skin-phillip-daniels-also-fell-victim-to-internet-hoax-warned-locker-room-in-december/

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342011

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000129949/article/washington-redskins-duped-by-woman-with-fake-online-identity

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1497859-washington-redskins-players-tried-to-meet-woman-with-fake-online-identity

http://www.usatoday.com/story/gameon...-hoax/1859021/

I asked if YOU saw those as analagous. Nine links to coverage of the same incident doesn't do that.

[Hannibal]

A cluster of mostly irrelevant and unrelated questions, put into paragraph form and then characterized as “analysis”… .

Those are absolutely not unrelated questions. They are questions as to how this string of events occurred. They are questions that could and should be answered in three seconds if there was any truth to Teo's story. Why did this "love of his life that he met after the 2009 Stanford game" suddenly morph into "internet girlfriend that he only talked to on the phone for three years, but never once saw photos of her friends and family, never tried to meet her (even though she was also from Hawaii), and never tried to video chat or face time with her"?

The South Bend Tribune didn't fabricate the story about how these two met. Who did?

Occam's Razor is useful when there is an unusual phenomenon with multiple possible explanations. The one that is most likely to be true is the one that doesn't require multiple strange behaviors or events that nobody has ever seen or heard of in their lives all occurring in one huge coincidence that has a one-in-a-million probability. Manti Teo's story is as unlikely as a World Trade Center conspiracy theory, and has even less evidence to back it up.

[Hannibal]

I asked if YOU saw those as analagous. Nine links to coverage of the same incident doesn't do that.

The story about the Redskins players is that it actually makes Teo look worse, not better. The Redskins players did try to meet her. They did not refer to this woman as "the love of their lives". They found out that she was phony, and according to the story, they were able to confirm that there was an actual woman behind the hoax.

[hack]

Did the Redskins players' dads have any comment on home visitations?

[Jeff Buchanan]

I think the media circus surrounding Teo and ND is an immense waste of time. It is not newsworthy ..... except in this country where sports/entertainment IS the news these days. Sad.

I think there are some important issues here. I haven't seen any good commentary on it mostly just babbling about the story.

One has to be stupid to conclude that ND officials handled this well. It should and could have been a non-story if the circumstances had been investigated, as Hanni suggests, by ND personnel inside the AD. Having done that, Swarbrick could have had a low key, truthful announcement about what happened; he could have framed the story in a way that showed how young, high profile athletes can get taken in by the unscrupulous and that the university had supported one of its own in outing those responsible. Instead, int appears they chose to stonewall, apparently hoping the story would go away. That was a really stupid decision, IMO because it demonstrates a serious failure on the part of ND officials to understand how rapidly things can unravel, in today's media environment, when people who should be proactive in these matters aren't.

Although I've got no evidence to support this assertion, it appears that ND officials became complicit in a fabricated story, one started by Teo and further facilitated by family, and may have told Teo to not comment further on it instead of plugging the hole in the damn that was about to burst. An abject lesson in how not to handle Public relations.

I have some empathy for Teo. I think he was manipulated by all sides in this. Who the hell was responsible for setting up the Curic interview? Another PR debacle. Sure, Teo could have been complicit in the fabrication but adults involved since the start should have known better. This circus is a classic example of things getting out of control because lies built up upon lies. I'm more inclined to let Teo off the hook than I am to let his father and ND officials off. Where were the adults fer God's sake.

[Optimus Prime]

Why don't these Butt Pirates just stop digging?

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo tells Dr. Phil he was in love with Manti Te'o

http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2013-01-30/ronaiah-tuiasosopo-gay-manti-teo-dr-phil-interview-video-tv-time-date-channel

[Optimus Prime]

I am certain that the ND team is glad that they will no longer have to shower with Manti Te'o.

Is that the end of the drama, his girlfriend of three years is actually alive and a man?

[Clashmore Mike]

Absolutely the end of it...hell I had forgotten all about it until you brought it up.

[Optimus Prime]

Well Mike, now that the story has struck midnight and Cinderella's identity has been revealed the drama has become surreal.

From what has been reported, the school as well as his teammates sensed something was awry with his story but it didn't stop them from garnering false attention, concern & sympathy over the entire season and only in the end did they "come partially clean". Seems to me there are more questions that need to be answered.

For example begs the questions, are they still dating and if so, do they plan to marry soon?

A little penitence by ND at this point would serve them well.

[Clashmore Mike]

I'll be sure to pass your advice along...

[Optimus Prime]

Thanks Mike, word of caution, just watch your ass while you are over there.