I dated his fake dead girlfriend before he even met her?
You know, there were times in college when I would have been grateful for even an imaginary girlfriend. 
Oh noes. More catfish tears for you!
Manti should be speaking today to clarify some points. This is certainly a bizarre story. Being a Notre Dame fan and having followed the team, and particularly Manti, pretty closely this past year, I would be shocked to learn that Manti was somehow in on this hoax. On the other hand, he does seem like a sheltered, and possibly even socially awkward, individual who could easily be duped by this kind of scheme. ND athletic director Jack Swarbrick said Manti was the perfect mark for this.
At any rate, it looks like Lance Armstrong is off the hook as the biggest sports news story before his interview even aired.
Yeah my wife Morgan Fairchild, who I’ve slept with…
But you have to understand, Manti wasn’t missing all those tackles in the title game, he was just trying to hug his girlfriend.
How soon is it OK to start dating again after your fake-girlfriend fake-dies?
I’m guessing Mauia met Tei, the woman who later pretended to be Kekua’s sister. Did Tuiasosopo and Tei cook this up to con an athlete or was it a prank they wanted to sell to a TV show- or did the TV show thing only come up when this started to fall apart?
The “dead girl” is also active again on Twitter and is promising to reveal some news or other at noon PST today. Who knows what the hell that revelation is supposed to be.
How is it even conceivable that he never Skyped with her?
That was my first thought too.
Well, he was involved to an extent in that he perpetuated the story that they had met several times.
I remember googling her shortly after learning of her death, and remember thinking how healthy and attractive she looked for someone about to die from cancer. There weren’t any shots of her looking even remotely sick. I assumed she acquired a particular form of cancer that resulted in a very rapid decline.
I’ve heard that Nev from the show Catfish is on the case. I’m on the edge of my seat.
Ahh, well, that explains it! 
Yeah, but Armstrong’s still by far the bigger douchebag. At least Manti hasn’t gone around trying to wreck the lives of those who’ve blown his story. (Yet.)
True, Manti may have exaggerated the details of what he thought was his relationship with his girlfriend, but I do not think he knew she didn’t exist.
This story is so crazy. I’m putting my money on he knew she wasn’t real from the beginning, but it’s not impossible he was duped.
That’s not too implausible to me. He was embarrassed his relationship wasn’t real, and went along with it afterwards, hoping it wouldn’t be found out that he was duped. He wouldn’t be thinking straight about how best to keep it covered, his mid would still be reeling with the crazy situation he was mixed up in.
If he’s a sheltered religious kid, then I could see him preferring an online relationship to a real life one. The real life girls are exciting but also scary, and he’s afraid of being led into temptation. The online girl is beautiful and interesting, but is kept at a distance and is safer.
I do think he was in on the hoax. Whether it was so he could cover up a gay relationship, or for publicity, or just for the lulz, it seems the most likely to me. But I also wouldn’t be shocked if he was legitimately fooled into thinking Lennay was real.
He’s one hell of an exaggerator, then. For instance, the stuff about his falling asleep talking to her, then waking up 8 hours later listening to the sound of her breathing over the phone?
If he was being played, that’s putting a hell of a lot of really boring work into the play, and I frankly don’t believe it. It’s clear that even if he was being played, he made up a lot of shit like this. Occam’s razor says he was making up everything, not just half of it while the other half was a hoax perpetrated on him.
They were covering this in Chicago last night like the President got shot or something. I find it amusing and a little baffling that it’s getting so much attention.
Here’s my take: Naive college kid meets a girl online and exaggerates the relationship to friends and family. He doesn’t realize the “girl” is just somebody screwing with him, and the hoaxer makes a game of seeing how far they can take it. Hoaxer eventually tires of the game and kills off the fake persona.
I’ll bet this sort of thing happens more often than people realize. We didn’t have the internet when I was in college, but at that age I was such a putz when it came to girls that I could imagine getting suckered like that. Because it happened to a high-profile college athlete it’s suddenly a big news story.
I’ll also bet that Te’o began catching on at some point but was too embarrassed to admit it to anybody. I know I probably would have been at that age too.
This guy says she is real, has met her, and was close to her family.
The plot thickens!!