Te'o told Notre Dame officials that he received a phone call on Dec. 6, while in attendance at an ESPN awards show in Orlando, from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Kekua. The woman on the line during that phone call told Te'o she had had to fake her own death in order to elude drug dealers, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports, citing a source close to Te'o's family. The woman then tried to restart her relationship with Te'o.
Te'o asked for a photo with a date stamp to verify her identity, the paper reports, but wasn't convinced and then went to his family and school officials to describe the hoax.
At the Heisman Trophy presentation Dec. 8 in New York, ESPN's Chris Fowler asked Te'o what moment of his very public story of tragedy he would remember.
"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 his grandmother, who died Sept. 12, and his girlfriend, who was reported to have died on the same day, were proud of him.
The Associated Press turned up two more instances during that gap 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."
In a column that first ran in The Los Angeles Times, on Dec. 10, Te'o recounted 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 Dec. 9 while attending a ceremony in Newport Beach, Calif., for the Lott Impact Awards.
Meanwhile, on Friday an adviser to Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap that the linebacker has been huddling this morning with family members and a team of advisers, who are trying to determine the best way for him to address the controversy. The adviser, who has been part of the discussions, also said all of the advisers are thoroughly convinced that Te'o is telling the truth in saying that he was a victim of a hoax.
They are encouraged, too, by the fact that several people have come forward defending and supporting Te'o. The thing most upsetting to Te'o, his adviser said, is that his relatives were also victimized by the hoax and are now suffering because of it.
Te'o's Notre Dame family is also suffering. Doubts about his participation in the scam extend to the campus, where he is one of the most popular players in Notre Dame's storied history.
Te'o told Notre Dame officials that he received a phone call on Dec. 6, while in attendance at an ESPN awards show in Orlando, from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Kekua. The woman on the line during that phone call told Te'o she had had to fake her own death in order to elude drug dealers, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports, citing a source close to Te'o's family. The woman then tried to restart her relationship with Te'o.
Te'o asked for a photo with a date stamp to verify her identity, the paper reports, but wasn't convinced and then went to his family and school officials to describe the hoax.
At the Heisman Trophy presentation Dec. 8 in New York, ESPN's Chris Fowler asked Te'o what moment of his very public story of tragedy he would remember.
"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 his grandmother, who died Sept. 12, and his girlfriend, who was reported to have died on the same day, were proud of him.
The Associated Press turned up two more instances during that gap 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."
In a column that first ran in The Los Angeles Times, on Dec. 10, Te'o recounted 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 Dec. 9 while attending a ceremony in Newport Beach, Calif., for the Lott Impact Awards.
Meanwhile, on Friday an adviser to Te'o told ESPN's Jeremy Schaap that the linebacker has been huddling this morning with family members and a team of advisers, who are trying to determine the best way for him to address the controversy. The adviser, who has been part of the discussions, also said all of the advisers are thoroughly convinced that Te'o is telling the truth in saying that he was a victim of a hoax.
They are encouraged, too, by the fact that several people have come forward defending and supporting Te'o. The thing most upsetting to Te'o, his adviser said, is that his relatives were also victimized by the hoax and are now suffering because of it.
Te'o's Notre Dame family is also suffering. Doubts about his participation in the scam extend to the campus, where he is one of the most popular players in Notre Dame's storied history.
ESPN has turned NCAAF into a joke!! Alabama losses a game at home to LSU 2 years ago, OSU losses to Iowa st in OT on the road...ESPN Analysts BEG for Alabama to get in..they do!! Alabama, KSU, and Oregon have a similar situation this year, and ESPN runs...winner of SEC game to be in BCS title game for a full week!! Its Bias, its money driven, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an SEC fan!!!
ESPN has turned NCAAF into a joke!! Alabama losses a game at home to LSU 2 years ago, OSU losses to Iowa st in OT on the road...ESPN Analysts BEG for Alabama to get in..they do!! Alabama, KSU, and Oregon have a similar situation this year, and ESPN runs...winner of SEC game to be in BCS title game for a full week!! Its Bias, its money driven, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an SEC fan!!!
No other network shows Sports highlights from Americas favorite sports and has the best T.V. contracts!
