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6:05, Sports Talk
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Manti Te'o
Reds/WBC
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Reds: Congrats to BP
Reds 2B Brandon Phillips named to TEAM USA provisional roster for
World Baseball Classic:
(From @WBC and @USABaseball)
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More Manti
The plot? Follow this timeline of tweets
Really? If you were a reporter, do you ask for death certificate?
The Sherman Report
I’ve known Wojciechowski for more than 20 years. He is at the top of his class when it comes to being a thorough and diligent reporter.
Really, who among us out there wouldn’t have done the same thing? Name me a reporter who says, “Sorry to hear about your loss, Manti. Can I see a copy of the death certificate?”
From a friend of mine in South Bend:
Only Notre Dame could go 12-0, have a defensive player contend for the Heisman and capture the nation's imagination with a heartwarming yet tragic story, and see it all devolve in to an embarrassing blowout, the coach who made it all happen looking for greener pastures, and a humiliating incident that gets national headlines for said Heisman candidate being either stupid or duplicitous in the biggest sports media hoax since Syd Finch. WTF!?!?!?
Question: Why was Te'o answering questions about her death, AFTER she called him and he realized it was a hoax? Chicago Tribune: Two days after Te'o was thrown for a loop by a dead girlfriend rising from the grave, here is how he answered a question about charity work he had performed this year.
"I worked with Relay for Life stuff," he said. "I really got hit with cancer. I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer."
Looking back...the ESPN feature
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Did you miss them?
Mike DeCourcy talked UC, XU, UK and more (6:11).
Andrew Whitworth talked Pro Bowl and went hard after critics of Andy Dalton (6:35)
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Reds
Improved NL Central poses challenge to retooled Reds
Mark Sheldon, MLB.com
"I think Pittsburgh improved a lot," Jocketty said. "They worked to improve their club in the second half of last season and over this winter. The Cardinals didn't do much to improve on what they already have. Milwaukee added a lot to its bullpen and already had a good offense. The Cubs made a lot of moves as they transition."
Billy Hamilton evaluation:
MLB.com’s Jim Duquette (Former ML GM) and Matthew Leach
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Xavier
Christon's double-double leads Musketeers to road win
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Bengals
Clayton thinks Gruden will be Arizona Cardinals coach
ArizonaSports.com
"I still think in the end it's going to be Jay Gruden," Clayton said. "I can't see Bruce Arians wanting to just get a head coaching job. I mean this guy; he's got a great situation. Why leave Andrew Luck? He's that good." Clayton believes Arians will get plenty of offers next offseason and has no reason to rush into a situation -- particularly if it ends up being a poor fit.
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Notre Dame
Details from the South Bend Tribune
Te'o talks about his girlfriend
Former Arizona fullback says he met Kekua
ESPN
Mauia said Tuiasosopo -- whom Mauia believes is Kekua's cousin -- introduced the two. After the initial meeting, Mauia said he met her at an "after-party" for all of the athletes involved in the camp.
"She was tall," he said. "Volleyball-type of physique. She was athletic, tall, beautiful. Long hair. Polynesian. She looked like a model ... "
Notre Dame presents believable explanation
Yahoo
Swarbrick came to his Wednesday news conference armed with enough information to be certain that Te'o was the victim, not the perpetrator, of a vile hoax.
After listening to him, I believe Notre Dame.
The next step will be to see whether we can believe Manti Te'o when he addresses the story that stunned America. He has some explaining to do, but I believe that task was made easier by what Swarbrick said Wednesday.
Reserve judgement until everything comes out
Sporting News
Why lie about a girlfriend? Why, as a red-blooded superstar linebacker with the world as your oyster, do you lie about something as simple—yet eventually, so complex—as a relationship?
This, more than anything, is why this story needs to play out. This, more than anything, is why this story is far from complete.
The inclination in this media climate is to meticulously criticize or joke about a fallen star (I’m a card-carrying member); to wonder aloud about explanations; to offer up answers.
Yet here’s a question we all must ask ourselves: What if it’s not that easy?
Media didn't create hoax, but did give it life
WDRB
people do stupid, cruel stuff like that all the time. Watch "Catfish," the MTV documentary series about online relationships. I'm not saying it's right. I'm not letting them off. But there are bigger catfish to fry.
What makes this different, and what is more important about this story, is that the national sports media picked up this falsehood and ran with it. National outlets may not have given birth to the fictional Miss Kekua, but they helped bring her to life. They gave her emotion and real-life struggles. They painted her with dramatic colors, bathed Te'o's tearful story in soft music and literal sunlight. (The Chicago Sun-Times: "The sunlight touched Lennay Kekua's face for the last time at noon eastern time two Saturdays ago." Sports Illustrated: "Her relatives told [Te'o] that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice.")
I don't know who created Lennay Kekua, but the media put flesh on her fictitious bones.
Legend of Teo's girlfriend: A tale everyone wanted to believe
Yahoo
The narrative whipsaw of a sad story turning into something far worse – a morbid, twisted tale of an Internet prank gone excessive – ignited the sports world Wednesday, and left everyone wondering whether this was really the case of a naïve football player done wrong by friends or a fabrication that has yet to play to its conclusion.
Confused? Everyone is. And maybe Manti Te'o was also that September night outside Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Mich., the night the legend of a dead girlfriend who never existed was truly born.
'Catfish: The TV Show' renewed for second season
The movie: Catfish
Manti Teo's dead girlfriend is a hoax
Deadspin
The photographs identified as Kekua—in online tributes and on TV news reports—are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te'o.
Notre Dame Statement: Manti Te’o
On Dec. 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed by Manti Te’o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia. The University immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax. While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators.
Dennis Brown
University Spokesman | Assistant Vice President
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Happy Hour
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Book signing
Meet author Keith O'Brien tonight at 7pm at Joseph-Beth Books, Crestivew Hills
Outside Shot: The powerful true story of a team, a town, and a fight for redemption
The Cardinals of Scott County High School were beloved once—and with good reason. For years, they gave Kentucky fans what they wanted: basketball glory. But by 2009, the county had lost faith in its boys. To win now, besieged and alone, they’d need to have the season of their lives.
Outside Shot, being published this winter by St. Martin’s Press, follows the team’s top players and their legendary coach as they struggle to redeem themselves in the face of impossible odds: once-loyal fans now turned against them, parents who demand athletic greatness, and scouts who weigh their every move, turning children into “mini-athlete gods.” It delves deep inside the lives of the boys, their families, and their community—divided along lines of race, politics, religion, and sports. And it chronicles not only the high-stakes world of Kentucky basketball, but the battle for the soul of small-town America.
Outside Shot shows that if it’s hard to win basketball games, it can be even harder to win at life itself.
Central figures in the book:
UC's Ge'Lawn Guyn, NKU's Chad Jackson & former UK recruit Dakota Euton
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