The Best American Sports Writing 2014

by Glenn Stout

  @lovalovaloveyou nice to meet u too ma’am

  —Manti Te’o (@MTeo_5) October 10, 2011

  Lennay Kekua’s Twitter name was @lovalovaloveYOU from 2011 until April 2012, @LennayKay from April until September 2012, and has been @LoveMSMK ever since. Their interactions, by and large, consisted of mild flirting. By January 2012, they were a “couple,” and Te’o sprinkled #LMK (for Lennay Marie Kekua) throughout his Twitter timeline in 2012.

  As for what Kekua was tweeting, we have only bits and pieces. Her Twitter was private during most of this time, though various Google caches reveal her ever-changing series of avatars and a handful of Twitpics.

  All of those photographs—with one important exception—came from the private Facebook and Instagram accounts of Reba, whom we found after an exhaustive related-images search of each of Lennay’s images (most of which had been modified in some way to prevent reverse image searching). We sent her a number of photographs that had appeared on Lennay’s Twitter account, which is now private but apparently still active. One picture in particular brought Reba to a start. It had been used briefly as @LoveMSMK’s Twitter avatar and later in the background of the page.

  That photo hadn’t appeared on the Internet—at least, not to Reba’s knowledge. She had taken it in December 2012 and sent it directly to an old high school acquaintance. The two hadn’t talked since graduation, but the classmate, whom Reba remembered fondly, contacted her on Facebook with a somewhat convoluted request: His cousin had been in a serious car accident, and he had seen her photos before and thought she was pretty. Would she be so kind as to take a picture of herself holding up a sign reading MSMK, to put in a slide show to support the cousin’s recovery? (He didn’t explain what MSMK meant, and Reba still doesn’t know.) Baffled but trusting, Reba made the sign and sent along the photo.

  And now here it was on a dead girl’s Twitter profile. After Googling Lennay Kekua’s name, Reba began to piece things together. She called up the classmate. He expressed alarm, Reba told us later, and “immediately began acting weird.” “Don’t worry about it,” he told her. Moments after the phone call, Reba’s picture was removed from the @LoveMSMK Twitter profile. Then, in a series of lengthy phone calls, Reba told us everything she knew about the classmate, a star high school quarterback turned religious musician named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

  Ronaiah Tuiasosopo comes from a big football family. His father, Titus, played for USC in the late ’80s and early ’90s. One uncle, Navy, played for the LA Rams; another uncle, Mike, coaches the defensive line at Colorado. A cousin from an older generation, Manu, went to Seattle in the first round in 1979; another cousin, Marques, went to Oakland in the second round in 2001. A cousin from a different side of the family, Fred Matua, earned All-America honors at guard for USC and played on several NFL teams, before dying this past August of a heart-related issue. (He was 28.)

  Tuiasosopo, now 22, had once been something of a football prospect himself. In 2005, the Los Angeles Daily News wrote that the young Tuiasosopo, then the sophomore starting quarterback for Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California, “looked like a star” in practice, despite some in-game growing pains. His coach said he was a “great kid” who did a fine job leading the older seniors. He was an honorable mention for the all-league team. But then he transferred out of town, to Franklin High in Stockton, where he spent his junior year living with an aunt and handing the ball off. His team featured two 1,000-yard rushers, and he completed only five passes all season. He transferred again: his senior year, he turned up at Paraclete High in Lancaster. Titus, his father, had become an assistant coach there. That’s where he encountered Reba. His team lost in the semifinals. A season recap article suggested that he might sign with Hawaii, but that evidently went nowhere.

  Once high school ended, in 2008, Tuiasosopo threw himself into his father’s church. Titus is the pastor at the Oasis Christian Church of the Antelope Valley, and Ronaiah leads the church’s band. He also has his own little YouTube music career. He sings secular songs, with a cousin (Conan Amituanai, a former Arizona lineman whom the Vikings once signed), and religious songs, both solo and as part of an ensemble. “Ignite,” the lead single on the group’s ReverbNation page, is a likable enough song. It borrows its chorus from Katy Perry’s catchy “Firework.” But the song only has 10 Facebook likes, a fairly low figure that seems especially low once one considers who plugged Tuiasosopo’s single on Twitter in December 2011: Manti Te’o.

  Te’o and Tuiasosopo definitely know each other. In May 2012, Te’o was retweeting Tuiasosopo, who had mentioned going to Hawaii. Wrote Te’o, “sole”—“bro,” in Samoan—“u gotta come down.” In June, Te’o wished Tuiasosopo a happy birthday. How they know each other isn’t clear. We spoke to a woman we’ll call Frieda, who had suggested on Twitter back in December that there was something fishy about Lennay Kekua. She was Facebook friends with Titus Tuiasosopo, so we asked her if she knew anything about Ronaiah.

