For quite some time, the Manti Te’o fake girlfriend hoax looked like it would be the story that never ends. The buzz has since died down, but Te’o has had to deal with some lingering heckling from minor league baseball teams and popular magazines. Apparently his former teammates have also faced questions about the alleged catfishing.
Houston Texans running back Cierre Wood, who was teammates with Te’o at Notre Dame last year, said a lot of people still ask him about Te’o’s fake girlfriend.
“Everybody asks me about Te’o,” Wood explained, via KHOU in Houston. “It’s something that I expected was going to happen. I got asked on the street a couple of times. I expected it from the locker room and what not.”
Those of you who still believe Te’o created the hoax himself — even after seeing Roniah Tuiasosopo recreate the Lennay Kekua voice on “Dr. Phil” — might be interested to hear that Wood actually spoke to the fake girlfriend once while at school.
“Yeah, I did,” Wood said when asked if he ever talked to Kekua. “I would come over to ask for a controller and he’d be like, ‘Come talk to my girl.’ It was on the computer screen and it was blank. I really don’t care. I heard someone talking, so I introduced myself, ‘Hi, I’m Cierre. How are you doing? Nice to meet you,’ and just went on about my business.”
Wood’s personal experience with the hoax is yet another example of how elaborate it was. At first, I thought for sure Te’o created the Kekua story for sympathy and attention. Now it seems pretty obvious that he was duped.
