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Dead Letters: All The Hate Mail We've Received Since Publishing Our Manti Te'o Story
Subject: With regards to the Te’o story......

Football Recruit Who Said His Notre Dame Visit "Went Great" Never Actually Visited Campus
Georgia high school running back Stanley Williams committed to UGA two summers ago, but he may be having second thoughts. As his star has risen, he's received interest from a number of big-time programs, including, he says, Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Oregon, and Notre Dame. The junior is planning to ...

How The Song “Seven Nation Army” Conquered The Sports World
This post was originally published on January 13, 2012....

It Appears Bill Cowher Is A Skoal Man
The only bigger waste of time than watching insipid and moronic NFL pre-game shows is watching their post-game counterparts, in which washed-up former stars mumble vacuous platitudes and chickenscratch X's and O's. We noticed something curious last night, though, when Shannon Sharpe suffered a brie...

Tuiasosopo Family Member Says Ronaiah May Address His Involvement In Hoax
Peter Navy Tuiasosopo, Ronaiah's uncle, spoke to reporters outside Oasis Christian Church, where his brother (Ronaiah's father) is pastor, and told reporters there will be a family meeting later this week to discuss how Ronaiah should address his role in the Lennay Kukua hoax....

Manti Te'o's Mom Tried To Convert Lennay Kekua To Mormonism Via Text Message
According to USA Today, the latest piecemeal bit to be released in this bizarre saga is the revelation that Ottilia Te'o, Manti's mother, tried to convert Lennay to Mormonism via text message. His family also engaged in bible study with Kekua, via text message, which Te'o alluded to with Jeremy Scha...

Canadian Figure Skaters Are A Menace
So, you're minding your business (or pleasure) in your tidy Delta Meadowvale hotel room in Mississauga and then, bam! Chaos. Figure skaters everywhere. One man had his cheek cut. He was OK and didn't need any medical attention, but I mean come on. The police were even called....

Here's A Woman Who Claims She's Dashon Goldson's Aunt Cursing And Screaming Incoherently On Live Television
Hat tip to ol' Diamond Joe on this one, from the NFC Championship Game postgame show today on KTTV, L.A.'s Fox affiliate. This segment was actually considerably longer than you see here, and includes several more minutes of ill-advised drunken fan interviews. But here's the best part: a woman clai...

Why Katie Couric's Manti Te'o Interview Will Suck
Lennay Kekua's story tempted the many outlets that wrote about her partly because her death gave Te'o's rise, not in itself particularly moving or dramatic, a dimension of tragedy. It made writing about Te'o easier (by reducing the time a story had to spend on his place in the Notre Dame defense), a...

Notre Dame's Lennay Kekua "Investigation" Basically Consisted Of A Few Guys Using Google And LexisNexis
Today's South Bend Tribune has the first full account of Notre Dame's investigation of the Lennay Kekua hoax, and it's startling how little investigation actually went on. According to the university, Te'o informed officials of his dead/undead girlfriend on Dec. 26, and Notre Dame proceeded from the...

The Dallas Stars Showed An Empty Chair On The Jumbotron, Identified It As "Manti Te'o's Girlfriend"
Like SNL, half of minor league baseball, and Mets GM Sandy Alderson, the Dallas Stars had some fun with the Manti Te'o story yesterday. During their home-opener (a 4-3 win over the Phoenix Coyotes) the stadium's jumbotron operators spotted an empty seat and, in a mash-up of old Clint Eastwood empty-...

What's Hockey?
In preparation for the resumption of the long-delayed season, we've compiled a brief refresher on "hockey."...

Report: Two Months After Ronaiah Tuiasosopo Gave "Lennay Kekua" Fake Leukemia, His Cousin Was Diagnosed With Real Leukemia
Among the (many) confusing things about the ongoing saga of Manti Te'o's fake dead girlfriend, the similarities between the real life of Te'o-deceiver Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and the false narrative he created have especially muddled the facts. Two turning points in the faked narrative: "Lennay Kekua" w...
![In ESPN Interview, Manti Te'o Admits To "Tailoring His Stories," Says He Wasn't Convinced Lennay Kekua Was Fake Until Wednesday [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/18by27wccpz3tjpg.jpg)
In ESPN Interview, Manti Te'o Admits To "Tailoring His Stories," Says He Wasn't Convinced Lennay Kekua Was Fake Until Wednesday [UPDATE]
Admitting that he deceived his parents and the press about the nature of his relationship with Lennay Kekua, but denying any involvement in the hoax, Manti Te'o spoke with ESPN's Jeremy Schaap Friday night for more than two hours in an off-camera interview. (Most of what little we know about the int...

Newspaper: "Lennay" Called Manti Te'o In December And Said She'd Faked Her Death To Elude Drug Dealers
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, citing a source "close to the Te'o family," has the particulars of a phone conversation between Manti Te'o and "Lennay Kekua" in December, three months after "Lennay" had supposedly died. ...

Here's A Photo Of Manti Te'o With Ronaiah Tuiasosopo's Sister The Night Before The Notre Dame-USC Game
This photo, provided to us by a friend of the Tuiasosopos, was taken on Nov. 23, 2012—the night before the Notre Dame-USC game. It shows Ronaiah Tuiasosopo's younger sister, known as Pookah, with Manti Te'o. (According to Manti's uncle Alema Te'o, Pookah supposedly posed as Lennay Kekua's cousin.)...

What Did Manti Te'o Say About His Dead Girlfriend After He'd Learned She Wasn't Real?
Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick said that Manti Te'o was at ESPN's college football awards show, on Dec. 6, when he received a phone call alerting him to the hoax. That was the moment, according to the Notre Dame timeline, that Te'o learned Lennay Kekua wasn't dead, and wasn't real. Here are quotes fro...

ESPN Reports Ronaiah Tuiasosopo Confessed To Te'o Hoax In December. Was Te'o Involved? Evidence Varies
ESPN's Shelley Smith is reporting that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the apparent creator of the Lennay Kekua hoax, confessed to duping Manti Te'o, according to an interview with a friend of Tuiasosopo. "He told me Manti was not involved at all, he was the victim," the woman told Smith, in an audio recording ...

"I Know A Liar When I'm Around One.": Manti Te'o's Uncle Comments On Ronaiah Tuiasosopo
Manti Te'o's uncle Alema Te'o went on The Zone Sports Network last night and spoke to radio hosts Scott Garrard and Riley Jensen about the Manti Te'o-Lennay Kekua story that we broke on Wednesday. Alema didn't have much to say about Manti, but he did offer some personal insight into the character o...