Mani Te'o Got CATFISH-ed, Or Was It A Gay Cover-Up

Queerty and Out Sports today are reporting that there may be more to the tragic Mani Te'o fake girlfriend story than just a hoax.  After Deadspin.com shocked the sports world and broke the incredible story yesterday, Te'o and Notre Dame released statements saying the whole thing is a terrible hoax that has been played on Te'o.  It's eerily reminiscent of CATFISH, the indie doc  where a young New Yorker is taken in by a Facebook friend's web of lies and falls for a person who does not exist.  When he meets her, though, the ruse is up.  When Te'o met his love at a football game in 2009, according to his story, the ruse was just beginning. So something seems a little off here...

Out Sports claims that the Twitter account of Teo's fake girlfriend was run by a good friend of his, Roniah Tulasosopo (a fellow football player and devout Mormon). The allegation is that this was all some sort of cover for a possible affair between the two men. That seems possible if not entirely plausible (especially over the last six months when he's been living in the spotlight). But the idea of creating a tragic girlfriend story would certainly give Te'o the advantage of looking straight while actually not being straight. All this sounds much fishier than CATFISH though. And as details come out as part of an investigation into the whole thing, we'll know more. It's disappointing though to see yet another inspirational sportsman caught up in a story of deceit.