Manti Te'o's girlfriend real or fiction?

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o is caught up in a whirlwind scandal with the potential to usurp his attention-grabbing 2012 College Football season.

In September, Te'o, a 2012 Heisman Trophy finalist, revealed that his grandmother had passed away. Just six hours later, Te'o announced that his girlfriend Lennay Kekua, who had survived a car accident, had also passed away from her battle with leukemia.

Well, as you know, Te'o, inspired by these two losses, carried his team to the National Championship game; Notre Dame's first shot at the title in 24 seasons. But a recent expose has called into question the credibility of his story; particularly of Kekua's existence.

Well does she exist or not?

Not according to a story published by online sports publication Deadspin, which you can read in its entirety here

Writers Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey allege that the picture of Kekua floating around the internet, and being used in media stories, is of a 22-year-old California woman who is not only alive, but was never in an accident or battled cancer.

Te'o claims he was the victim of a calculated hoax, saying he was led to believe a young woman he developed an emotional online and phone relationship with was real. But the story gets complicated because much of the details shared by the media has taken many dramatic twists and turns in a bid to paint Te'o as an inspiration to others. Te'o never shied away from sharing details about meeting her (in person) after a game at Stanford, which we now know to be false. He shared a tear-jerker about staying up all night to talk to her while she lay on a hospital bed.

Deadspin cites a former classmate of the unidentified woman in the picture, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, as the likely source of the hoax. Other classmates have apparently said they believe Tuiasosopo created the hoax. A Notre Dame official says Te'o was merely a victim, but a friend of Tuiasosopo told Deadspin he was "80 percent sure" that Te'o helped plan the hoax to help boost his popularity.

This story gets weirder. An Arizona Cardinal football player is claiming that Kekua's identity is real and that he met her during a charity visit to Samoa in 2011. Reagan Mauia said while visiting the American territory along with fellow Polynesian football player Troy Palomalu, he was introduced to Kekua by Tuiasosopo. In ESPN's report of the story, he described her as a "Volleyball-type of physique. She was athletic, tall, beautiful. Long hair. Polynesian. She looked like a model ..."

There's so much conflicting information about this story that it warrants reading the original story on Deadspin to get the full picture. But you get the message. Someone's lying in this picture, and this is the worst time for a big-time athlete to be labeled a liar.

Fresh off revelation that seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong took part in perhaps the biggest doping cover-up in sports, and emphatically lied about it, Te'o should want nothing to do with this story right now. He's been touted as a possible first round draft pick in this year's NFL draft, but if it turns out that he partook in a calculated attempt to deceive the whole country –using a devastating disease like leukemia no less–then his career as he knows it is over. Notre Dame can protect him for the remainder of his college career. Some NFL team may even take a chance on him (heck, even convicted liar Maurice Clarett was drafted,) but he will never get the fame or endearment that he so badly coveted. He'll forever be linked to this bizarre plot.

Sadly, the price of fame has risen to such astronomical heights that people would do just about anything to get it. In this day when reality TV is considered more profitable than original scripted programming, exposing the supposed reality of everyday people is the norm. It doesn't matter that most reality shows have in fact been determined to be anything but real; merely dusted fragments of actual reality sprinkled into the giant pot of scripted reality soup. The Te'o reality show fits this bill to the Tee. There were some real aspects of it: his grandmother's passing was genuine. But that story was largely overshadowed by the more tear-inducing, but totally unreal one of his cancer-stricken girlfriend, which was eaten up by the media and retold at any moment Te'o's face flashed across a TV screen.

It would be nice to know Te'o had nothing to do with this. It will be good to know he's too talented to have relied on cheap tricks exploiting the sympathy of cancer victims, their families and college football fans. But I'm a little suspicious of a relationship so strong and inspiring, but not nearly enough to warrant a visit after her supposed car accident, her battle with leukemia, her funeral or even to her tombstone. Not even so much as a skype confirmation of her existence? Why didn't he correct the misinformation about Kekua enrolled as a student in Stanford? I want to give Te'o the benefit of doubt, but as Armstrong and reality TV have proven, some people will go through any length to be successful.

Is Te'o one of them?

**Here's a link to a CBS story about Manti Te'o overcoming the odds. Unfortunately the embedding function was disabled so I couldn't post it on here. But you can find it here.

Meanwhile you can check out this ESPN video summarizing the aftermath of the Deadspin expose.