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ESPN: The Manti Te'o Story


Aqua Buddha

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1 hour ago, Laga4 said:

Dude was way ahead of his time.

Had a virtual girlfriend,  virtual death of the girlfriend and then the mourning all on a national stage.  

He pretty much prepared us all for when pretty much everything from ESPN is fake news.

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3 minutes ago, dingleberryswitzer said:

Did this guy ever do shit in the NFL?  It's be a funny story if he was an asshole, but seemed like he kept pretty quiet.

San Diego drafted him hoping he was the next Junior Seau (RIP)......he was not.

Did seem to keep pretty quiet, looks like he's on the Bears practice squad these days.

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  • 1 year later...

I watched the Netflix show today, and it didn't change my opinion of Manti at all. I never thought he was a bad guy, but he ignored a lot of red flags, and I think that's because he understood the benefits of having the dead girlfriend story on his side while pursuing a Heisman trophy. It almost worked too, he got 2nd.  

However, even the voters couldn't give it to an above average linebacker, that position just isn't capable of producing the right stats for winning it in today's hyper-offense QB-centric age.  I think the same media that makes Notre Dame an unworthy top 10 team in the preseason every year, decided to latch on to Manti and blast this story to gain sympathy votes for Heisman, and maybe helped get the team the #1 ranking at the end of the season. They pump up ND a lot with undeserved praise. 

In any case, he's the one who created a lot of the stories about her, claimed they met after the Stanford game, claimed they hung out in Hawaii when he was home, etc etc. He never met her, he never FaceTimed her, her webcam was always "broke" yet he couldn't bother to investigate it over the 2 years he was chatting with her. He created that narrative, he made it sound magical, he kept feeding the machine after her "death" and kept talking about her. It was a spectacle because he made it central to who he was, because, I believe, he knew how great of a story it was for his own purposes. So to say he's the victim in all of this is pretty hollow to me. He knew he was benefitting from it, and kept it up as long as possible until someone else investigated it. Then it all fell apart.

Sure, he wasn't a first round pick, but going 38th and getting a few more NFL contracts means he's still a multi millionaire. Can't really claim it ruined his career like some have speculated. Yeah it was awful it happened to him, but it was only a national story because he couldn't help himself from using for his own purposes. The Netflix show doesn't go into any of that, or show interviews where him or his family go on and on about how great Lennay is, they completely ignore all the false claims and narrative from his side and paint this picture of a poor, good hearted guy who just had some bad luck. No wonder he agreed to this show, he probably wrote the narrative for it too. 

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