<p>Manti made up so many details about meeting with his “girlfriend” that his credibility in now claiming to be the victim of a hoax, rather than its perpetrator, is close to zero.</p>
<p>A lot of people are going to be on this and I assume eventually the truth will come out, but for now I can see two leading possibilities:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The hoax was concocted by the Notre Dame p.r. machine to try to generate some steam behind Te’o’s Heisman candidacy, or</p></li>
<li><p>Te’o was actually involved in a romantic relationship with the man in California at the other end of the Twitter feeds, they invented the “girlfriend” as cover (and as a convenient enough reason why Te’o, who surely would have been BMOC, wouldn’t date Notre Dame women), but then they needed to kill off the “girlfriend” when teammates and others started to think it strange that they had never met her despite a supposed 3-year relationship.</p></li>
</ol>