Those following the saga of the girlfriend "hoax" involving football star Manti Te’o still have a wait before all the who-knew-what-when facts will have emerged. But what’s already telling about the case is the fever pitch over the revelations so far, and the observation that so many people fell for the fictional parts of Te’o’s story in the first place.
Why is there such an outcry over the narrative of the Hawaii-born Notre Dame linebacker and Heisman Trophy runner-up?
Some of it’s righteous indignation — nobody likes being hoodwinked — but the truth is that almost everyone had a hand in creating a huge explosion out of something that really shouldn’t matter much.
All of it comes down to mythmaking: the universal fondness for hero stories in the context of athletic competition, and the use of this storytelling in burnishing the already considerable attributes of a solid athlete.
How much Te’o himself was complicit in the creation of the inspirational tale is still unclear, although the evidence so far suggests that Te’o and his school realized the deception about the "girlfriend," who supposedly died of leukemia, well before going public with the truth.
As local and national media now have reported endlessly, the subject of the online romance, known as Lennay Kekua, is a made-up character.
The story of the young woman’s mortal illness compounded an actual tragedy in Te’o’s family, the death of his grandmother. All of this was seized on as a compelling narrative about an athlete who pushed through his personal sadness for the benefit of his team.
We the sports-loving public simply adore such tales. Part of what has made athletic competition such an enduring fascination and entertainment through the ages is the back story about the athlete’s personal experience, presumably the source of his or her strength. Otherwise, simply watching teams push back and forth on a field or in a court, racking up points on the board, would quickly lose its charm.
If the public eats up this stuff with a spoon, everyone in the sports industry is going to dish it out:
» The player, who hopes that added appeal will boost the chance for career success.
» The team organization, which could turn the story to its own advantage, bolstering its reputation.
» And if the public likes it, naturally the media are going to leap on it.
In today’s 24-hour news cycle, which instantaneously quickens with the activity of the social media, the temptation to chase the shiny object of a marketable story is almost irresistible.
And none of them — not the local media, not even big-league players like Sports Illustrated — resisted it.
The fact is that the media should have done a better job in nailing down the story everyone seemingly took on faith before the sports website Deadspin.com finally unearthed it.
In many sports stories of recent years — the dismal saga of Penn State football comes to mind — it’s been easier for media to accept the easy narrative and look the other way until the conflicts become too grotesque to ignore.
In the sports world, heroes rule and any lie that helps create that stature would be hard to relinquish.
Perpetuating the fiction of a dying sweetheart is less egregious than the relentless denials of Lance Armstrong over his doping habits. But both are still lies.
And while their achievements are stellar, such sports stars are like most of us: only human, not heroic.
Lies can be hard to ferret out right away, so maybe it would be wise for sports fans to remember these cases the next time a shiny object bounces along.
Perhaps we should fix our eyes more often on the field, and the scoreboard. What we see there isn’t always so thrilling, but at least it’s the truth and, in sports, the thing that matters.
