
A former Notre Dame football star whose story of triumph over tragedy inspired millions was exposed as a fraud Wednesday. Manti Te'o, the runner up for the Heisman trophy, told the media his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, 22, and his grandmother died within hours of each other in September.
"I miss 'em, but I know that I'll see them again one day," he told ESPN before Notre Dame was blown out by Alabama in the college football’s BCS National Championship in Miami on January 7.
The gifted linebacker became the face of the BCS title game as he spun his web of lies about Kekua. He made national headlines when he said his "girlfriend" suffered serious injuries in a car crash a month before she died of leukemia in Hawaii.
The national media -- and in particular, the sports networks, tripped over themselves in their rush to uplift Te'o as a symbol of hope over adversity, or whatever.
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