Manti Te’o has been silent since he issued a statement through Notre Dame that he was the victim in a hoax. But many news sources are reporting that the Irish All-America linebacker continued to refer to Lenney Kekua after Dec. 6, when he says he learned she did not exist.
These reports only add more intrigue to a bizarre story that will not go away for some time, no matter Te’o’s silence. He tried to kill her off by saying she died of leukemia on Sept. 12. But this scandal will live on for some time.
On Dec. 8, Te’o said at the Heisman Trophy presentation in New York: “I think I’ll never forget the time when I found out that, you know, my girlfriend passed away and the first person to run to my aid was my defensive coordinator, coach [Bob] Diaco, and you know, he said something very profound to me,” Te’o said. “He said, ‘This is where your faith is tested.’ Right after that, I ran into the players’ lounge and I got on the phone with my parents — and I opened my eyes and my head coach was sitting right there. And so, you know, there are a hundred-plus people on our team and the defensive coordinator and our head coach took time to just go get one [of those players]. You know, I think that was the most meaningful to me.”
Te’o also said on ESPN Radio the same day that he hoped he made his grandmother proud. He said his grandmother died six hours before his virtual girlfriend.
The Associated Press turned up two more instances during the days between Dec. 6 and Dec. 26, the date when Te’o told Notre Dame that he knew of the hoax, when the football star mentioned Kekua in public.
During another interview at the Heisman ceremony that ran on WSBT.com, the website for a South Bend TV station, Te’o said: “I mean, I don’t like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. So I’ve really tried to go to children’s hospitals and see, you know, children.”
On Dec. 10, Te’o recounted in The Los Angeles Times why he played a few days after he found out Kekua died in September, and the day she was supposedly buried.
“She made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play,” he said on Dec. 9 ,while attending a ceremony in Newport Beach, Calif., for the Lott Impact Awards.
Doubts about Te’o’s participation in the scam even extend to his own campus, where he is one of the most popular players in Notre Dame’s storied history.
“Whenever Manti decides to speak, I’ll bet the entire campus will stop what they’re doing and watch what he has to say,” Notre Dame student body president Brett Rocheleau said Thursday, according to ESPN.com. “I think the majority of students believe in Manti. They just want to hear him answer these final few questions and hear the story from his point of view.”
Anonymous teammates have said in the past few days that they questioned the entire girlfriend scenario and called him an attention-seeker.
