Quote Originally Posted by know1 View Post
He's claiming he was a victim of the hoax too, but he at least assisted in perpetuating the story by not being completely upfront in interviews, etc.
You know, this thing is weird...and hokey...and it's going to be a joke a minute, no doubt, because it's just too easy to crack on. I haven't read half of the different accounts of what exactly happened, and really don't care to be honest.

I'm not a Notre Dame fan, myself, nor was I a big proponent of Manti...BUT...and I guess this is the "new Dad" coming out in me...

Manti is a college kid.

A lot of us did stupid crap in College...many times worse than this, I might add. It could have been him getting drunk and driving and killing somebody, or drugs, or raping some girl, or getting a girl pregnant, or racking up a bunch of credit card debt and filing bankruptcy, or any of the 17 dozen other things that college kids get themselves into that are pretty bad. Instead, we're talking about a kid who gets acquainted with a girl online, whom he hasn't met, and becomes attracted to/emotionally involved with the "online persona" of that girl. It turns out the person is duping him. He's embarrassed. A "Cover Your Ass" story ensues, to try to hide the embarrassing truth. Considering he ends up a Heisman Candidate and in the national spotlight, it comes out. In today's world, I don't think any of that is too far fetched. I mean, look at all of us here on Fishin.com who have never met face to face. I feel like I know several of you here fairly well, though we haven't met. Many, and I mean many, people meet their significant others online first, before they ever meet in person. It happens a lot now. People getting duped online by bogus personalities is also pretty common.

Hell, for all I know, "mhall" is not Mark Hall at all...could really be Martha Hollingsworth, who is a 573-pound single woman living in a double-wide trailer in Pikeville who is a passionate Wildcats fan, phones in to the pregame call-in shows every night, and has 3 cats...one named Ritchie, one named Tubby, and one named Cal.

I'm just saying - Some people are screwed up and it's easy to live a "life" online that isn't quite what it seems to be. It so happens, Manti hosed up the way he handled it when it was discovered...probably because he was embarrassed.

I say that the scum-sucking vultures of the media need to lay off the kid. Somehow this is becoming a "National Headline" and today's talk of the town. He already plays for Notre Dame and got absolutely demoralized by Alabama. Time served.