  “Manti and Ronaiah are family,” she said, “or at least family friends.” She told us that the Tuiasosopos had been on-field guests (of Te’o or someone else, she didn’t know) for the November 24 Notre Dame–USC game in Los Angeles. USC was unable to confirm this, but a tweet from Tuiasosopo’s since-deleted account suggests he and Te’o did see each other on that West Coast trip. “Great night with my bro @MTeo_5! #Heisman #574L,” Ronaiah tweeted on November 23, the night before the game.

  And there was something else: Tuiasosopo had been in a car accident a month before Lennay’s supposed accident.

  Was this Lennay Kekua? We spoke with friends and relatives of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo who asserted that Ronaiah was the man behind Lennay. He created Lennay in 2008, one source said, and Te’o wasn’t the first person to have an online “relationship” with her. One mark—who had been “introduced” to Lennay by Tuiasosopo—lasted about a month before family members grew suspicious that Lennay could never be found on the telephone, and that wherever one expected Lennay to be, Ronaiah was there instead. Two sources discounted Ronaiah’s stunt as a prank that only metastasized because of Te’o’s rise to national celebrity this past season.

  The hoax began crumbling around the edges late last year. On November 4, 2012, an “U’ilani Rae Kekua,” supposedly Lennay’s sister, popped up on Twitter under the name @uilanirae. Manti Te’o immediately tweeted out the following:

  Shout out to Ms.@uilanirae she’s new to twitter and really needs some followers! One of the realist people I know.

  Te’o also wished U’ilani a happy Thanksgiving on November 22.

  Numerous Notre Dame fans sent U’ilani messages of condolence, and she responded with thanks. On November 10, U’ilani tweeted the following:

  I miss you @LennayKay our dinner for Daddy today was beautiful & it hit me hard that you weren’t at the table. Rest easy lala, love you sis.

  A few weeks later, the @uilanirae account was deleted. The deletion came immediately after tweets from two now-suspended Twitter accounts had alleged that U’ilani was a fraud, that the same person behind Lennay was operating the U’ilani account, and that the images of “U’ilani” were really of a woman named Donna Tei.

  Tei’s Twitter account is @FreDonna51zhun; Fred Matua wore number 51, and Tei’s profile is full of pictures of herself with the late football star (and cousin of Tuiasosopo’s). We showed U’ilani’s Twitter avatar to one of Tei’s friends, and he confirmed it was her.

  In yet another now-deleted tweet, Tei herself reached out to Nev Schulman, star of the 2010 film Catfish and executive producer of the MTV program of the same title. Schulman’s movie and show are about romantic deception through fake online personas.

  Manti Te’o, meanwhile, has deleted his tweets mentioning U’ilani.

  There was no Lennay Kekua. Lennay Kekua did not meet Manti Te’o after the Stanford game in 2009. Lennay Kekua did not attend Stanford. Lennay Kekua never visited Manti Te’o in Hawaii. Lennay Kekua was not in a car accident. Lennay Kekua did not talk
to Manti Te’o every night on the telephone. She was not diagnosed with cancer, did not spend time in the hospital, did not engage in a lengthy battle with leukemia. She never had a bone marrow transplant. She was not released from the hospital on September 10, nor did Brian Te’o congratulate her for this over the telephone. She did not insist that Manti Te’o play in the Michigan State or Michigan games, and did not request he send white flowers to her funeral. Her favorite color was not white. Her brother, Koa, did not inform Manti Te’o that she was dead. Koa did not exist. Her funeral did not take place in Carson, California, and her casket was not closed at 9:00 A.M. exactly. She was not laid to rest.

  Lennay Kekua’s last words to Manti Te’o were not “I love you.”

  A friend of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo told us he was “80 percent sure” that Manti Te’o was “in on it,” and that the two perpetrated Lennay Kekua’s death with publicity in mind. According to the friend, there were numerous photos of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and Te’o together on Tuiasosopo’s now-deleted Instagram account.

  The sheer quantity of falsehoods about Manti’s relationship with Lennay makes that friend, and another relative of Ronaiah’s, believe Te’o had to know the truth. Mostly, though, the friend simply couldn’t believe that Te’o would be stupid enough—or Ronaiah Tuiasosopo clever enough—to sustain the relationship for nearly a year.

  Since Notre Dame was blown out in the BCS national championship game, Te’o has kept a low profile. He has tweeted sparingly, and he declined an invitation to the Senior Bowl. His father made news recently when he announced on the “Manti Te’o ‘Official’ Fan Club” Facebook page that he had “black listed” the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which had carried a photo on its front page of Manti getting bowled over by Alabama’s Eddie Lacy in the title game.

  Te’o hasn’t tweeted at Lennay since November 6, when he wrote:

  @lennaykay I miss you!

  —Manti Te’o (@MTeo_5) November 7, 2012

  As of this writing, Te’o’s Twitter profile carries a quotation from Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, the great adventure novel about a man in disguise.

  Life is a storm. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.

  We called a cell phone for Manti Te’o, but the number we had is not accepting calls. Brian Te’o, Manti’s father, was in a meeting when we called, according to a text message he sent in response. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo did not answer his phone or respond to multiple text messages. We left a message with Notre Dame earlier this afternoon. We’ll update with comments when and if we get any.

