While Jobu is on vacation, enjoy one of our greatest hits as Jobu takes a light-hearted look at the initial information from the Manti Te’o scandal.
I didn’t want to weigh in on this issue until all the dust had settled, but holy crap is it dusty in here. There’s dust literally everywhere. Could this story get any weirder? Te’o had a girlfriend, then she died. Then, he didn’t have a girlfriend because she didn’t exist. Then, some guy on the Cardinals said she did exist, and that he was her friend, but don’t mess with Troy Polumalu about it! I don’t know how this story is going to end, but I know Lance Armstrong is probably running up and down his hallways singing the Notre Dame fight song and thanking the lord for this distraction. I also know how I would solve this whole issue in one afternoon of television.
First of all, congratulations to Deadspin for breaking this story on Wednesday. Allegedly, ESPN had the story a week or ten days earlier and was sitting on it in anticipation of getting an exclusive interview with Te’o himself, but Deadspin got wind of it, confirmed the hoax and got the big news pay day. They do some good, yet underrated work on Deadspin, and they deserved to get this big scoop.
Right now, so much weird information is coming out that it’s hard to really bring it all together into a coherent story. The undisputed facts are as follows: Manti Te’o played football for Notre Dame… That’s it. Everything else about this story is clouded. You know what we actually need? Screw Oprah and Bob Costas. We need Maury! Maury would bring Manti down to his studio in Stamford, CT, administer a lie detector test and get to the bottom of this whole thing.
“Manti… We asked you if you met Lennay Kekua at the Stanford/Notre Dame game on November 28, 2009. You answered ‘yes’. The lie detector determined that was a lie.” (crowd erupts in chants of “Maury! Maury! Maury!” as Te’o’s head sinks into his hands).
“Manti… We asked you if your girlfriend was in a car accident, survived a coma because your voice kept her heart rate up as she lay unconscious, until she finally came out of the coma moments before her family was going to pull the plug. You answered ‘yes’. The lie detector determined that was a lie.” (more crowd taunts, more sad Te’o)
“Manti… We asked you if your girlfriend was found to be suffering from Leukemia after waking from her coma, seemingly beat the disease and then died suddenly on September 11, 2012, just hours after your grandmother also passed away, but you didn’t go to the funeral, or ever visit her family because she told you she wanted you to play the game. You answered ‘yes’. The lie detector determined that… was a lie.”
At this point, as Manti sat there looking sad and defeated, Maury would obviously bring out a secret guest from Manti’s past, Roniah Tuiasasopo, who would come out to a loud chorus of boos from the crowd and immediately begin flipping audience members off and spouting as many curse-laden insults at them as he could think of. “Yeah I hoaxed Te’o! Yeah I did it! Whatever! F**k you guys! I do what I want! Whatever! Y’all don’t know me! Whatever! I tell everyone fake stories about car accidents to everyone I know because I have low self esteem! Whatever! F**k you too! Y’all don’t know me!”
That’s where Tuiasasopo would drop the bombshell that Manti knew about the scheme all along and went along with it to build sympathy for his Heisman push, or to cover up his secret gay affair with Tuiasasopo himself, or whatever other crazy theories are out there right now. The crowd would go wild, before Maury quieted them down so that he himself could drop the biggest bombshell of all…
“Manti… When it comes to your 22 year old, make-believe deceased girlfriend Lennay Kekua… you ARE the father!”
OK that was fun and needed to be done. To be honest, I’m not sure what I believe just yet, but I’m leaning towards the scenario that Manti was hoaxed, found out about it and perpetrated the lie to save embarrassment. As these things often do, it spun out of control and now he’s in over his head in a ridiculous scandal. By the way, he’s still getting drafted in the first round this year, I just hope enough teams get scared away that the Giants can snag him somehow. I’ll definitely be weighing in some more on this issue as more crazy stories comes out (possibly an official one from Manti Te’o himself), so please… stay tuned.
Featured image courtesy of: Jeff Haynes/Reuters
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