Te’o spoke of ‘girlfriend’ after learning she was fake

Football star and Notre Dame still face many questions regarding bizarre hoax

SOUTH BEND, IND. — Not once but twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never existed, Notre Dame all-American linebacker Manti Te’o perpetuated the heartbreaking story about her death.

An Associated Press review of news coverage found that the Heisman Trophy runner-up talked about his doomed love in a Web interview on Dec. 8 and again in a newspaper interview published Dec. 10. He and the university said Wednesday that he learned on Dec. 6 that it was all a hoax, that not only wasn’t she dead, she wasn’t real.

Thursday, a day after the inspiring, playing-through-heartache story was exposed as a lie, Te’o and Notre Dame faced questions about whether he really was duped or whether he and the uni- versity were complicit in the hoax and misled the public, perhaps to improve his chances of winning the Heisman.

Yahoo sports columnist Dan Wetzel said the case has “left everyone wondering whether this was really the case of a naive football player done wrong by friends or a fabrication that has yet to play to its conclusion.”

Gregg Doyel, national columnist for CBSSports.com, was more direct:

“Nothing about this story has been comprehensible, or logical, and that extends to what happens next,” he wrote. “I cannot comprehend Manti Te’o saying anything that could make me be- lieve he was a victim.”

Wednesday, Te’o and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said the player was drawn into a virtual romance with a woman who used the phoney name Lennay Kekua and was fooled into believing she died of leukemia in September. They said his only contact with the woman was via the Internet and telephone.

Among the outstanding questions Thursday: Why didn’t Te’o ever clarify the nature of his relationship as the story took on a life of its own?

Te’o’s agent, Tom Condon, said the athlete had no plans to make any public statements Thursday in Braden- ton, Fla., where he has been training with other NFL hopefuls.

Notre Dame said Kekua found out Kekua was not a real person through a phone call he received at an awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 6. He told Notre Dame coaches about the situation on Dec. 26.

The AP’s media review turned up two instances during that gap when he mentioned Kekua in public.

Wednesday, Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not go public with its findings sooner because it expected the Te’o family to come forward first. But Deadspin.com broke the story Wednesday.