3 prior to the BCS title game, saying: "This team is very special to me, and the guys on it have always been there for me, through the good times and the bad times. He was asked again about his girlfriend on Jan. I appreciate all the love and support that everybody's given my family and my girlfriend's family." But at the end of the day, what matters is the people who are around you, and family. And it goes to show that people understand that football is just a game, and it's a game that we play, and we have fun doing it. "My family and my girlfriend's family have received so much love and support from the Notre Dame family.
Te'o said he was told just six hours later that Kekua had lost her battle with leukemia.Īfter Notre Dame's 20-3 win over Michigan State on Sept. 12, Te'o learned his 72-year-old grandmother, Annette Santiago, had died. "I want to stress, as someone who has probably been as engaged in this as anyone in the past couple of weeks, that nothing about what I have learned has shaken my faith in Manti Te'o one iota," Swarbrick said Wednesday night. Swarbrick said that, based on a report from an investigative firm hired by the school, he believes Te'o was duped into an online relationship with a woman whose death was then faked by the perpetrators of the hoax. Manti was very unnerved by that, as you might imagine." "When he answered it, it was a person whose voice sounded like the same person he had talked to, who told him that she was, in fact, not dead. 26, very early morning, Manti called his coaches to inform them that while he was in attendance at the ESPN awards show in Orlando, he received a phone call from a number he recognized as having been that he associated with Lennay Kekua," Swarbrick said. Someone using a fictitious name "apparently ingratiated herself" with Te'o, the school said, then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had died of leukemia.
26 that Te'o had been the victim of what appeared to be a hoax. Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said in a news conference Wednesday night that coaches were informed by Te'o and his parents on Dec. The university issued a news release Wednesday after reported it could find no record of Lennay Kekua existing. Notre Dame says a story about Manti Te'o's girlfriend dying, which he said inspired him to play better as he helped the Fighting Irish get to the BCS National Championship, turned out to be a hoax apparently perpetrated against the linebacker.