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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First and foremost, if you’re one of the 16 remaining Americans who hasn’t read Deadspin’s incredible, mind-blowing investigative report on Notre Dame linebacker and soon-to-be first round draft pick Manti Te’o and his fake dead girlfriend, do it now. I haven’t read something so riveting since “The Berenstain Bears Go to Gitmo”. That article should be taught on day one when the cool kids show up to J school.

That said, there’s no point in retelling the story, because it can’t be summarized. However, I do have 10 quick thoughts on this…

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Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with Kate Upton.

It is not an easy task to put together a list, such as the Greatest Sports Moments of 2012, specifically because so many things happen in any given year that it’s all but impossible to universally gauge which one event or person is greater than another. But since we’re just a couple dudes who like to make fun of stuff and almost always ignore actual sports news, it’s really quite easy.

With that said, here’s a quick breakdown of how our team of fact checkers and sports analyst number crunchers determine which people, places and things were the most important and influential in 2012…

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I haven’t been the most devout NBA fan yet in this young season, so I was a little surprised to see that more than a month later, Oklahoma City Thunder fans are still mad at James Harden. In case you forgot – or simply don’t care, because it’s so damn trivial – Harden turned down a contract extension from the Thunder because it was reportedly lower than the max deal that he was seeking. So the Thunder traded Harden to the Houston Rockets in a move that Harden admitted left him baffled and hurt, and he eventually signed his new max deal with the Rockets.

I mean, unless I’m completely missing something, Harden wanted what was best for him – what he has since proven he deserves – and that didn’t match what the Thunder offered, so the team traded him. He didn’t leave. He didn’t demand to be traded. He was just traded. A business decision, as the kids at the playground call it. Yet here we are, staring at a t-shirt that paints Harden into some sort of Dwight Howard villain. The shirt’s not even cool.

Oh well, I’m sure Harden is losing sleep over it.

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Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees spent his Saturday at Ross-Ade stadium, leading the Fighting Irish to a 38-10 win over Purdue Boilermakers. A fight in the stands during a game at Ross-Ade is nothing unusual, especially between drunk college football fans and pissed-off working types stuck making boilers all day, but this one was special — Tommy’s 21-year old sister Meghan was involved, and she was arrested on charges of public intoxication.

From The Exponent, which sounds like something I had to find in math:

Purdue Police Captain Eric Chin said at around 8:30 p.m. officers received a report of a fight occurring in section 116 of the stadium. When the officers responded to the report, fans pointed to Rees as the one causing the disturbance.

“We did discover that a Meghan Rees was implicated as being one of the individuals involved in the disturbance in 116 and she was escorted out of the stands and into the concourse,” Chin said.

All he needed to do was add “particular” in front of “individuals” and he would’ve given the most cop statement of all time. Pictured right is Meghan, looking a little worse-for-wear than her Twitter user photo, and you can click it to see the full-sized version. Hopefully she’ll be healed up and ready to go in time for Saturday’s game against Air Force and will be drunk enough to fight their tough dad dressed like Batman.

As of now there has been no official statement from Tommy or Notre Dame, but hopefully the press release from Tommy just says, “heh, my sister’s a trip, right” and Notre Dames says nothing.

Yes. If I get the ability, I will post one dunk video. It’s not Blake Griffin, though, so you’re lucky. The dunker and…. dunkee(?) are both very white. The dunker is Kyle Kuric from Louisville, and I don’t know the name of the other guy, but he’s from Notre Dame. He should get in the witness protection program, since he can never show his face again.

Video after the jump.
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