[the Talking Can]

this info is surely a repost, but i'm still trying to get my head around the timeline....this is the first mention of her

Confused? Everyone is. And maybe Manti Te'o was also that September night outside Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Mich., the night the legend of a dead girlfriend who never existed was truly born.

Te'o's Fighting Irish had just beaten Michigan State 20-3 to move to 3-0, a landmark victory on their way to an undefeated regular season. Te'o was the star, with 12 tackles, a sack and a fumble recovery.

He was also an inspirational story. That week, his grandmother back in Hawaii passed away. That much is undeniably true. Then the story filtered out that just hours later, he'd lost Kekua. Newspapers and the ESPN broadcast were all over it. After the game, Te'o stood in one end zone and triumphantly pointed to the heavens.

"I lost two, you know, women that I truly love," Te'o said after the game. "But I had my family around me, I had my football family around me, I had my girlfriend's football family around me. And at the end of the day families are forever. I'm going to see them again and it's going to be a very happy day when I do."

This was the start of the snowball that has now humiliated the 22-year-old.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/ncaaf--...052534925.html

At one point, I talked to Swarbrick about Te'o, about this Hawaiian Mormon who chose to play for the Irish Catholics, who turned down the NFL draft to return and lead Notre Dame back to glory, who demonstrated such obvious leadership.

"The perfect Notre Dame football player," Swarbrick said.

Then I asked the athletic director about whether the girlfriend's long battle with leukemia, as it had been described, had worn Te'o down. That's a slow, emotional way to die. It's especially tough on the survivor when you're off in Indiana, helpless and incapable of getting back to help or hug.

Swarbrick hesitated, maybe surprised at the thought. He acknowledged he hadn't noticed anything.