The background:

Manti Te’o's success was one of the biggest college sports stories of 2012. He won eight postseason awards as a linebacker for Notre Dame, becoming one of the most decorated college football players of all time. He was runner-up for this year's Heisman Trophy, the most coveted individual prize in NCAA football and was projected to be a first-round NFL pick.

Until recently, Te'o was also living the life of a media darling. A devout Mormon, he identifies himself as family-oriented and religious. Sports Illustrated’s Pete Thamel, who wrote a cover story on Te’o in October, describes his celebrity appeal: “Te'o graduated from Barack Obama's high school, practices Mitt Romney's religion and has post football career goals similar to Tim Tebow's.”

The coverage of his football heroics was all the more adoring for the tragedies he overcame to achieve them. The story went that his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and his leukemia-stricken girlfriend, Melelengei “Lennay” Kekua, died within six hours of each other in September shortly before he delivered a dominating performance against Michigan State.

Last week the world learned that college sports’ most inspirational story was a fiction: After receiving an anonymous tip, Deadspin broke the news on Jan. 16 that Lennay Kekua did not die, because she had never existed in the first place.

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