Puppy Love?

I heard this headline last night about the Manti Te'o story.  It was one of those 7pm Hollywood shows that I don't watch but it came on before I could click off of it to change the channel.  The sports story that everybody is talking about.  First thing I thought about was "Is everybody talking about this or is it the media with nothing else to talk about?"

 We have fallen in love with instant media. There was a while that blogging on the Internet was access to the world.  Along comes U Tube and Face book and everything you do is now out there for the world to see for those who have the time to watch.  Now this thing called Tweeter where you instant thoughts can be sent to anyone who wants to hear what you say can be sent to them.

Is this a kid who loves notoriety and when it came up about a girl friend embellish to make it seem more than it actually was or is he a Lance Armstrong of Tweeter? Now we have to remember that this kid is 22 or less and as a major college football player has plenty of pressure from the media.  I can tell you as a 17 and 18 year old I laid across my bed many a night staring at a telephone wanting to call a girl for a date but not in some cases  having the courage to do so.  Now many years later I chuckle remembering how hard it was to call girls now that I have become the sex symbol that I am.

We all I think have gone through wishing to speak to a girl  and once she looked your way fell in love whether she spoke to you or not.  If this girl did exist and they were pen pals(boy that's old time) talking on line he just may felt something for her and never had seen her.  So he considered her a girl friend even though they  had never met.  Then there is the Lance Armstrong Effect.  He may have made all of this up.

Social pressure for a college kid who didn't have a girl friend and a media star to boot may have been thinking I need to invent a girl and kill her off to take this girl friend pressure off me.  If this is what happened he  is a Lance Armstrong  waiting to happen.  then the other option is he just might have been Catfished?  That is another one of this modern media  world lingo that a prank has been pulled on him by somebody on social media.

Evidence seems to be telling us that he knew  that stories were untrue  and did nothing to quiet the false statements.  Teammates have come forward and are telling just about everyone on the team knew there was no girl..  Manti Te'o is waiting for the April NFL draft.  If all of this proves out to be false I don't see how any NFL team could gamble on such a person.  His performance in the National Championship game has hurt his NFL status a lot already before all of this surfaced.  We have all seen professional team look first to talent potential and talent over rides problems.  We have seen many instances where after the fact many NFL teams wish they had passed on players and the opposite has happened that teams pass on players that blossom as they grow up.

If all of this pans out that this is a classic Catfish that he was duped 100% then he is clean and we all can feel sorry for him.  Where this story stands now I don't see where he will be exonerated.  Hope he is.  This new world of instant fame carries pressure that young kids don't see until they are buried in the avalanche that follows stupidity in this instant world of fame.