Manti teo gay

Originally published February 26th, 2013

“Are you gay?”

Katie Couric asked the question out raucous, and there was a collective gasp. Until that moment, the majority of the news surrounding Manti Te’o revolved around how a seemingly honest and hard-working, family dedicated, and religious player could be duped by someone posing as a girlfriend online. As the story evolved, others questioned whether Te’o was personally complicit in the hoax as an effort to drive a growing Heisman campaign. Quietly, there were others like myself that wondered if it was something else entirely.

Are you gay? You. Reading this. Are you gay? For most of us, sexuality isn’t an issue. It doesn’t impact our jobs, it doesn’t impact our friends. For the most part, we choose where we work, we select our friends, and for most of us, our personal lives aren’t on display. But that interrogate is coming up for Te’o again this week. The media is starting to wonder louder, the calls are coming into sports radio, and the rumors are that it’s a “concern” with NFL executives. A concern? The NFL should realize that Manti Te’o

(CBS) Apparently NFL teams aren't buying Manti Te'o's declaration that he's not gay.

After the fake girlfriend hoax exploded in January, Katie Couric asked Te'o if he was male lover and the former Notre Dame linebacker nervously responded: "No, far from it, far from it."

But according to Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, NFL teams are still wondering if Te'o is indeed gay and they want to know the answer.

"Here's the elephant in the room for the teams and it shouldn't matter but we contain to step aside from the lie down of reality and walk into the unique industry that is the NFL," Florio said on The Dan Patrick Show Monday. "Teams want to grasp whether Manti Te'o is gay. They just want to know. They need to know because in an NFL locker room, it's a different planet. It shouldn't be that way."

Florio said he didn't ponder teams actually asked Te'o about his sexuality when they met with him over the weekend.

"It's been described to me as the proverbial elephant in the room and I don't consider anyone knows how to solve this dilemma yet," he said. "It's just that they crave to know what they're getting. They want to grasp what issues they may be dealing with down the road. We just assumed that

The new Netflix documentary “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist” tells the story of how Manti Te’o was a victim of an elaborate and cruel catfishing scandal that left him prone to a vicious social media culture, not to mention football’s (and America’s) own entrenched homophobia.

Te’o, of course, was the excellent Notre Dame linebacker who in 2012 dedicated his Heisman finalist season to his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, who he said died of leukemia before an initial season game.

The problem was simple: Kekua didn’t exist. She was a collection of stolen photos and a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, who now identifies as a transgender woman named Naya. While there had been a real, and apparently deep passionate online and phone relationship (Tuiasosopo was deftly able to address in a young woman's voice), there was no girlfriend.

Deadspin.com broke the story in January 2013, as Te’o prepared for the NFL draft, setting off a firestorm of controversy, speculation, jokes, insults, confusion and confrontation that got so ridiculous Te’o create himself sitting on a couch across from no less than Katie Couric, who tried to corner him.

“Are you gay?” Couric a

Do the Eagles Crave to Know if Manti Te’o Is Gay?

And is it any of their business?

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Are the Philadelphia Eagles one of the NFL teams trying to find out if Manti Te’o is gay? Suspicions that Te’o is hiding something about his sexuality persist, even after he told Katie Couric that he is not male lover. And Mike Florio, a well-connected reporter for Pro Football Discuss and NFL Sports, says that several teams are trying to get the answer to that question before the NFL draft. If the report is correct, any team actively investigating the sexuality of a potential employee would be violating federal law.

This week, Te’o showed up at the NFL combine to try to impress future employers, but didn’t. Te’o ran the 40-yard dash in 4.8 seconds—fast for normal human beings, but lumbering for an NFL pro prospect. Te’o’s stock plummeted, possibly out of the first rotund and into the second. The Philadelphia Eagles have the fourth pick in the second round.

According to Florio, it’s not just the turtle on the track that wound Te’o, but the elephant in the room. Any team th