Manti Te’o has successfully transformed ESPN’s online site into a special edition of Entertainment Tonight with what is honestly one of the most elaborate public dupes on which the press has feasted its eyes. If it is true, that is. If this story really is of a second place Heisman finalist spending four years developing a long distance relationship with someone he had never met before, then maybe the NCAA should start looking into safer helmets to prevent brain damage to their student-athletes.
What is one of the most striking aspects of this case, if not Te’o’s unbelievable gullibility, is the dedication it took on the end of the pranksters orchestrating the whole scheme.
“Every day. I slept on the phone with her every night,” Te’o said. “… I’d be on the phone. And she had complications from the accident, and she said the only thing that could help her sleep was if I was on the phone. So I would be on the phone, and I’d have the phone on the whole night.”
After a lengthy interview with ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap, the world got its answers straight from Te’o himself, during which he adequately showed he was not in on the hoax. This makes the quotes from him even more astounding in the fact that they showed someone actually had to talk to Te’o every single night until he fell asleep. Within the laundry list of events in the duping were a near-fatal car crash, an extended coma, group spiritual conversations that included Te’o’s parents, and several plans to meet up.
The dedication on the part of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the admitted mastermind, and his two accomplices definitely deserves a second thought. The first reaction elicited from the public was one of general outrage directed at the scheme because all of the sympathy felt for Te’o was unfounded and the plot was downright cruel.
The second reaction really should be pure amazement that for four years, from the time Te’o was a freshman at Notre Dame, these three people spent hundreds of days invested in this hoax. They hatched a plot that even included having “Lennay Kekua,” the fictional girlfriend, breath into the phone to simulate her post-car accident comatose state and they stuck to it day in and day out.
All the media attention really should not be centered on Te’o. He was tricked and it may or may not have affected his game performance. In any case, the media should really just lay off him for a while.
The real story needs to be Tuiasosopo and the woman who talked Te’o to sleep every night. How they avoided the suggestion of video chatting so that the two lovebirds could see each other while they talked is another feat in itself. What brings this hoax above and beyond is surely not Te’o. In an unfair stereotype, athletes are not known to be the sharpest tools in the shed, but for some girl to go all that time without thinking, “You know, I’m getting tired of this,” and calling it quits— is unprecedented.
The question that probably will never get answered but should be asked is, at the end of all this, is Te’o actually that devastated that this turned out to be a hoax? What would he consider to be the worse situation, the one where he is humiliated in front of the national eye or the one where the woman he actually loved died of Leukemia? Looking back at the situation, no one should be enraged or even angry about it. Relief should be the overpowering emotion; relief that such a sad story turned out to be just that—a story.
Te’o will probably never put this behind him and the media will hold onto it for a while. It will define him as he goes into the NFL draft and is selected by a team. It will pop up in his first few years on a pro team and within the team he will never hear the end of it. But for the most part, he will be able to move on from this.
If he does not become a breakout star in the NFL then no one is going to care enough about him for the story to resurface in a big way. Even if he does become a franchise name for some pro team, then his outstanding play will eventually beat out the jabs about the sports world’s most impressive dupe.
The tale of Te’o boils down to an emotionally-vulnerable athlete, a great use of modern communication techniques, and a ton of commitment. Working up a fuss over the hoax is not the way to go. It’s just an entertaining story that even Hollywood couldn’t have done better.
