Did Manti Te'o know his dead girlfriend never existed?

Oh man, this does NOT look good. At all.

Here we goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ...

QUOTE(#1):

Originally posted 11:26 PM ET  01.16 by ICEnSoCal

Oh man, this does NOT look good. At all.

No matter how they try to spin this, it will NOT look good at all. NO silver lining in THIS cloud.

We are talking about the same school that changed the pronunciation of their QB's last name so that it would rhyme with Heisman. So the fact that their 2012 Heisman candidate had an imaginary girlfriend with a compelling, but bogus, backstory is really no surprise.

I'm already sick of this. The TMZ generation needs to grow up and stop focusing on crap like this.

this is a strange article, to say the least. And how would people not have known about the made up girlfriend when it happened?

Get ready... this story is going to be everywhere for a while.

QUOTE(#6):

Originally posted 11:50 PM ET  01.16 by puttin on the foil

this is a strange article, to say the least. And how would people not have known about the made up girlfriend when it happened?

it's called a cover-up. the question is, why?

anyone seen the movie catfish?

QUOTE(#8):

Originally posted 11:55 PM ET  01.16 by honestjohn

it's called a cover-up. the question is, why?

I agree 100%. Why invent it in the first place and then why act to cover it up afterwards? If he was the victim of a hoax, why would he have then made up extra details in addition to it all. I understand that it's embarrassing, but there's no way he could have figured it would help.

This is one of the strangest stories I have ever read.

QUOTE(#9):

Originally posted 12:06 AM ET  01.17 by puttin on the foil

anyone seen the movie catfish?

Scripted. Just like the TV show. I wanna punch that tool in the face.

QUOTE(#5):

Originally posted 11:35 PM ET  01.16 by Dr. B-f-G

I'm already sick of this. The TMZ generation needs to grow up and stop focusing on crap like this.

I agree. The angle for us here though, was did he know this girl actually never existed??? If that's he case, it makes him look REAL bad.

QUOTE(#11):

Originally posted 12:09 AM ET  01.17 by jermur613

Scripted. Just like the TV show. I wanna punch that tool in the face.

scripted or not is irrelevant...and I didnt even know there was a show...

but anyways, I could see how he could have started some sort of online thing that was a hoax...but nothing after that makes sense.

At first read I was wondering to myself if it was impossible that he has a real mental problem and his friends and family are complicit in helping him hide it. At this point, I suppose it's as plausible a theory as any because no theory really makes total sense.

No theory does make sense. But I think your "real life catfish" referrence is probably the closest to what the actual story is. Atleast from what little I have read about the situation and Te'o.

There have been people on this site before "fake" their own death. It's all part of the internet. The anonymity makes it easy to get people to feed into whatever you tell them. Especially someone who may WANT to believe.

Read the deadspin article. There's just too many interviews, quotes, cross ties with the person supposedly responsible for duping him. It's just much.

http://deadspin.com/5976517/

Just read somewhere else, supposedly the pics of his "gf" were actually of another one of his friends. Who knows. Only time will tell when some of the BS can be seperated out of the stories, either his, or the authors.

Just read somewhere else, supposedly the pics of his "gf" were actually of another one of his friends. Who knows. Only time will tell when some of the BS can be seperated out of the stories, either his, or the authors.

QUOTE(#12):

Originally posted 12:09 AM ET  01.17 by ICEnSoCal

I agree. The angle for us here though, was did he know this girl actually never existed??? If that's he case, it makes him look REAL bad.

AND when did he actually figure it out that she didn't exist? Yeah, I know they say that he and his family reported it to ND on Dec. 26th. But how long before they reported it to ND did they know about it?

Just because ND investigated it doesn't necessarily mean they investigated without bias. With ALL the media on it NOW a FULL blast, it should get even more interesting over the course of this week.

There's gonna be NO winners out of all this, regardless.

Bad news Corp. Like the guy wasn't having a bad enough couple of weeks as it was. Yikes.

Is his dead grandma made-up too? I heard she's alive and well watching Jerry Springer on their rented couch back in poko-olo.

If your make believe girlfriend dies in cyberspace, does she go to computer heaven?

Was anyone suspicious that he didn't attend her funeral?

Manti is as nuts as the guy who was pretending to be the girl he was pretending to date.... for 3 years.

I hope they both appear on the MTV show Catfish, and hash it out. I bet Manti ends up being the girl when it's all said and done, and that's better than watching reruns of the BCS championship game all offseason long on the ESPN family of terrible broadcasting. Hey, it's on again, I'm turning it off before halftime just like I did on January 7th.