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Manti Te’o documentary: the world reacts

nick shepkowski
·6 min read
1

You don’t have to be much of a college football fan whatsoever to recall the Manti Te’o catfishing story.  Us being a Notre Dame based website means we’re plenty aware of it and how incredible of a player Te’o was during his time at Notre Dame, but the story of his girlfriend dying and then ultimately not actually ever existing meant it went from a sports story to a national news story.

I don’t think anyone ever forgot about the craziness that was around that story and it never really went away but for almost 10 years now there hasn’t been anything new that we’ve learned about it.  At least until now.

Netflix recently released “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist,” a two part documentary on the entire story of Te’o, Lennay Kekua, and Naya Tuiasosopo and the catfishing scheme that took place.

The Twitter world reacted to the documentary and we’ll get to that in just a second but I wanted to next share just a couple of my initial takeaways.

NEXT: My initial thoughts after watching the documentary

NMatt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

  • I have no doubt Naya Tuiasosopo had an incredibly difficult life dealing with what she dealt with but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a less remorseful person in my life.  Every time she opened her mouth in the documentary she just buried herself deeper and deeper.

  • The majestic team at Deadspin couldn’t wait to put “hoax” in the headline of their story and publish that Te’o may have known (although he clearly didn’t), but can’t wait to play victim in the documentary because all they were doing were going after ESPN and Sports Illustrated.

  • Seeing louis nix celebrating after the goal line stand against Stanford made me tear up.  RIP Big Lou.

  • Deadspin downplaying Te’o as a legit Heisman Trophy candidate that season is beyond laughable

  • The absurdity of the Katie Couric interview is even more ridiculous 10 years later.

  • Dr. Phil makes me incredibly uncomfortable whenever I see him on  TV but even he couldn’t get past the absurdity of the Naya Tuiasosopo ridiculousness.

  • Were Brian Kelly or Bob Diaco asked to be on this?  I’d be very curious to see what each had to say about literally everything that 2012 season and the days and weeks that followed it.

  • Manti has more compassion and forgiveness in the pinky finger on his left hand than I do in my entire body and you can’t walk away not impressed by him upon watching this.

Scroll down for how the Twitter world reacted to “Untold: The Girlfriend That Didn’t Exist”.

Ian Rapport

Will Cain

Kacy Standohar

Nene Hilarious

Tanktop Vegan

Rich Ohrnberger - NFL teammate of Te'o

Lerato Elias

Spartan Roy (speaks for all who watched it)

Just Lain

Thor Nostrum

Colby Hooper

Josh Callaway

The EndZone

Carrington Harrison

Chris Torello

Lisa Hahner

More Manti

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Gallery: Manti Te’o through the years

Story originally appeared on Fighting Irish Wire