Especially when it comes to NCAAF!!! The talknig heads at ESPN have way too much pull over public opinion, and dramatize "cover-ups" lies, and Bandwagons on Tebow, Lin, the SEC....And at the same time Crucifies penn st. and puts Ohio st back on the map with xxxxxx while they are on probation
When thye go with a story in NCAAF, foor example....it son ESPN, First take, College Football live, PTI and Around the Horn...that could be all day of talking about Penn st., How great the SEC is, or Lin (when he was hot) or Tebow 24/7!!!
If Fox would have a show hosted by say Dan Patrick and had a Sportcenter copy, a college gameday copy, and better and more coverage of NFL, NCAAF, NCAAB (the sports Americans care about) then we would have an option...Otherwise you want to hear about sports, you have to watch ESPN!!!
No other network shows Sports highlights from Americas favorite sports and has the best T.V. contracts!
Especially when it comes to NCAAF!!! The talknig heads at ESPN have way too much pull over public opinion, and dramatize "cover-ups" lies, and Bandwagons on Tebow, Lin, the SEC....And at the same time Crucifies penn st. and puts Ohio st back on the map with xxxxxx while they are on probation
When thye go with a story in NCAAF, foor example....it son ESPN, First take, College Football live, PTI and Around the Horn...that could be all day of talking about Penn st., How great the SEC is, or Lin (when he was hot) or Tebow 24/7!!!
If Fox would have a show hosted by say Dan Patrick and had a Sportcenter copy, a college gameday copy, and better and more coverage of NFL, NCAAF, NCAAB (the sports Americans care about) then we would have an option...Otherwise you want to hear about sports, you have to watch ESPN!!!
I have to wonder whether ESPN really believes (sadly, my guess is that they have never even really thought about it this way) that Mike McQueary really saw a boy being raped, did nothing about it, told Joe Paterno and others about it, and they decided, after about a dozen people already knew about the story, to go ahead and cover it up and let a former employee they didn’t like continue to rape young boys. Oh, and by the way, they made no effort to make McQueary, Sandusky, or the boy part of their cover up, made no effort to keep McQueary from testifying, Paterno decided to help blow up the cover up by testifying himself, and Curley (who had a nine year old son who was consistently exposed to Sandusky in 2001) lavishly praised Paterno, who presumably led him into a cover up which destroyed his life, at his death.
As ESPN’s NFL crew might say, “Come on man!!”
Even if there was some real evidence to back it up, that scenario is just plain nuts and yet it is accepted throughout the media as if it is gospel and even questioning this narrative is almost sacrilegious.
I have to wonder whether ESPN really believes (sadly, my guess is that they have never even really thought about it this way) that Mike McQueary really saw a boy being raped, did nothing about it, told Joe Paterno and others about it, and they decided, after about a dozen people already knew about the story, to go ahead and cover it up and let a former employee they didn’t like continue to rape young boys. Oh, and by the way, they made no effort to make McQueary, Sandusky, or the boy part of their cover up, made no effort to keep McQueary from testifying, Paterno decided to help blow up the cover up by testifying himself, and Curley (who had a nine year old son who was consistently exposed to Sandusky in 2001) lavishly praised Paterno, who presumably led him into a cover up which destroyed his life, at his death.
As ESPN’s NFL crew might say, “Come on man!!”
Even if there was some real evidence to back it up, that scenario is just plain nuts and yet it is accepted throughout the media as if it is gospel and even questioning this narrative is almost sacrilegious.
Rick Reilly wrote about Paterno
What a fool I was.
In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.
It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.
"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.
"What's hagiography?" I asked.
"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."
Jealous egghead, I figured.
What an idiot I was.
Twenty-five years later, when former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of a 15-year reign of pedophilia on young boys, I thought Paterno was too old and too addled to understand, too grandfatherly and Catholic to get that Sandusky was committing grisly crimes using Paterno's own football program as bait.
But I was wrong. Paterno knew. He knew all about it. He'd known for years. He knew and he followed it vigilantly.
That's all clear now after Penn State's own investigator, former FBI director Louis Freeh, came out Thursday and hung the whole disgusting canvas on a wall for us. Showed us the emails, read us the interviews, shined a black light on all of the lies they left behind. It cost $6.5 million and took eight months and the truth it uncovered was 100 times uglier than the bills.
Paterno knew about a mother's cry that Sandusky had molested her son in 1998. Later, Paterno lied to a grand jury and said he didn't. Paterno and university president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley all knew what kind of sick coach they had on the payroll in Sandusky. Schultz had pertinent questions. "Is this opening of pandora's box?" he wrote in personal notes on the case. "Other children?" "Sexual improprieties?"
