With the NFL draft taking place today, one name is on my mind: Manti Te'o. If you're not familiar with the Manti Te'o scandal, I commend you on consuming better media or at least eating at home instead of sitting next to me at a diner that has ESPN running 24/7. But here's the short version: an outstanding Notre Dame linebacker in his senior season was struck by tragedy right before the biggest game of the year as his fake girlfriend and his real grandmother both died on the same day. This tragedy inspired him to new heights and rallied his team around him, and the power of this narrative made Te'o a Heisman contender and probably put Notre Dame in the national championship game, since the participants are partly decided by polling sportswriters and coaches as to who they would like to see in the Big Game, narrative can still trump quality. And two facts illustrate what a heavy narrative this was for this college football season, for two reasons. The first is the scope of the media coverage: I know literally nothing about this college football season (or really any other season in the last fifteen years) that is not somehow related to Manti Te'o. And second, Alabama's overwhelming victory and 265 yards rushing show that the spectre of Te'o's dead girlfriend was the only reason to want to see the Irish in that game. Seriously, this was such a debacle that college football may have to finally implement a real play-off system... Te'o's fake dead girlfriend actually broke college football, meaning they might have to turn it into something I'd actually watch.
I don't even care that much what the hell happened, what Te'o knew and when he knew it, why somebody would create and perpetuate this hoax, or the seven levels of bizarre behavior that went on in a man having a romantic relationship entirely over twitter with another man pretending to be a woman without ever meeting her, hearing her voice, or even seeing a live image in an era where every laptop has a webcam, or expecting anybody to believe he wasn't in on it... pulling that hoax off without Te'o being in on it seems like it would have been harder than dubbing a Nicholas Cage movie into Cantonese, but I actually don't care either way. What I do care about is the tremendous comedy potential of all of this, especially considering the degree to which football is something I share with my dad.
