Manti Te'o

The Sporting News looks back on the bizarre catfishing hoax that hooked the star Notre Dame linebacker.

The friend also claimed Tuiasosopo said Te'o was not involved with the hoax. It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life. So I kind of tailored my stories to have people think that, yeah, he met her before she passed away, so that people wouldn't think that I was some crazy dude." Catfishing is often carried out with the intent of duping a specific victim. The University immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax. To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating. He wants to be with his teammates, he wants to be with the people that care about him. In either instance, the person creating the persona will use photos from a real person, often without their knowledge or consent, to deepen the illusion their fabrication is legitimate. Deadspin also interviewed sources who suggested the Notre Dame linebacker had to have some knowledge he was the victim of catfishing — a practice in which someone impersonates or creates an online persona. Te'o's story was bolstered not only by his play, but also by significant attention from local and national media: He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and was also featured as part of a "College GameDay" episode, for example. In the postgame interview, Te'o spoke extensively about his family and how much they meant to him. But his support and his family at home have been great, and all of the coaches and players have been there for him.

The Emmy-winning Vainuku, whose documentary about four Polynesian football athletes, In Football We Trust, premiered at Sundance in 2015, is from Salt Lake City ...

In 2021, gymnast Simone Biles was central to NBC’s promotion of the Tokyo Olympics but when she withdrew from competition, it became a telling moment to see how the sports media would handle the story, along with questions about mental health stresses that elite athletes face. Likewise, ESPN, which had been called out for its gratuitous piece in 2012, still was aching to ask “hard questions” of Te’o, in its effort to redeem its sloppy journalism surrounding the story by doing its own retrospective for its Backstory series in early 2021. Undoubtedly, the UNTOLD episodes finally give Te’o the opportunity to reclaim everything he had lost and to do so on his own terms. Furthermore, the documentary leads to truths well beyond the focus on a tale of “catfishing.” At the time when their online relationship began, the phenomenon of “catfishing” was not as widely known as it is today. He was selected in the second round by the San Diego Chargers. Now a free agent, he also was with the New Orleans Saints and, more recently, the Chicago Bears. Without a doubt in watching both episodes, to quote Vainuku, Te’o “is the definition of faith, family and football.” His high school career in Hawai’i became a badge of pride for his parents, who were excited about his college prospects. Tuiasosopo is sincere in her remorse while Te’o, who is married now, epitomizes grace and acceptance, holding no grudges against Tuiasosopo while reinforcing the importance of his LDS faith. Among the last interviews Te’o had done on the matter was in early 2013 with Katie Couric, in the immediate aftermath of the revelation. He was the young Polynesian athlete who was the epitome of a culture based on the pillars of faith, family and football. Most significantly, it is a satisfying closure for Te’o as well as Tuiasosopo, who at the time of filming, was going through gender transition. For today’s premiere of the second volume of Netflix’s UNTOLD, its sport documentary series, the first two episodes titled The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, directed by Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku, revisit Teo’s story. For reporters covering the culture of sport, Teo’s story was perfect.

The new Netflix documentary, 'Untold', looks back at the tabloid drama through a sympathetic lens.

I’ll take all the jokes, I’ll take all the memes, so I can be an inspiration to the one who needs me to be.” Whatever the truth, Te’o sadly became a person of ridicule both online and off ( Saturday Night Live even parodied the story on the show). Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice.” But then on 11 September he was hit by a double tragedy: both his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died on the same day. When Te’o took to the football pitch, it was by all accounts an incredible performance – he took 12 tackles and his team went on to beat Michigan State 20-3. Now, The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, a two-part documentary that arrives as part of Netflix’s Untold series, revisits the strange story – and reveals who he was really talking to.

Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist takes a fresh look at the 2013 scandal and the collatoral damage left in its wake.

It's a story about the lies we tell to feel alive, the lies we tell to save face, and the cost of not asking questions we don't really want the answers to. At the end of the day, the story of Manti Te'o, Naya Tuiasosopo, and the lie that grew too big not to leave some serious collateral damage in its path, is a lot more understandable than a lot of people were willing to allow at the time. But they also left a lot of questions unanswered in their initial story, and the national media was all to happy to swoop in and provide their own answers. That both Te'o and Tuiasosopo seemed to have arrived at a place of relative peace on the other side of this is a blessing. (Of course to not expect the national media to go all-in on a scandal about lies and sexuality when they could otherwise be talking about fact-checking practices in sports journalism is pretty naive itself.) The doc runs through the process of how Deadspin writers Tim Burke and Jack Dickey broke the story, and then how the national media ran with it, interpreting it in whatever way suited them. As both Burke and Dickey attest, this was the perfect Deadspin story: a way to make ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and the rest of the credulous, cheerleading sports media look stupid while tearing down one of that year's most pious myths in sports. As told in the two-part doc directed by Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku, the catfishing of Manti Te'o forms the root of a story about two incredibly lonely people whose circumstances had both more and less in common than was originally surmised. What elevated Te'o's story above the ranks of a typical catfishing story was in part sinister and in part circumstantial. Because Te'o was Notre Dame's top freshman recruit and this happened just before the football season began, it quickly became easy and enthusiastic fodder for the sports media, who took this story of double tragedy and ran with it all season. She tells a story that feels a bit less exotic in 2022, about feeling comfortable in an online relationship where she could pretend to be this made-up person. It its first season, Netflix's sports documentary series Untold did a good job of living up to its title, offering illuminating looks at stories that had previously not been covered covered nearly as extensively.

