![]() This is part of the nature of polarized discussion among partisans, and ESPN has helped stoke those discussions by embracing debate and providing an ever-intensifying torrent of takes to agree with or dismiss out of hand. There were many, many people who disagreed with the argument even happening on principle, and tired of the arguments, and tired of the people making the arguments, but I'm a Florida-born University of Florida graduate who writes about the Florida Gators as part of my job, and I promise you that people still like defending Tebow's honor against people who think he's the worst NFL quarterback ever. ![]() You know why Tim Tebow was a daily fixture on SportsCenter? Because people liked arguing about Tim Tebow. Te'o hoax coverage by Notre Dame fans Manti Te'o matters because America loves to argue ![]() The reasons people are still interested in Manti Te'o are the reasons this story matters, because a story being interesting to many people is more than enough to make it matter. It's been nearly two weeks since Deadspin dropped its biggest story ever: Manti Te'o's girlfriend - the one who died within hours of his grandmother's death, the one whose story became part of his Heisman campaign, the one who Te'o spoke of repeatedly - never existed.Īnd yet, despite Te'o and Ronaiah Tuiasosopo becoming national names and punchlines, despite Notre Dame stepping up for one of its best football players in a way it didn't for a young woman who committed suicide after alleging sexual assault against a Golden Domer and a young man who died in the process of obtaining information for Notre Dame, despite the story's course presenting a dozen opportunities to gape at the problems in sports (and mainstream) media in America, there are those who insist Manti Te'o doesn't matter.ĭid we just spend the last 12 days making jokes about a thing that "doesn't matter?" (We do seem to do that a lot.) Are we deeply invested in the outcome of a story that makes us look bad for caring? (We do this a lot, too.) Does the interest in feeding the many, many people who would like to know more about Te'o and how this all happened combined with an apparent lack of interest in ascertaining whether Te'o's phantom girlfriend ever existed when he was telling us all that she did tell us something about the media? (Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.)
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