It gets worse. According to Freeh, Spanier, Schultz and Curley were set to call child services on Sandusky in February 2001 until Paterno apparently talked them out of it. Curley wasn't "comfortable" going to child services after that talk with JoePa.
Yeah, that's the most important thing, your comfort.
What'd they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody. And let Sandusky keep leading his horrific tours around campus. "Hey, want to see the showers?" That sentence alone ought to bring down the statue.
What a stooge I was.
I talked about Paterno's "true legacy" in all of this. Here's his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.
Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment. The mother of Victim 1 is "filled with hatred toward Joe Paterno," the victim's lawyer says. "She just hates him, and reviles him." Can you blame her?
What a sap I was.
I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier, Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.
What a chump I was.
I tweeted that, yes, Paterno should be fired, but that he was, overall, "a good and decent man." I was wrong. Good and decent men don't do what Paterno did. Good and decent men protect kids, not rapists. And to think Paterno comes from "father" in Italian.
This throws a can of black paint on anything anybody tells me about Paterno from here on in. "No NCAA violations in all those years." I believe it. He was great at hiding stuff. "He gave $4 million to the library." In exchange for what? "He cared about kids away from the football field." No, he didn't. Not all of them. Not when it really mattered.
What a tool I was.
As Joe Paterno lay dying, I actually felt sorry for him. Little did I know he was taking all of his dirty secrets to the grave. Nine days before he died, he had The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins in his kitchen. He could've admitted it then. Could've tried a simple "I'm sorry." But he didn't. Instead, he just lied deeper. Right to her face. Right to all of our faces.
That professor was right, all those years ago. I was engaging in hagiography. So was that school. So was that town. It was dangerous. Turns out it builds monsters.
Not all of them ended up in prison.
Rick Reilly wrote about Paterno
What a fool I was.
In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.
It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.
"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.
"What's hagiography?" I asked.
"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."
Jealous egghead, I figured.
What an idiot I was.
Twenty-five years later, when former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of a 15-year reign of pedophilia on young boys, I thought Paterno was too old and too addled to understand, too grandfatherly and Catholic to get that Sandusky was committing grisly crimes using Paterno's own football program as bait.
But I was wrong. Paterno knew. He knew all about it. He'd known for years. He knew and he followed it vigilantly.
That's all clear now after Penn State's own investigator, former FBI director Louis Freeh, came out Thursday and hung the whole disgusting canvas on a wall for us. Showed us the emails, read us the interviews, shined a black light on all of the lies they left behind. It cost $6.5 million and took eight months and the truth it uncovered was 100 times uglier than the bills.
Paterno knew about a mother's cry that Sandusky had molested her son in 1998. Later, Paterno lied to a grand jury and said he didn't. Paterno and university president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley all knew what kind of sick coach they had on the payroll in Sandusky. Schultz had pertinent questions. "Is this opening of pandora's box?" he wrote in personal notes on the case. "Other children?" "Sexual improprieties?"
It gets worse. According to Freeh, Spanier, Schultz and Curley were set to call child services on Sandusky in February 2001 until Paterno apparently talked them out of it. Curley wasn't "comfortable" going to child services after that talk with JoePa.
Yeah, that's the most important thing, your comfort.
What'd they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody. And let Sandusky keep leading his horrific tours around campus. "Hey, want to see the showers?" That sentence alone ought to bring down the statue.
What a stooge I was.
I talked about Paterno's "true legacy" in all of this. Here's his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.
Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment. The mother of Victim 1 is "filled with hatred toward Joe Paterno," the victim's lawyer says. "She just hates him, and reviles him." Can you blame her?
What a sap I was.
I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier, Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.
What a chump I was.
I tweeted that, yes, Paterno should be fired, but that he was, overall, "a good and decent man." I was wrong. Good and decent men don't do what Paterno did. Good and decent men protect kids, not rapists. And to think Paterno comes from "father" in Italian.
This throws a can of black paint on anything anybody tells me about Paterno from here on in. "No NCAA violations in all those years." I believe it. He was great at hiding stuff. "He gave $4 million to the library." In exchange for what? "He cared about kids away from the football field." No, he didn't. Not all of them. Not when it really mattered.
What a tool I was.
