Wow. I guess I'm back to blogging. It's been nearly three years since my last blog post and that was on a different website. Some people have been suggesting that I write a blog and I was thinking of posting a Facebook status or a series of tweets on this pressing issue, but I thought it might be a better idea to write a blog post about it.
Whether you love or hate Notre Dame (I'm a hater), we can all say that we were all sad for ND linebacker Manti Te'o when we heard of the passing of his Grandmother and his girlfriend in the same week. Our hearts went out to him and we wished him the best. The way he played through adversity and led his team to an undefeated regular season and a National Championship berth was a compelling story that inspired many. The only problem? This story, we all want to believe isn't entirely true.
Te'o's girlfriend didn't exist. Te'o has claimed that he got romantically involved with a woman on the internet named Lennay Kekua that he never met in person. He says that he is embarrassed and that he got duped. If you haven't read the whole story, read it hear on ESPN.com http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8851033/story-manti-teo-girlfriend-death-apparently-hoax.
I have a lot of skepticism. I'm not denying that catfishing is real and it's happened to people, but I have a lot of questions. Manti Te'o, you're the big man on campus and can practically date any woman you want and you choose a woman over the internet? Over those three years, where you were talking to your girlfriend, you never met her in person? You never Skyped her? And when you thought she got in a car accident, you never visited her in the hospital? When she was diagnosed with leukemia you still never visited her? You didn't go to her funeral? This smells funky. There are a lot of things that don't look right to me and while Te'o has a reputation of being one of the most honest and honerable players in all of sports, I just can't believe him.
How can he say that he was in love with someone when didn't talk to her in person after she was in a car accident? We want to believe him. Just like we wanted to believe that Tiger Woods wasn't cheating on his wife, Joe Paterno didn't know about Sandusky, and Lance Armstrong wasn't doping. A few years ago we thought all those guys were heroes, just like we thought Manti Te'o is a hero. People say we should trust him because of his reputation, but may I remind you of a quote? "Achievements on the golf course are not what matters, decency and honesty are what matter", -Tiger Woods.
Being a Cubs fan all my life, when I was eight years-old, like most other kids in Chicago, I loved Sammy Sosa. I loved watching him hit monster home runs and bunny-hopping his way to first base. And then all of the sudden, in a game against the Devil Rays, Sosa's bat cracked and we discovered that he was using a corked bat. I wanted to believe it was a mistake, but I knew it wasn't. I was crushed, but I learned something from that. I learned that sports stars and celebrities aren't people to look up to. We can respect them and admire what they have accomplished, but at the same time, they are just regular humans like you and me. Because we're all human, we all have sin in our lives. We all have sinned and will continue to do so. So what I learned on that day when I was eight years-old was not to strive to be like or expect a certain behavior from athletes. Why make our role models people that are exactly like us- mortal and imperfect?
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