  Update (5:17 P.M.): Notre Dame responds:

  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

  Update (6:10 P.M.): Manti Te’o’s statement:

  This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her. To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating. It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother’s death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life. I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been. In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was. Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I’m looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft.

  DON VAN NATTA JR.

  The Match Maker

  FROM ESPN.COM

  “HELLO AGAIN, EVERYONE, I’m Howard Cosell. We’re delighted to be able to bring you this very, very quaint, unique event.”

  On Thursday night, September 20, 1973, 50 million Americans, fatigued by Vietnam and Watergate, tuned in to see whether a woman could defeat a man on a tennis court. Dubbed “The Battle of the Sexes,” the match pitted Billie Jean King, the 29-year-old champion of that summer’s Wimbledon and a crusader for the women’s liberation movement, against Bobby Riggs, the 55-year-old gambler, hustler, and long-ago tennis champ who had willingly become America’s bespectacled caricature of male chauvinism.

  Before 30,472 at the Houston Astrodome, still the largest crowd to watch tennis in the United States, the spectacle felt like a cross between a heavyweight championship bout and an old-time tent revival. Flanked by young women, Riggs, in a canary-yellow Sugar Daddy warm-up jacket, was imperiously carted into the Astrodome aboard a gilded rickshaw. Not to be outdone, King, wearing a blue-and-white sequined tennis dress, sat like Cleopatra in a chariot delivered courtside by bare-chested, muscle-ripped young men. Moments before the first serve, King presented Riggs with a squealing, squirming piglet. “Look at that male chauvinist pig,” Cosell told viewers. “That symbolizes what Bobby Riggs is holding up . . .”

  All of the vaudevillian hoopla made it easy to forget the enormous stakes and the far-reaching social consequences. King was playing not just for public acceptance of the women’s game but also an opportunity to prove her gender’s equality at a time when women could still not obtain a credit card without a man’s signature. If she were to defeat Bobby Riggs, the triumph would be shared by every woman who knew she deserved equal pay, opportunities, and respect. Equally sweet, King would cram shut the mouth of a male chauvinist clown who had chortled that a woman belonged in the bedroom and the kitchen but certainly not in the same arena competing against a man. For Riggs, the $100,000 winner-take-all match offered big money and a perfect launching pad to a late-in-life career playing exhibition matches against women.

  It seemed a certain payday for him. Four months earlier, Riggs had crushed Margaret Court, the world’s number-one women’s tennis player, 6–2, 6–1, in an exhibition labeled by the media as the “Mother’s Day Massacre.” Court’s defeat had persuaded King to play Riggs. Nearly everyone in tennis expected a similarly lopsided result. On the ABC broadcast, Pancho Gonzales, John Newcombe, and even 18-year-old Chrissie Evert predicted Riggs would defeat King, then the number-two-ranked woman. In Las Vegas, the smart money was on Bobby Riggs. Jimmy the Greek declared, “King money is scarce. It’s hard to find a bet on the girl.”

  But by aggressively attacking the net and smashing precision shots, King ran a winded, out-of-shape Riggs all over the court. Riggs made a slew of unforced errors, hitting soft returns directly at King or into the net and double-faulting at key moments, including on set point in the first set. “I don’t understand,” Cosell said after a King winner off a Riggs backhand. “He’s been feeding her that backhand all night.” Midway through the third set, Riggs looked drained and complained of hand cramps. After King took match point, winning in straight sets, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3, Riggs mustered the energy to hop the net. “I underestimated you,” he whispered in King’s ear.

  Several
hours later, Bobby Riggs lay in an ice bath in the Tarzan Room of Houston’s AstroWorld Hotel. Despondent and alone, Riggs contemplated lowering his head into the icy water and drowning himself.

  “This was the worst thing in the world I’ve ever done,” Bobby Riggs later told his son, Larry, about his defeat before the whole world. “The worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  When Hal Shaw heard the voices at the Palma Ceia Golf and Country Club in Tampa, Florida, on a winter night some 40 years ago, he turned off the bench light over his worktable and locked the bag room door. He feared burglars. Who else would be approaching the pro shop long after midnight? Then Shaw, who was there late rushing to repair members’ golf clubs for the next day’s tournament, heard the pro shop’s front door unlock and swing open.

  Peering through a diamond-shaped window, Shaw, then a 39-year-old assistant golf pro, watched four sharply dressed men stroll into the pro shop. He says he instantly recognized three of them: Frank Ragano, a Palma Ceia member and mob attorney whose wife took golf lessons from Shaw, and two others he knew from newspaper photographs—Santo Trafficante Jr., the Florida mob boss whom Ragano represented, and Carlos Marcello, the head of the New Orleans mob. Trafficante and Marcello, now deceased, were among the most infamous Mafia leaders in America; Marcello would later confide to an FBI informant that he had ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A fourth man, whom Shaw says he didn’t recognize, joined them.