Bizarre Te'o Tale the Strangest Yet

Sports have been around for hundreds of years and in that span there have been stories of heroics, humor, inspiration, victory, defeat and mystery. There may never have been a story as strange and bizarre as the tale that is unfolding in South Bend, Indiana involving former Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o though. By now, the details of the story are well-known and I won't go through them again on this post, but as I was reading an article about the latest developments I couldn't help but wonder why this is so newsworthy?

In the grand scheme of things this story, whether Te'o created/participated in the hoax or not, shouldn't affect the star linebacker that much. Sure, he will be embarrassed and humiliated by the media and fans, but his draft stock shouldn't drop that much, if at all. He won't be in any trouble with the law or anything like that and so it begs the question: why do we care? There are men in the NFL who have murdered people yet they continue to get picked up by teams so the idea that Te'o will see his draft stock drop because of this is silly to me. If the kid is a player then teams will want him.

The reason that this story is so interesting is because it is so mind-boggling. Online relationships are a reality in today's world and people are tricked everyday on who they are actually conversing with. There is an entire television program devoted to stories of online relationship fraud and lying which proves it is a very real thing. However, there was little thought that something like this would ever happen to a celebrity. Yet, here is Te'o claiming to be the victim of someone's sick joke and there was Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick almost daring someone to challenge Te'o on his role in this.

Manti Te'o was all that is right in sports. In a world where athletes take banned substances like candy, have frequent run-ins with the law and college programs are hit with sanctions almost weekly, Te'o was special. He was the All-American linebacker for the country's most recognizable team who had close ties with his family and endured enormous grief to orchestrate one of the greatest seasons we have seen from a defensive player in college football. In a six hour span on September 12th his grandmother and "girlfriend" passed away, but his play only improved as the year went on. He was a hero.

Now, he is the center of perhaps the strangest story to ever hit the sports world. People are fooled by others in online relationships every day, but what makes this one different is that is wasn't just one guy who was fooled by someone behind a computer screen. It was literally the entire nation. All of America watched Te'o produce big game after big game and then talk about his "girlfriend" in postgame interviews. We all believed it until a few days ago.

We may never know how someone could get away with something like this, but it truly is fascinating how it has all played out. There will be many more details to come, but it's my hope that Te'o didn't participate in this hoax for attention and I certainly hope he wasn't a part of creating it. If he was simply a victim then he is just a foolish college student who engaged in a relationship with someone he never met. If he participated or created this hoax then he is an attention-seeking fraud and this will leave a stain on his career and life forever.

So if he did participate/create the hoax then I hope the few months of fame and attention were worth it because forever is a long time. Forever is permanent.