Manti Te’o Online Dating Gone Awry?

Here’s the one thing I’m sure of in this Manti Te’o situation.  Someone is lying.  Who, I’m not exactly sure.  Let’s examine what the media has finally decided to uncover.

Here are a few articles to read.  Feel free to Google more for yourself, but beware it’s a rabbit hole:

• This is the one that broke the story yesterday by deadspin.com.
• This is the one about the guy on the Arizona Cardinals who claims to have met the fake dead girlfriend. Yeah, exactly.
• This is one from the New York Times. Pretty good summary of the last two days.
• This is the AP article that says Mati Te’o spoke to the press about his girlfriend after he says he knew it was a hoax.
• This is an interesting take on the journalism aspect of the story.

So, what do we know? A lot of crap.  Either this guy was duped or is a liar. Maybe a little of both? First of all, be it from the way these journalists write or the fact that they just don’t have the time to check facts, this guy possibly dated this chick for three years without ever meeting her in person.

Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never even existed, Notre Dame All-American linebacker Manti Te’o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.

That quote is from the AP article.  See what I mean?  The Deadspin.com article says they started “dating” in 2012.  Well, he called her his girl friend in early 2012, but I suppose they could have been dating before that.  We all know how that can label can be fuzzy even when you meet in a bar or other traditional dating venue.

Everyone knows that the first rule of online dating is that it’s just a way to meet in real life.  If the person you are chatting up doesn’t ever seem to be able to meet in real life, you move on…quickly.  It’s a sign that something is amiss.

Now I know there are lonely people out there who want to believe that the person they’ve been interacting with for months is truly into them, but I have a difficult time believing a football player at a college like Notre Dame doesn’t have chicks flinging themselves at him on a regular basis.

Also, how could his friends not know that something weird was going on? They are there with him daily, right? Didn’t they go, “Um where is this girlfriend of yours?  Why isn’t she visiting you or you visiting her?”  Did none of his friends go, “Something’s not right with that woman you are dating, my friend.”

I can understand how he might have embellished the truth to his family.  He’s Mormon and might have had some pressure to get married, but just wasn’t having any luck, so he just told them what they wanted to hear to get them off his back.  I’m just speculating.  None of that could be true, but if it was the case, I think some of us could empathize.

Maybe it was a combination of him being scammed and him lying to his family about how much interaction he had with this person in real life.  Or maybe his dad did the embellishing, who knows?  Someone knows and it seems that no one is telling the truth.

It’s kind of like when you were a kid and someone misbehaved, but wouldn’t fess up to it, so your mom said, “Fine!  You’re all in trouble then!”  That’s how I feel, “Fine!  You’re all liars!”  No one wants to man up and tell the truth then everyone is in trouble.

Journalists are in trouble too.  Yes, I know you’re all overworked, underpaid and on the verge of being replaced by holograms, but does that mean you need to take what everyone says to you as the truth?  Did no one go, “Your grandmother and your girlfriend died within hours of each other?” (Raises eyebrow in skepticism) “That seems odd…”

Apparently not.  And sorry, but I really can’t trust what a college says these days, and a Catholic one is like a double whammy. I mean if colleges are willing to cover up the rape of little boys to protect their football programs, who is to say that they aren’t going to do whatever it takes to protect that same program when they find out a star player is involved in some ridiculous online dating scam and may or may not be lying about it?