Manti Te’o and his girlfriend hoax to be subject of ESPN Backstory documentary

Manti Te’o and his girlfriend hoax will be the subject of ESPN’s next Backstory.

Manti Te’o was an incredible college football player, but that’s not what he’s best known for.

Te’o nearly won the 2012 Heisman Trophy, as he was the star defensive player for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. He took home nearly every major defensive award in college football that year. Notre Dame was an undefeated 12-0 heading into the BCS National Championship game vs. the Alabama Crimson Tide, but all we remember about him is his embarrassing catfishing saga and how his dead girlfriend inspired his run to the BCS National Championship Game and Heisman ceremony. The only thing is she didn’t exist.

It’s still bonkers this event even happened, as for many of us, we had no idea catfishing was a thing until what went down between Te’o and acquaintance Ronaiah Tuiasosopo pretending to be a fake Stanford University student named Lennay Kekua. Nearly a decade later, this whole story will now be told on ESPN’s Backstory.

ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. says Manti Te’o: Too Good to Check will be airing this fall. It will be fascinating to uncover what he doesn’t already know about Te’o, Tuiasosopo and the entire catfishing hoax. If this incident didn’t epitomize stranger than fiction, I don’t really know what does. It’s still borderline unbelievable that it happened nearly a decade after the fact.

Manti Te’o’s catfishing hoax will be profiled in ESPN’s Backstory.

Te’o put together a season dominating enough at Notre Dame that will eventually earn him enshrinement into the College Football Hall of Fame. It was one of the greatest years we’ve seen out of a linebacker in the last quarter of a century, yet this fake girlfriend hoax is the first thing we ever bring up surrounding Te’o and his football career.

After playing for a national title at Notre Dame in 2012, Te’o would be a second-round pick by the then-San Diego Chargers in the 2013 NFL Draft. Te’o spent his first four NFL seasons in Southern California before signing on with the New Orleans Saints in 2017. He has been with the Saints the last three seasons but remains a free agent on the open market heading into the 2020 season.

Outside of his Notre Dame career, Te’o was part of the final years the Chargers played in San Diego, as well as three of the most soul-crushing postseason losses in NFL history by the Saints, all of which coming in consecutive years. His football life is and always will be an utterly fascinating one.

Te’o being the primary subject of an ESPN documentary signifies how crazy of a story it was.

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