It is hard to argue with Manti Te’o for wanting to be home on the North Shore when the NFL Draft call comes this week, or with his handlers for encouraging it.
Being surrounded by a supportive throng of family, friends and neighbors sure beats being on the receiving end of what will no doubt be a gale force razzing from the rowdy gallery at Radio City Music Hall in New York, where the draft begins Thursday.
But for all the Notre Dame All-American has been through and the class with which he has conducted himself in beyond-trying circumstances these past four months, you’d like to see Te’o, standing tall as ever, make that walk from the green room to the podium handshake with the commissioner to personally claim the validation that comes with being a first-round draft choice.
What is a ceremonial occasion for most first-rounders would be unmistakable as a symbolic rising above the tumult and a triumph over adversity for Te’o, whose path has been unlike any other player in 78 years of the draft.
Nobody has run a gauntlet of Jeremy Schaap, Katie Couric, Dr. Phil, David Letterman and “The Daily Show” — and much more — before they even got to the stopwatches at the NFL Combine.
No incoming player has been the punch line for so many or had his personal life and psyche so probed and dissected. Nobody has had to answer to such a critical jury of general managers, personnel directors, coaches and media like Te’o. Or done it as unflinchingly.
To be sure, he has been well-prepped. But under that kind of constant prying and pressure, a person’s true nature tends to emerge and, in the end, that has undoubtedly been the best thing Te’o has had going for him.
Likewise, the betting is that the perspective of time has given teams a better chance to assess Te’o’s talents and see him for his four-year body of work at Notre Dame instead of just the Alabama game, a 40-yard dash time or youthful gullibility. The one cogent fact is the guy is an instinctive football player and plays the sport well and with great passion.
NFL people are, by and large, a bottom-line bunch. They couldn’t care less about dating history. The date most of them are interested in is having their teams still playing come late January.
You have to figure some team — Minnesota, Chicago, Denver, Baltimore — will see Te’o as improving their linebacker corps and chances to get there. Just in case you were wondering, the betting over/under on the position where Te’o will be taken in this week’s NFL Draft is listed at 251⁄2, according to online gaming site Bovada.lv.
Well before the Lennay Kekua thing hit the headlines and Te’o shut down his social media accounts, he had posted what would become a particularly prescient quote from Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo.” It read, “Life is a storm my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
Come Thursday’s first round, the betting is Te’o will be still standing.
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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