As Joe Paterno lay dying, I actually felt sorry for him. Little did I know he was taking all of his dirty secrets to the grave. Nine days before he died, he had The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins in his kitchen. He could've admitted it then. Could've tried a simple "I'm sorry." But he didn't. Instead, he just lied deeper. Right to her face. Right to all of our faces.
That professor was right, all those years ago. I was engaging in hagiography. So was that school. So was that town. It was dangerous. Turns out it builds monsters.
Not all of them ended up in prison.
Why OU and Texas A&M fans are giving you suck grief This guy!!
Joe Paterno once famously said he couldn’t retire and leave college football in the hands of the “Jackie Sherrills and Barry Switzers.”
Paterno’s remark rubbed Sooner fans raw. But the remark, for which Paterno would later apologize (at least to Switzer), captured how Paterno viewed himself and Penn State: They were different from the rest of college football, the exceptions to the rule.
Certainly different from Switzer’s Oklahoma and Sherrill’s Texas A&M football programs, in Paterno’s mind anyway.
Unlike other major programs, Paterno’s teams won “The Right Way.” There were no reports of unscrupulous boosters and pay-to-play schemes out of Happy Valley. No off-the-field incidents involving sexual assault in the athletic dorm or a starting QB peddling cocaine.
Before Jerry Sandusky, this was Joe Paterno’s legacy, and it takes no great stretch of the imagination to think he was trying to preserve that legacy when he and several high-ranking Penn State officials willfully covered up Sandusky’s unconscionable crimes.
After Paterno was fired from his head coaching position last November, Switzer was asked how a tragedy of this magnitude could occur. He referenced the “American sports phenomenon,” in which we elevate coaches and athletes to near-mythical status, often at the expense of reason and sound judgment.
For everyone at Penn State, Paterno was a living legend, and one must wonder whether he succumbed to his legendary status when confronted with evidence of Sandusky’s crimes. Or was he thinking about being compared to the Jackie Sherrils and Barry Switzers? Whatever was going through his head at the time, Paterno and others chose to remain silent.
Despite all the talk of running a different kind of program and being a cut above, when faced with his single greatest test, Paterno faltered. That’s why his statue was unceremoniously removed this week shortly before the NCAA slammed Penn State with sanctions.
Switzer was no saint. He lost control of his players, and like many of his colleagues at top-ranked programs, he engaged in squirrely recruiting practices.
Yet, if you gaze out onto the lawn of the athletic dorms at OU, you’ll see Barry’s statue — still standing.
Why OU and Texas A&M fans are giving you suck grief This guy!!
Joe Paterno once famously said he couldn’t retire and leave college football in the hands of the “Jackie Sherrills and Barry Switzers.”
Paterno’s remark rubbed Sooner fans raw. But the remark, for which Paterno would later apologize (at least to Switzer), captured how Paterno viewed himself and Penn State: They were different from the rest of college football, the exceptions to the rule.
Certainly different from Switzer’s Oklahoma and Sherrill’s Texas A&M football programs, in Paterno’s mind anyway.
Unlike other major programs, Paterno’s teams won “The Right Way.” There were no reports of unscrupulous boosters and pay-to-play schemes out of Happy Valley. No off-the-field incidents involving sexual assault in the athletic dorm or a starting QB peddling cocaine.
Before Jerry Sandusky, this was Joe Paterno’s legacy, and it takes no great stretch of the imagination to think he was trying to preserve that legacy when he and several high-ranking Penn State officials willfully covered up Sandusky’s unconscionable crimes.
After Paterno was fired from his head coaching position last November, Switzer was asked how a tragedy of this magnitude could occur. He referenced the “American sports phenomenon,” in which we elevate coaches and athletes to near-mythical status, often at the expense of reason and sound judgment.
For everyone at Penn State, Paterno was a living legend, and one must wonder whether he succumbed to his legendary status when confronted with evidence of Sandusky’s crimes. Or was he thinking about being compared to the Jackie Sherrils and Barry Switzers? Whatever was going through his head at the time, Paterno and others chose to remain silent.
Despite all the talk of running a different kind of program and being a cut above, when faced with his single greatest test, Paterno faltered. That’s why his statue was unceremoniously removed this week shortly before the NCAA slammed Penn State with sanctions.
Switzer was no saint. He lost control of his players, and like many of his colleagues at top-ranked programs, he engaged in squirrely recruiting practices.
Yet, if you gaze out onto the lawn of the athletic dorms at OU, you’ll see Barry’s statue — still standing.
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