The internet poked fun at Manti Te'o after a catfishing saga derailed his NFL prospects, but Kevin E G Perry finds the athlete cuts a sympathetic figure in ...

While he went on to spend seven years in the NFL with the San Diego Chargers, New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears, Te’o never quite reached the heights that had once been predicted for him. She started talking to Te’o because she was looking for a friend, and she found a genuine one in the sweet and sensitive football player. In the years since Lennay was exposed as a hoax, Tuiasosopo has come out as transgender, and in her own interviews with Duffy and Vainuku says that it was her struggles with identity, rather than anything more nefarious, that inspired the creation of the Lennay Kekua account. In extensive interviews with directors Ryan Duffy and Tony Vainuku, Te’o recounts his upbringing in Hawaii and the promising life he built for himself around the three tenets of family, football and his Mormon faith. In truth, as The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist makes plain, the young athlete had only ever acted compassionately, if naively, and had done nothing to deserve such mockery. Te’o’s tumultuous, heart-wrenching tale is the subject of The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, the first instalment of the second season of the Netflix documentary series Untold. The athlete originally shot to nationwide fame in America as a superstar linebacker for college team Notre Dame, in part thanks to his emotive backstory: on 11 September 2012, in the run-up to some of his team’s most crucial fixtures, both his grandmother and girlfriend died on the same day.

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Te’o is now married to Jovi Nicole Engbino, a personal trainer and beauty consultant. Te’o chose Notre Dame and played for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Football team from 2009 to 2012. He has made a total of 307 tackles in his NFL career .

Manti Te'o -- the college football superstar who fell for one of the most famous catfishing scams to date -- is opening up on his decision to go public with ...

"Cam Jordan with the Saints took a bunch of us teammates to a Jay-Z concert," Te'o said on "CBS Mornings." Manti Te'o -- the college football superstar who fell for one of the most famous catfishing scams to date -- is opening up on his decision to go public with his side of the hoax ... saying attending a Jay-Z concert helped him come forward. Manti Te'o Jay-Z Inspired Me To Speak Out ... On Catfishing Hoax Now, Manti says he's happily married ... with one daughter, and a son on the way. Manti -- who was eventually drafted by the San Diego Chargers in the second round of the 2013 NFL Draft -- is now speaking about the whole thing ... and says he was first inspired to go public with his story after attending a Jay-Z concert as a member of the New Orleans Saints in 2017. Manti Te'o Says Jay-Z Inspired Him To Speak Out On Catfishing Hoax

He was the golden boy in his Hawaii hometown, active in his faith and easy to get along with. Then, tragedy struck. His grandma died, then his girlfriend. Both ...

Yes, it is a sports story, a football story to a degree, but really it's a story about two individuals who were pretty young at the time -- I think they were 19-, 20-years-old when they were building this relationship -- and so to us they were really the only two people that knew what those conversations were, that knew what their relationship was like, that knew how each other felt about one another. I think it was just something that felt genuine and important in the way that they talked about it. When we first talked to Naya, the way she spoke about her journey of self-discovery and a journey of self-identity was an evolving process. But I do think in a way, none of our documentaries, even though they're sports documentaries, really have anything to do with who's going to win the championship game, who's going to hit the three-pointer as the clock winds down and win the game for their team. But at the time that we were filming this documentary, her journey was evolving to a degree. Was there anything that surprised you as you all were going about the research and reporting process? One thing that stood out to me is this is a story about Manti obviously, but you choose to lead with Naya, and you just said that you actually spoke to her first. I don't think they wanted that media coverage to be the period at the end of this really long sentence that was a story between these two individuals. And so I think for both of them the opportunity to really interview at length, at deep, about this story was appealing and attractive to them. I think there was a pile of documentary pitches sitting in his inbox over the course of the years. It's just always been a white whale in the sports documentary space; it's something that my brother and I remember very well, just kind of reading the news media on it and all the noise. It was probably a call that was only going to be 15, 20 minutes, and we ended up talking to her for two hours.

Manti Te'o is speaking out about the 2012 catfishing incident in order to heal from it, he told "CBS Mornings."

"I want to bring more light to my grandmother because it almost is like this story overshadows her," Te'o said. Following the story, Te'o received backlash online for critics who said he was in on the scheme. "You don't expect for somebody to say 'Hey, somebody's dead,' and three months later, 'Somebody's alive.' What do you do with that information?" Reporters at the sports outlet Deadspin in 2013 were unable to locate records of Kekua's death or for a car accident on the reported dates. Football player Manti Te'o, who learned in 2012 that his online girlfriend not only faked her own death but also was not the person she claimed, says that he's speaking out about the situation so he can to heal from it. During Te'o's senior year at Notre Dame in 2012, he reported the death of both his girlfriend Lennay Kekua and grandmother within hours of each other.