Will the Real Manti Te'o Please Stand Up

At the onset of the 2012 college football season, news poured out that the star linebacker of Notre Dame, Manti Te'o, had suffered two egregious losses in a span of a few hours. First his grandmother died, then hours later his girlfriend died after a battle with leukemia. All of this was a remarkable back story for one of the best players in the nation, and this inspiration kept Te'o going en route to leading his team to an undefeated regular season and a date in the BCS National Championship.

Courtesy of Bleacher Report

Now, courtesy of an intense Deadspin.com report, it is being uncovered that not only did his girlfriend not die from leukemia, but that she didn't exist at any point. Someone had deceived Te'o into believing a girl out there named Lennay Kekua was the love of his life. He carried on this relationship over the course of a year, and supposedly spoke with her on the phone daily and cared about her deeply.

The most baffling notion of this whole story is the fact that Te'o himself, and his parents, claimed they met her in person. His parents say she used to visit him in his home state of Hawaii, and he says he originally met her after a game versus Stanford in 2011. So then if he claims he met her, then she would have to be real, right? Apparently not.

According to Deadspin, this woman never existed and there is evidence to support this. They say Te'o never met Kekua, and that he maintained a relationship with her solely online. On its surface, this alone sounds strange, and Te'o's insistence of this relationship seems like the actions of someone who struggles socially. But with that in mind, there are millions of people who are in online relationships today. It is a relatively new phenomenon, and there are more people than just Manti Te'o who claim to be in love without ever having met their significant other. It is certainly odd, but surprisingly common nonetheless.

Now, Te'o is supposedly going to speak soon and address of all the madness. He has already released a statement, along with Notre Dame, that claims he was the victim of a hoax. Someone online lead him to believe that who he was talking to was a female whom he wound up caring for deeply. They then exacerbated this whole thing by concocting stories of a severe car accident she endured, followed by the discovery of cancer in her body which would eventually lead to her demise. Apparently Te'o believed it all, believed that was suffering yet another loss after the passing of his grandmother, and shared it with the college football world. Everyone felt his pain and sorrow, and even the biggest Notre Dame haters became more inclined to root for them because of Te'o and his remarkable story. Several months later, however, the truth has come to light.

The most pressing question of all is what happens to Te'o next? Per the deadspin report, there are numerous people and accounts that believe Te'o was not really duped, but was in fact a perpetrator of this incident all along. That he participated in the creation of this woman, and helped support this story by continuing to talk about her in the media and tell of his sob story. Would he do that for publicity? Perhaps for Heisman votes? Why would Te'o drag something like this on, and carry it into the light so extensively that ESPN did a whole behind the scenes story on him and the struggles he endured over the past year? Is this soft spoken Hawaiian-born man of faith secretly a malicious person who will do anything for some good publicity? Or is he just, unfortunately, incredibly naive?

Neither one of those things is the best look for Te'o moving forward. However if you had to pick your poison you would hope he is just remarkably naive and the victim of some disgusting, humiliating prank. "Catfishing", as it is commonly referred to, is the act of luring someone online into believing you are someone you're not, and continuing to carry on a relationship. It's become such a huge thing that there was even a documentary movie created about it, and there is now a television show of the same name. It now appears that Te'o is suddenly the most famous person among the scores of those who have been catfished.

Whenever Te'o decides to speak, not only should he be 100% honest with what actually happened on his end, but he should anticipate heavy fire coming from everyone who has questions. If Te'o speaks and isn't truthful, one would have to imagine that the truth will come to light eventually as it seemingly always does. If that is the case, Te'o could watch his reputation and his draft stock drop dramatically in the coming weeks. After a poor championship performance against Alabama, Te'o could be on a fast track to watching that stock potentially plummet if he becomes the face of a mastermind ploy for fame and fortune, and ultimately yield great untrustworthiness.

Simply put, this whole situation is unprecedented and wildly complex. The entire Deadspin report reads like something out of a Christopher Nolan script, as there are twists and turns and new names at every corner. Currently, no one knows what to think. Whether to feel bad for Te'o and console him for being at the heart of something so senseless and brutal, or condone him for creating something that is so baffling and cynical that it makes him look like someone who doesn't exactly have all his marbles. Either way, Te'o is about to endure a brutal few weeks of questions, picking, and pruning into this entire endeavor and attempts to expose him for who he really is.

It's just a matter of time until we find out if Te'o is still the gentle, kind spirited person he was portrayed to be over the course of his tenure at Notre Dame, or if he is this villainous schemer whose plan has been foiled to the utmost extent. Will NFL GM's see him as a worthy NFL linebacker, or a guy who can't be trusted in the locker room and ultimately has more cons than pros. It'll be an interesting few months until the NFL Draft, and soon we'll all find out who the real Manti Te'o is.