Enough Already With The Manti Te’o Jokes

Written by Ashley Burns / 05.21.13

It has been a little more than four months since that insane Deadspin article blew open one of the most absurd hoaxes in sports, at least in this Internet era, as it revealed that Lennay Kekua, the reported dead girlfriend of Notre Dame star Manti Te’o, was the fabrication of a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Sure, we all had a ton of additional questions and would have loved to have a little more insight into how a grown man fell for such a trick, but Te’o and Tuiasosopo sort of told their stories and were content to leave us believing that Te’o is just a big, dumb schmuck.

Of course, between that January article and today, plenty of other things happened in sports and we’ve turned our attention elsewhere, because we thought that we’d beaten this joke into oblivion. That suggests, however, that sports fans are all on the same wavelength, and obviously Te’o jokes were going to be made during and after the NFL Draft. But today? Talk about timely.

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Sorry, HS Baseball Players, This Is What Your Internet Girlfriend Really Looks Like

Written by Brandon Stroud / 02.13.13

high school baseball coach Catfish

An elaborate scheme to teach high school baseball players the value of not sending nude pictures to strangers, or a horrible man’s attempt to see kid dicks? YOU decide!

Actually, sorry, you don’t have to decide. The horrible dicks one.

Irvine police have arrested a high school baseball coach suspected of posing as a female on Facebook and convincing underage boys to send him sexual pictures of themselves.

Zachary Reeder, 30, of Orange set up a fake profile using a photo of a blonde female, police said, and used the social networking site to form relationships with his victims.

Reeder was arrested Saturday on suspicion of lewd conduct with a child, possession and distribution of child pornography, and child annoyance. (via Daily Pilot)

The worst part about the Manti Te’o story making “Catfishing” a household word is that a bunch of the less-clever perverts found out and went, “wow, I’m gonna try that!” So now women are being lured into jewel heists or whatever and local reporters are getting Catfished on Facebook for money. I wish we could go back in time to 2009, when the only way we had to address people with imaginary internet relationships was “stop being stupid.”

A video report of the story is after the jump. Enjoy*.

*”Enjoy” is probably not the right word.

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It’s Lance Armstrong’s Oprah Interview Mixed And Mashed Into Radiohead’s ‘Creep’

Written by Ashley Burns / 01.29.13

Say what you want about him, but Lance Armstrong's karaoke night had great drink specials.

I’m more affected by the fact that Radiohead’s “Creep” is old enough to drink than I am by anything that Lance Armstrong says lately, which is why I only watched the former 7-time Tour de France champion’s interview with Oprah Winfrey so I could burn a few thousand calories by practicing my eye roll exercises. But you already know everything that went down in that interview from Armstrong admitting that he used more drugs than your parents in the 70s and Oprah’s nip slip that may have been part of a strange dream of mine.

Fortunately, from the ashes of disgrace rises the Internet’s creativity, as a brilliant man named Matthijs Vlot chopped up Armstrong’s interview with Oprah and turned it into a delightful cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”, which is quite a fitting song for the athlete who deceived the entire world.

But is it the most fitting song? Probably, but I still have another request.

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Want People To Respect Vegetarians? Say They’re Exactly Like Manti Te’o

Written by Brandon Stroud / 01.29.13
Manti Te'o Peta ad

"Quorn chicken has milk in it? What a CRUEL HOAX."

Here’s something important you should know about me: I’m a vegan.

Some of you know that. If I mention it in passing, I’m guaranteed at least five tweets and two sternly-worded e-mails about how a brief mention of my personal dietary choices equates to full-on BLOOD PROTEST, and how I need to stop trying to cram it down the readers’ throats. If you weren’t aware, that’s probably normal, because I don’t mention it much.

I have, however, sorta ended up as “the vegan” in the Notable Comedy Sports Blogs circle of friends. Almost everyone else who writes about sports is full-on Ron Swanson 24/7, so if, say, vegan chicken wings are mentioned by a sports guy, Cosby Sweaters will talk about how their “world is imploding” and CFB Section gets comments like “go throw red paint on someone wearing a fur coat … tree huggers.” It instantly turns normal people into Jim Belushi. I’m left here to kinda meekly say “those wings aren’t bad, because they aren’t really supposed to be chicken wings” and hope nobody throws a brick at my head.

The reason I bring this all up now is because Peta has launched a Manti Te’o ad campaign, and oh my God I want to hit them in the head with a brick.

Manti Te'o Peta ad

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Is The Manti Te’o Hoax Really The Worst Fake Internet Girlfriend Story Of All-Time?

Written by Ashley Burns / 01.18.13

I thought we all had a pretty great conversation about the Manti Te’o story yesterday – except the one or two commenters who sassed me – so I wanted to bring up two fun little updates to the story because they jumped out of my monitors this morning and smacked me in the balls.

For starters, one of the first points I made in my rambling mess of thoughts yesterday was that this is Deadspin’s baby from start to finish, because Jack Dickey (or Tom Scocca, according to Donald Trump) and Timothy Burke did a great job putting together a puzzle that neither Notre Dame nor ESPN wanted to even take out of the box, because (if they’re to be believed) both parties knew about this hoax for weeks.

However, there are other people out there trying to steal the Te’o show now, like the New York Post, which decided to do what Deadspin was too nice to do and expose the poor girl whose photos had been taken and used as the fake face of Lennay Kekua. So now this girl who had nothing to do with any of this nonsense, other than giving an old friend a picture because she thought it might make a cancer patient happy, is being harassed by reporters. For what? So they can have someone crying on camera as she shouts, “I don’t f*cking know anything”? Classy.

But now my favorite part. The part where I’m right.

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Yep, Taiwan Animation Weighed In On The Manti Te’o Girlfriend Hoax

Written by Brandon Stroud / 01.17.13

Manti Te'o Taiwan AnimationNew career goal: get name-dropped in a Taiwan Animation video.

With the exception of WWE doing a Lennay Kekua/Little Jimmy joke on Monday, the most predictable thing to come from the reaction to Deadspin’s Manti Te’o I LOVE MUH DEAD GIRLFRIEND story is the response from Next Media Animation. Sometimes life lobs a ball in their direction, and it’s their job to do a bunch of peyote and slam it home. They don’t disappoint here, covering Te’o's troubles with butt-chugging leprechauns, in-game mech attacks and what may or may not be a necrophilia joke.

Thanks for doing what you do, Taiwan. I’d be down for an entire series of these, especially if they involve more scenes of fictional characters pouring whisky up this poor guy’s butthole.

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