[cardcoug]

Of all sources, Deadspin seems to have put together the most credible timeline of this entire utterly bizarre story because they've managed to cobble together various sources that substantiates their story, the first point in that timeline being Manti and the "girlfriend" met after Stanford's awesome win over the Domers at Stanford Stadium.

You're right that the Deadspin piece has the most important info, and I think it does clearly show that Te'o is not a completely innocent victim. He lied about having met her - that much seems uncontroversial. But one possibility is that he thought he had an online girlfriend, but instead was being pranked, and that he pretended she wasn't just an online girlfriend, making up stories about meetings at Stanford and Hawaii, etc... Another is that he made up those same stories, and made up her death on the same day his actual grandmother actually died, and went through the trouble to orchestrate a whole bunch of other crazy little details for the story. The first possibility seems just more likely on its face, and also it makes sense of both the deadspin article and the existence of tweets in november and december laughing about pranking Te'o. The second possibility would mean, as was suggested above, that Te'o is a complete sociopath.

[cardcoug]

Of all sources, Deadspin seems to have put together the most credible timeline of this entire utterly bizarre story because they've managed to cobble together various sources that substantiates their story, the first point in that timeline being Manti and the "girlfriend" met after Stanford's awesome win over the Domers at Stanford Stadium.

You're right that the Deadspin piece has the most important info, and I think it does clearly show that Te'o is not a completely innocent victim. He lied about having met her - that much seems uncontroversial. But one possibility is that he thought he had an online girlfriend, but instead was being pranked, and that he pretended she wasn't just an online girlfriend, making up stories about meetings at Stanford and Hawaii, etc... Another is that he made up those same stories, and made up her death on the same day his actual grandmother actually died, and went through the trouble to orchestrate a whole bunch of other crazy little details for the story. The first possibility seems just more likely on its face, and also it makes sense of both the deadspin article and the existence of tweets in november and december laughing about pranking Te'o. The second possibility would mean, as was suggested above, that Te'o is a complete sociopath.