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Of course it ended in a cliffhanger -- and also raised more questions than it put to bed. As the Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax saga entered its third week, and with America seemingly desperate to finally look away, Part I of Dr. Phil McGraw's two-part grilling of admitted hoax mastermind Ronaiah Tuiasosopo turned out to be largely an appetizer for Part 2. The Dr. Phil show ended Thursday with McGraw confronting Tuiasosopo about the latter's assertion he was the actual voice of Lennay Kekua. Kekua is the character Tuiasosopo created and Te'o purportedly fell in love with, through on-line contact...

Noting the unusual amount of online chatter linking Manti Te'o, his hoax of a (dead) girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, and Lizzy Seeberg (and perhaps connecting that to my long-held belief that the Fighting Irish would never be national champions again until Notre Dame better reflected its namesake), my wife, Jeanette, told me that "perhaps the good thing about the Kekua-Te'o tale is that it brings the Lizzy Seeberg story back out into the open." Trusting Jeanette's intuition, but not yet grasping the exact connection, I pondered the similarities (and differences) of the trusting girl naively thinking she was getting involved...

The campus of the University of Notre Dame. January 21, 2013 (CNS) - Fr. John Jenkins C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, will march in the March for Life along with about 600 students and more than a hundred faculty, according to students with the University’s pro-life student group. Fr. Jenkins has walked in the March for Life since the 2010 event. This year, however, is a little different as Notre Dame students were asked to lead the March for Life. “In addition to the faculty and students attending the March, alumni and friends of ND will also...

Who hasn’t laughed at the revelation that Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o had a “fake” girlfriend? I meant to spend five minutes on the subject on my radio show and ended up doing an hour and then making fun of it randomly throughout all three hours. As funny as it is, and it is pretty funny, it’s also not foreign to me. A friend of mine (who I won’t name) has fallen for this several times. The hoaxes perpetrated against him eventually evolved to the point of fake woman needing money to get out of some horrible situation...

Manti Te'o has told family and friends that the woman who was the voice of his fictitious girlfriend “Lennay Kekua” called him in December and said she had to fake her own death months earlier to elude drug dealers, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser has learned. The woman, who has yet to be identified, tried to re-engage a relationship with Te‘o months after she supposedly had died of leukemia in early September, the Notre Dame All-American linebacker has told the people close to him. The account was shared with the Star-Advertiser by a source close to the Te‘o family. According to the...

Just about four months ago the Democrats’ media broke the heartbreaking story of how a double tragedy had struck Manti Te’o a star football player for Norte Dame. The reports told of how Te’o’s grandmother in Hawaii had died and shortly thereafter his girlfriend, the love of his life, had died from injuries sustained in a car accident or leukemia – whichever carried the narrative better during a particular retelling of the story . Te’o’s grandmother Annette Santiago, was real and there is no reason to doubt his deep sense of loss at her death, but the “life” and “death”...

So many tears for a fake dead girl, but none for a real one. The death of Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o’s beautiful, brave girlfriend Lennay Kekua — widely reported by Sports Illustrated, CBS and many other media outlets — was all either an elaborate hoax or worse. And in response, my alma mater held the kind of emotional news conference for the fake dead girl they never held for the real one, Lizzy Seeberg.

Too funny! Go to link

Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend is the biggest story on Twitter News January 17, 2013 Fernando Alfonso III more articles | email | Twitter — Deadspin published a blockbuster investigation Wednesday night, exposing the relationship between star Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o and his girlfriend—who reportedly passed away last year—as a grand hoax. The story has quickly taken over Twitter, which is now inundated with praise for the sports site, jokes at Te'o’s expense, and questions as to the star player’s level of involvement. The investigative piece by Deadspin's Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey reveals how Te'o's relationship with girlfriend Lennay...

Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school's football program back to glory, Te'o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI's Pete Thamel described how Te'o would phone her in...

Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school's football program back to glory, Te'o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI's Pete Thamel described how Te'o would phone her in...

Alabama Wins National Championship Cork GainesJanuary 7, 2013 In the end, it wasn't even close. Alabama blew out Notre Dame 42-14 and Nick Saban has now won three national titles in four years. Here are the final moments...(Click to the site to see the video)

BCS Championship Game thread - Alabama (2) at Notre Dame (1) (+9, O/U 40.5), ESPN 830pm EST. Miami Gardens, Fl. Weather, temperature around 73 degrees, chance of showers 10 percent.

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The images will be vivid, history will be haunting, ghosts will be everywhere.This is Knute Rockne versus Bear Bryant, Touchdown Jesus versus Dreamland Bar-B-Que, Four Horsemen versus Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Montana versus Joe Namath, and, of course, in the battle of the little guys, Rudy versus Nick.It will be a football game bathed in a complicated mess of legend, religion and roughhousing, but most folks think Monday's BCS national championship heavyweight fight between Alabama and Notre Dame can be symbolized by a single disparity.

I never had any problems in the short time I lived in the Deep South. My co-workers in Savannah, Ga., told me at times that I was nice for a Yankee, which is to say that thanks to Southern hospitality, I was very politely well-tolerated. Still, there were times I felt as if I needed a passport. I also had never seen an entire aisle at the grocery store dedicated to grits, the way they had it at the Piggly Wiggly. And while that life was a while ago, it was enough to give a sense of some of the...

Tomorrow the national college football championship will be decided in a game that will be watched by millions of people. The combatants will be Notre Dame and Alabama. Millions of Catholics around the country will be rooting for the “Fighting Irish” but I won’t be one of them. I find it hard to support frauds whether they are in or out of politics. Notre Dame is a consummate fraud and has been for many years. The formerly Catholic school has always held itself up as the pinnacle of Catholic higher education. The “Fighting Irish” were born with a chip on...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Jeremy Pike is a 37-year-old native and resident of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Like all proper fans of the Alabama Crimson Tide, he maintains an abiding hatred of Southeastern Conference rivals Auburn and Tennessee. But there is a third member of his unholy fan trinity, and always has been. "Oh, I hate Notre Dame," Pike said. "I never pull for them." On Nov. 3, Pike and about 50 other Alabama fans were in Louisiana getting ready to watch the Tide play LSU – the most anticipated game of the year. But before the game, they were glued to...

<p>SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Top-ranked Notre Dame finally got down to the serious business of getting ready to play defending national champion Alabama in the BCS title game on Jan. 7.</p> <p>After weeks of some players and coaches traveling the nation for award shows, players finishing up the school year with finals and making trips home for Christmas, Notre Dame had its hardest hitting practice Saturday since its 22-13 victory over USC on Nov. 24 in the regular-season finale. Kelly plans another physical practice Sunday.</p>

Notre Dame Fans Continue To Trash Alabama With Offensive National Championship T-Shirts Andrew TredinnickDec. 27, 2012, 12:43 PM In the month leading up to Notre Dame's first trip to the national championship game in more than two decades, Irish faithful have created a series of T-shirts bashing their opponent, Alabama. Notre Dame is winning the trash-talking battle with the series of racy shirts, but the last thing Notre Dame needs is to provide a feisty Crimson Tide team and fan base with any source of motivation before the game. Maybe Alabama will take the shirts for their comedic value. Eleven...

In what the University of Notre Dame’s student newspaper is calling “a historic decision,” the University announced plans for a University- recognized homosexual student organization as well as a full-time student development staff position focused on LGBTQ issues. The announcement was made as the result of a long review of the University’s policies. According to the student newspaper, Fr. John Jenkins, the president of the university, said that the plan “grows out of our mission as a Catholic university” and is “directed by that fundamental mission in a profound way.” But although the plan describes the student organization as acting...