The Chris Moeller Archives

The Te'o of journalism

My dear sainted favorite website, Deadspin, uncovered this daffy story of the media-sainted Notre Dame football player having invented from whole cloth a story about having a (dying) girlfriend. The player's ultimate motive is still unknown, but he did wind up second in the Heisman Trophy voting last month, and of all the individual or team awards in American sports, that's the one that's most wrapped up in old-fashioned, patriarchal, moralistic, flag-waving values of personal inspiration and courage. So I don't know, maybe he was campaigning or something?

Manti Te'o, all-world linebacker for the Fighting Irish, #5 in your program, #1 in your heart, young Mormon enrolled for four years at the best-known Catholic school in the country after he "prayed on it," was the unofficial ball carrier on the end around play to apply a fresh coat of lacquer to the long-tarnished Golden Dome of Our Lady's Touchdown Jesus Football Academy. In recent years, unfortunately, Notre Dame has been considered, on a good day, a national joke; on a bad one, a dangerous criminal cabal.

And this is because their lies just keep coming. In 2001, head coach George O'Leary was hired and then quickly fired, for claiming on his resume that he had a master's degree. In 2010, a student filming football practice during a local wind advisory was killed when the tower he was standing on fell over. The Indiana OSHA office found that the conditions of work were unsafe, but the university still appealed the $77,500 fine administered because of its negligence. Also, in 2010, a student at neighboring St. Mary's College committed suicide nine days after telling police she had been sexually-assaulted by an ND football player and a full six days before school investigators finally got around to questioning the man she fingered as her attacker. One of the player's friends had sent her a text message the night of the alleged incident that read "Don't do anything you would regret... Messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea."

And of course, these lies were not too far out of the norm. Much of the legendary career of famed Irish coach Knute Rockne is exclusively legend, his "win one for the Gipper" speech a big juicy fat one; and the Rudy (Rudy Ruettiger) saga of 1975 is a bunch of crap too, so if Manti Te'o needs to create a terminal internet girlfriend one weeknight to help inspire the Irish past Michigan State, maybe that's just part of the game. What we have here might be just another harmless, "boys being boys" incident, instructive less of young male sexual entitlement and secondary education athletic department hubris than of just the epic volume of bull fertilizer a famous person is allowed to spread about the Earth's surface if he or she first claims to be deeply religious.

Shame, though, on the media agencies that bought into it without bothering to even Google a death notice on the internet, or check the Lexis Nexis research service that's available in the corner of their newsroom. Here, I'm speaking about the reporters particularly at Sports Illustrated, at ESPN/ABC, at NBC, and of course, at what I'm sure is a stiff arbiter of Notre Dame university ethics, the sports page of the South Bend Tribune. My guess is that the same journalistic twits most likely to swallow an "inspirational" story like Manti Te'o bravely doing battle on the gridiron to honor the memory of the fictional Miss Lennay Marie Kekua, who, incidentally, before dying, suffered physically from both leukemia and a crippling car wreck (because you just as well go all the way with the story), are the same "to-the-death" defenders of the fragile moral core of the American sporting world that vote about eight-to-one against allowing Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The ultimate irony in all of this is that these gullible, lazy establishment hacks with the fish hooks still attached to the insides of their mouths went along with Te'o's story out of a desperate desire to convince us how interesting the man is, and now it turns out that he's incredibly interesting!

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If you're curious tonight as to the environment of entitlement that Te'o grew up in, you might be interested in this less-frequently-copied Deadspin story from earlier in the week-- Te'o's father in Hawaii taking to Facebook and asking friends to unsubscribe to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser because the newspaper published a photo of his son missing a tackle on the morning after the national championship game.

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And finally, my favorite Te'o-related comments from Deadspin's bulging stable of brilliant, anonymous commenters...

Pearls of Wisdom- "Finally, a reason to hate Notre Dame!"

Justin Jump- "Fantastic. I can't tell you how much joy it brings me to see the word 'Deadspin' typed out over and over in an article at ESPN.com."

DougExeter- "So she was a metaphor for the Irish's title chances all along?"

Raysism- "Take a bow you motherfuckers."

iced327- "PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN"

Abe Froman- "If Lennay Kekua had access to firearms, she would still be alive."

Gamboa Constrictor- "More like Nosuch Dame, amiright???"

Lana, Lana,...LANAAAAAA!!!- "I'm Guinea need Samoa information before I can Nauru down the possibilities here."

jleonard14- "Sources close to me are saying that Manti wasn't missing tackles against Alabama... he was actually hugging his girlfriend."

Treemanm- "Holy crap, at least Rudy had arms."

Pigsqueel- "How much is Tebow kicking himself for not thinking of this angle?"

flyers4ever- "I think he faked her death to protect her from Brent Musburger."

Carrie Hunt and the Spoonerisms- "Alabama's running backs aren't even sure Manti Te'o exists at this point."

girouxd28- "can someone on here be my girlfriend? sorry im not a heisman candidate"

...and then the one I can't find on the site anymore- "my fake girlfriend makes $5000 a week working at home..." 

posted by CM @ 9:00 PM