Uhh yes. Wtf 1m is a lot of money.

i think when one of the two possible liars is a known con artist, it's pretty easy to figure out which person is more likely to be the liar.

add in the audio experts and i would be absolutely shocked if it really was tuiasosopo.

the first thing i woulda asked him would be to do the female voice

this!!! and not asking at all is 1000% hacktacular!

So why would Tuiasosopo lie about being gay with Teo? It makes zero sense. Teo isn't going to pay him to say they were gay, but he would possibly pay off the girl to make it seem like he wasn't gay. Tuiasosopo gains nothing from claiming this.

my theory is he's still gay and obsessed with te'o , but the cousin also got obsessed with manti as well , but roniahh is taking the fall for the both of them .

edit// family might be pressuring him to take the fall , i mean if tino wasnt the voice, wouldnt she have said anythng by now ?

Nothing like a fake gay incest triangle to get the Catholics furious

When I think of "audio experts" in a modern way, I'm certainly not picturing them sitting around "listening" to a tape to determine male or female voice.

Manti's objective is to distance himself from Ronaiah as much as possible. The crazier the narrative that makes Ronaiah appear that he's off his hinges the more sympathy that Manti can generate for himself.

Ronaiah's job is to fit that narrative as much as possible. Admitting that he is gay and is infatuated with Manti is a perfect firestorm of circumstances that would lead an objective person to believe that Manti was scammed here all along and that he never knew a thing. Ronaiah persisting that it was his voice on the voicemails is just damage control. The less people involved, the easier it is to control the narrative.

Not if she's getting paid off. Of course she'll be keeping her mouth shut. I'm open to the possibility that there was a fake relationship with Tino speaking to him, but only after he had already had a gay relationship with Roniah. But for anyone to say Teo was never in a gay relationship with Roniah is pretty absurd at this point, look at the emotion they had for eachother in that video where they hug. (They were definitely closer than Manti led you to believe)

+1

if not, TUI would have some **** to say that would contradict manti for reasons (a) to defend his name (b) because manti could not have been entirely honest as it was his goal to defend his own name. this is ****ing basic logic. they should not have interlocking stories to tell.

I probably missed something obvious, kind of stopped following the story, but what's the consensus on when Te'o knew it was fake and did he give any kind of explanation for continuing to lie about it afterward?

Starting to see stuff like, "OK, now let's all hope this story goes away now." No. If people told the truth then I could see the story losing its mystique, but that clearly hasn't happened. Also +1 to Dr. Phil failing hard by not getting him to do the female voice.

hard to say.

the official story is that he was notified about it in early December, and informed ND of this in late December. but of course his story to Schapp and/or Couric is that he still doesn't know for sure or not, or something. even after everyone else in the world acknowledged that this was a fake girl that didn't exist.

i'm thinking that he knew earlier than that, maybe even before she "died". i'm still as to why she was killed off when she was (did Derpy Phil ask about that?). it's very weird to me that according to the original story, a lot of the backstory on her was filled in through Manti's dad through the ND paper in October. that's where a lot of stuff confirming she was indeed real came from. now why does that happen after she dies? were people already digging into it, and they knew it was fake already?

also in Deadspin's follow-up on the twitter activity, Te'o stopped tweeting about Lennay (or to her fake sister, or maybe both, i forget) sometime in November. so did he finally find out for real in November? were people closing in on the story in November? idk.

kinda seems weird that he wouldn't have found out in September at the latest though, around the time she "died". like he didn't try to get in contact with the family or anything? send a letter to be read at the funeral or something if he couldn't make it there? didn't look around for an obituary? nothing. she got out of the hospital one day, suddenly died the next, he sent flowers to Ronaiah's house or something, the end.

of course i guess this works if he's a huge moron, who never cared much about this girl, but played it up in the media, etc like he did. of course this doesn't jive at all with spending every waking minute on the phone with "her" basically.

can anyone sort this out? still feel like everyone is just lying about everything. Manti lied about meeting her, the dad lied off of those lies, and they were all coincidentally lying about the main issue at hand, that she wasn't real. how convenient. but they're not liars, trust them.

gay angle still seeming pretty possible tbh.

The thoughts in my head are telling me that TUI shouldn't be involved in sweet stuff with Te'o , but that's not how I feel.

The cousin probably had a crush on Manti and liked the idea of having a long distance phone boyfriend.

Any way we can just ship ronnie, Tino , and Manti off to some abandoned island and let them Eiffel tower each other till the cows come home and that way all of them are out of our lives and Manti never graces my television on Sunday ever.

There's a non 0 chance this happens.

Meh, excellent chance it happens if he just keeps playing like he did against Alabama.

Or those phone calls were fabricated with the intention of misleading relatives and friends so the two of them could be gay together without anyone suspecting.

There is no way he does not, at the minimum, find a spot playing on special teams for a couple of years.

Yeah, the only time I remember a guy just never making an NFL roster like this is Maurice Clarett. Last pick of the third round, but agreed to an absolutely horrible contract that made it really likely that he would not make the final roster, and was cut.

Had he taken a standard contract, he would have almost certainly made the team. I don't see Te'o or anyone else taking a contract like that again, although if you think that Te'o was just the victim of the hoax, then it means he's about as smart as a box of hair, so you never know.

There are two ways; he could be perpetually injured or suck so badly that they can't even bear to put him out on special teams. How many whiffs do you think he'd get? Or I suppose he could just get picked up by the 49ers who never wind up playing him.

Just because he cracks the field a few times does not mean he has to show up on SNlum2711's television.

No matter how insane/gay he is, he's still one of the top lb's in the draft and he'll find a spot somewhere.