Manti Te'o: A Victim or a Liar?

Manti Te’o: A Victim or a Liar?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/19/sport/manti-teo-controversy/index.html?hpt=us_c2

            A Victim or a Liar? Everybody who has heard the story about the star Notre Dame linebacker’s supposed girlfriend who died in September of leukemia, only to have been found out to not exist, are asking themselves this very question.  For those who haven’t heard the story, here’s a quick background: Manti Te’o, a Heisman trophy finalist in college football, claims to have had an online relationship with a girl from Stanford. Then, on the same day his grandmother died, this girl also died from leukemia.  Shortly after Notre Dame lost the national championship game to Alabama, the story broke that this girlfriend never really existed and Te’o got scammed.  Since then, the biggest question, and really one of the last ones that remain: Is Manti Te’o a victim of some scam artists or was this whole scheme planned out and Te’o even one of the conspirators?

The article above is named “Manti Te'o denies he was part of girlfriend hoax.” Recently, Manti Te’o spoke publicly about the hoax for the first time and the answers and information that he gave is basically put together in this article.  The gist of his story is that he is completely innocent and that he had no idea of the hoax while it was occurring.

My opinion?  Te’o is a complete and utter liar and this whole hoax is nothing more than a sick publicity stunt.  Nothing in this story adds up and many facts seem very fishy.  The first one is the fact that this whole relationship was over the internet.  A scam artist would have to be very, very dedicated to have time to sit down and talk to Te’o over the phone every single night for six months.  On the other hand, if Te’o knew about the hoax then he could say they talked, or even met (which he did say, then admitted he lied about it).  Next is the timing of the events in the story.  The supposed death of the girlfriend was within a few hours of the death of Manti Teo’s grandmother’s.  Add this to the fact that there was no previous mention of her having leukemia and you either get a very ignorant Manti Te’o, or you get a conspirator.  The other timing issue is the timing of when the “non-existent girlfriend” story broke.  It was within a couple weeks after the end of the national championship game.  Coincidence?  Of course not, Te’o’s college career is over and waiting to make the story public was nothing more than another publicity stunt ending his senior year, and making his NFL draft stock that much more intriguing (Te’o first told the story to Notre Dame officials around Christmastime).  The last confusing part of this story is the lack of apparent motive by the perpetrators.  If Te’o truly is innocent, then why?  Why go to all this trouble just to mess with a college football player?

These questions and (lack of) answers have me convinced that this so-called hoax is nothing more than a publicity stunt, with Manti Te’o as a (co-)conspirator.  What do you think?  Is Te’o a Victim or a Liar?