Please, People, Don’t Let Manti Te’o Soak Up The Hero Narrative Again

by Dylan Murphy | 5:14 pm, January 17th, 2013

We start here, with the words of Ty Duffy from The Big Lead:

“The sports media gets caught up with these tidy hero narratives. These narratives captivate the imagination, raise the blinders and lead to gratuitously lazy journalism.”

That was the Te’o story, a bunch of overly-trusting writers skimming over discrepancies because well, the alternative is time-consuming and possibly offensive and journalism. But I won’t rehash Duffy’s entire premise here – instead, his points are a launch pad for a second, emerging narrative that mirrors its source and alibis the entire practice of hero journalism itself: Manti Te’o's redemption, again.

Gene Wojciechowski, who conducted that ESPN interview with Te’o you’ve seen 400 million times on repeat, doesn’t believe Te’o was in on it. Sports Illustrated‘s Pete Thamel, who has been similarly crucified for his thick, heroic brushstrokes, said on the Dan Patrick Show today that he thinks Te’o was wholeheartedly duped, clinging to the vestiges of Te’o's gift-wrapped image. All of which is to emphasize two things: first, that sportswriter x, whether at Sports Illustrated or ESPN or the South Bend Tribune, or whichever outlet that was undermined by non-intensive fact checking, can salvage their own journalistic reputations. But there’s a secondary undercurrent in play, because Te’o-as-victim sets in motion the exact narrative we’re claiming to decry: Manti Te’o, tragic casualty of misfortune that overcomes.

Te’o will be drafted by some team. That team will hold press conferences, explain their decision and be possibly lauded for investing in a fallen hero. And Te’o is a great football player – no one can really dispute this – so he might go on to have a great career. The interviews will come, again, what Te’o learned, how he’s different now, a flurry of platitudes peddling digestible bullshit. The stuff that melts one hero story into another. And that’s the horribly ironic part of all this, that Te’o could, in theory, be once agin propped up by a new batch of the same people. Because our court-of-law standards are, by default, setting up another hero.

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dmc

Am I the only one that finds it ironic that on the same page of this article it is recommended that I read 12 quotes from Ray Lewis to get myself motivated? The same Ray Lewis that was involved in a murder but is now treated as a deity? Hmmm…
EJS

How bout we get the facts first, then make judgments. If he was duped, he was duped. If he was in on the scam it will have to come out. For instance, he said he sent white roses to the girlfriend’s funeral. Where’d he buy them? Where’s the receipt? Were they delivered somewhere, if so, where? He said he speny all night on the phone with her. Let’s see the phone bill. Does he or does he not know the young guy in California, Tuiasosopo, who appears to have perpetrated this mess? The little circumstantial facts will either condemn him or exonerate him. I’m a lot more interested in the facts than the half-baked, half-cocked opinions of guys who don’t really know what they’re talking about.