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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...

Breaking Down The Craziest Half-Inning In Television History
Originally published in Baseball Prospectus....

<em>Us Weekly</em>: Te'o Hoaxer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo Auditioned For <em>The Voice</em> And Had A "Sob Story" About A Car Accident
And finally we've learned a little bit more about Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the man we believe to have posed as Manti Te'o's girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. What we do know about Tuiasosopo so far? He sings. He's religious. He, like Lennay, supposedly got into a car accident. And we know that he knows Te'o....

Report: Some At Notre Dame Wanted To Announce The Manti Te'o Hoax Last Week
Yahoo's Pat Forde is openly carrying water for the "Manti Te'o is a hapless victim" lobby at this point, but there's something fascinating at the top of his latest report: an assertion that the Notre Dame hoped to go public with the hoax last week, but that Te'o and his agent wanted to hold off....

What Manti Te'o Told <em>Sports Illustrated</em> About Lennay Kekua
SI's Pete Thamel has been making the rounds today, explaining how he came to write the cover story that had the single biggest role in mythologizing the fake narrative of Manti Te'o's girlfriend. Now we've got more details. At SI.com, Thamel has addressed the steps he took to confirm Lennay Kekua's ...

How <em>Sports Illustrated</em>'s Manti Te'o Story Got Published
While reporting his cover feature for Sports Illustrated on Manti Te'o, Pete Thamel found what he called some "small red flags" in the story of Lennay Kekua, the dead girlfriend who never existed. So what did he do?...

What Happened To Manti Te'o's Interview With ESPN?
At his teary press conference last night, when pressed on details that didn't add up, Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick promised to let Manti Te'o tell those parts himself. Te'o, Swarbrick said, would be addressing the media "soon."...

Darnell Dockett Wants To Cheer Up Manti Te'o By Taking Him To The Strip Club
This Manti Te'o business is on everyone's mind, including Darnell Dockett's. The Arizona Cardinals defensive end is sympathetic to Manti's situation, and has some interesting ideas on how to cheer Manti up:...

Here's Everything The Media Screwed Up In Reporting The Story Of Manti Te'o's Fake Dead Girlfriend
In our investigation of Manti Te'o and his nonexistent dead girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, published yesterday, we mentioned the media's role this fall in amplifying the hoax. Here are all the ways they got the story wrong:...

Manti Te'o's Teammates Had Their Doubts About Lennay Kekua
The big question is: What did he know and when did he know it? We may never get a straight answer from Te'o. Nor from his family, who have thrown hissy-fits anytime the media doesn't work as Manti's PR agency. But what about those who spent the most time with Te'o over the last few years. According ...

Curt Schilling Is Selling His Bloody Sock—But Not <em>That</em> Bloody Sock
Heritage Auctions has posted a preview of an eagerly awaited lot—a bloodstained sock worn by Curt Schilling as he pitched through injury to lead the Red Sox to their first World Championship in 86 years. But before you go taking out a second mortgage, know that this isn't the one from Game 6 of the ...

Cardinals Player Says He Met Manti Te'o's Fake Dead Girlfriend
This is a confusing story; there's no doubt about it. But if there's one thing everyone can agree on—from our original story, to the Notre Dame statement, to Manti Te'o's own statement, it's that Lennay Kekua was a hoax. She didn't exist....

Notre Dame: Manti Te'o Was The Victim Of Mean Internet People
The Notre Dame version of events is that Manti Te'o is still the hero everyone thought he was. He's just not so good at using the internet....

ESPN Reporter On Te'o Story: "Short Of Asking To See A Death Certificate, I'm Not Sure What Most People Would Do Differently"
The other angle to the Manti Te'o drama? The media. More than a dozen news outlets reported about the girlfriend who didn't exist. So, why didn't the likes of CBS News or ESPN or Sports Illustrated find out sooner?...

Terry Francona Says Red Sox Owners Don't Really Care About Baseball
Terry Francona has a book coming out about his time in Boston. Written with (ugh) Dan Shaughnessy, it probably won't satisfy readers expecting a bridge-burning tell-all, since he's back in baseball managing the Indians and has to work alongside the players he'd probably love to blast. But there are ...

Roger Goodell Thinks That Robert Griffin III Knee Injury Saga Played Out Just Fine
The problem with football players is that they they're born not wanting to act in their own best interests, especially with regards to their long-term health. That's why they play football. In theory, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would be acting in his own best interest by acting in theirs—after ...

H, Y, and Z Are Your Money Letters: How To Beat Scrabble's Flawed Points System, Using Google-Powered Math
This week the director of research at Google, a fellow named Peter Norvig, published on his blog the results of a fascinating deep-dive into the English language. If you're at all interested in letter frequency or word frequency, you owe it to yourself to at least skim Norvig's post. Essentially the...

The Philadelphia Eagles Can't Buy A Coach
We've had our laughs about the various coaching firings and hirings in the NFL in the wake of the NFL's Black Monday: Getting rid of Lovie Smith made no sense, Rex Ryan went to the Bahamas and everyone thought maybe he'd been fired, Doug Marrone got hired on the strength of sort of turning around Sy...