Today is a ketchup catch up day so there’s tons to talk about. We’ll get into Iman Shumpert’s return to the Knick line up. We have the continuing drama of the Manti Te’o fantasy girlfriend. And we have hockey coming back this weekend along with Championship Sunday stuff, but before all that, we start off with the interview of Lance Armstrong because I flipped a coin and Lance beat Manti for the lead off.
Breaking News: Lance Armstrong has admitted to years and years of fooling, doping and beating both critics and drug tests in order to live the lie. There’s a bunch of powerful thoughts being shared by writers much smarter than I, so I’m just going to give it to you straight. Dave D’Alessandro of the Star Ledger, who’s fast becoming my favorite columnist, put it exactly how I was feeling with his last paragraph:
“We like successful people, and feed their need for such narcissism — until we decide that we can trash them like they are used-up holiday decorations. Sure, they can be inspiring figures. But if you’re willing to overlook a decade of sins just so a guy could spend a few hours curating his legacy on prime time TV, it didn’t make much sense to idealize him in the first place.”
Liz Clarke of the Washington Post writes that with little emotion he characterized his cheating as just “part of the job.” Bonnie Ford of ESPN.com writes that Lance “exerted his last bit of leverage left” and tried to reestablish the Lance brand. Mike Lupica of the Daily News writes that his confession was shaky at best and served no interest but his own and that it was so obvious that it didn’t work.
Honestly there are a ton of other links I could have attached to this story but the overwhelming majority of today’s articles around the country about this story will be filled with vitriol and venom for a guy who fooled the public into believing his story. I sat and thought about watching the interview but I couldn’t find a reason to support it. I’m not an Oprah fanatic which means i’m not a middle aged white woman, so I wasn’t even going to watch it for her interviewing prowess. So there was very little motive to watch it. I even thought about DVR’ing it for a moment and that faded with this idea: why support Lance? Why even give him a single iota of rating success though my television being on means very little in the long run. Its clear that America has made up their mind, or at least the journalism wing of our republic have.
There is no doubt a ton of resistance against Lance because of his ability to fool a ton of reporters and to parade around collecting all the love and kudos while knowing he was cheating. There’s a ton of backlash for the details of his personality that show him to be a slimeball and an ugly human being capable of anything in order to protect his brand and his legacy. But from what I gather, there was very little push back from Lance. From what I can tell, he showed very little remorse and spoke as though this will ultimately clear his name so he can continue to live off of it. My sense was that if he showed any kind of contrition America may have bought in. We always do. That’s our nature. This is the easiest country to rebuild your name in. You travel to Europe to escape if nothing else. But when you screw up here, there’s a chance to come back. We love those stories.
But its clear that personality issues that made him a terror still remain in Lance and continue to haunt him. He just can’t hide his hubris and pride. He doesn’t care for the judgement that has already rained down upon him and the legal settlement to come in the Floyd Landis trial, well that’s what he was on Oprah for, to help him in that aspect to. No one is here ostracizing Oprah for giving him that kind of platform but its kind of fitting she did it on a channel that most Americans barely knew was on their cable or satellite subscription. “What the hell is OWN?” was probably a popular question yesterday. “How do I get there?” Was probably the second question to be asked. But Lance had to be asking that question too. How do I get to forgiveness? Its easy Lance. Like I said two days ago, just go away. The best thing you can do is pay everyone back. Apologize to those people you hurt privately without fan fare. Then we’ll know that you actually mean forgiveness. Talking about it with Oprah won’t convince me of shit, unless you make ammends with the people you need to. Do your time in prison. Just stay away for a while.
Ok, so here’s the Manti Te’O story from Deadspin.com written by Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey. Several people were fooled along the way, like great journalist, SI’s own Pete Thamel who wrote a cover story about Manti. Thamel believes that Manti was duped by a clever prankster according to this snippet from the Dan Patrick show. SI today put the transcript of Thamel’s conversation with Manti on its cover page. That was for this story that was featured in the Oct. 1st issue of Sports Illustrated.
There’s a ton there to read and sift through but the holes are pretty obvious. The big question here is whether Manti knew about the hoax and if he played along. I find it hard to believe that a kid of such strong faith and character could be so easy manipulated like this. There are also a ton of things that he just seems to fumble with as it relates to this story. Either he wasn’t paying attention when she would talk to him, OR he was in on it. I’m not willing to just outright convict him on those kind of charges. The fact is, this is such a mess that its difficult to really believe that two young teenagers are responsible for it.
I think much of the blame can be given to Manti for being so naive, or even complicit in the hoax, but some of the blame deserves to go to others. The list is long. We can assign blame to the reporters who loved the story of a humble star who’s narrative they shot through the sky for all to see, eventually landing him a few votes shy of the Heisman trophy. They all failed to follow up on troubling parts of the story, instead choosing to focus on the juicy portions for the good of the overall product. Some of the blame goes to the father, Brian, who spoke confidently about this girl despite never meeting her. If you can blame Manti being naive, then what to say of his father who claimed to have spoken to her! Some of the blame goes to Notre Dame, a Catholic school that prides itself on integrity yet is willing to side with their star in order to clear their name along with his. They know the longer this drags out, the worse it will be for them. They learned about it almost a full month before this story broke but never released details in order to protect the team from a distraction before their much ballyhooed but ultimately one sided National Championship game against Alabama. The fact is, Notre Dame hadn’t had a star like this in almost two decades and hadn’t had a season like this in even longer than that. They were in love with the idea of Manti Te’o as standup kid and standout linebacker, not weakminded invidivual with a fake girlfriend. Unfortunately there’s evidence that he continued referring to his fake girlfriend even after it was revealed to him that he was part of an elaborate hoax and the woman from the picture that many had come to believe was Lennay, was not her, but a woman from California who had never met Manti. It still, incredibly, doesn’t convince me of Manti’s involvement. Is that strange?
Let’s also not forget to mention that the words died of leukemia and hit by drunk driver were part of the fictional tale of Lennay Kekua. That’s two life altering events that make people rally around a human being and since Manti was the supportive boyfriend, staying on the phone for hours and even sleeping on it from time to time, that made him an even more likeable person. Who knows if this was for press like many of Manti’s former teammates at Notre Dame are saying he was known to have an affinity for. Who knows if this was about the Heisman? All I know is that this story is being treated like we just uncovered a steroid user. For me, this is a big joke. Nobody in their right mind could have pretended, at his age, to have a girlfriend and make up all those ridiculous stories unless he was a simpleton, in on it, or had mental issues that made him hallucinate this kind of stuff. Manti doesn’t look like a guy who is mentally insane. He doesn’t strike me as a simpleton. But I’m not willing to say he’s guilty either. Its literally hurting my head thinking about this, but I’m glad the internet is there to help console me with plenty of parody accounts and blog posts. Either way, in a week, we’ll all laugh about this and just wonder how we got so wrapped up in a kid and his made up girlfriend. We’ll all wonder why we cared. Then we’ll all go to sleep and act as if it never happened. Lance and Manti are hoping for the best.
The Knicks played last night and it looked like loose appendages were making their way back on to the court for the Knicks. As big as it was for the Knicks and the NBA to jump the pond and play a game in London, site of this past summer’s Olympic games, it was bigger because of Iman Shumpert’s return. If you’ll remember, he went down on the same day that Derrick Rose did and the Knicks fans ultimately lost the series to the Heat in 5 games. Their young defensive ace didn’t disappoint according to Mike Vaccaro of the Post, even knocking down his first shot- a corner three. On the other side, the All Star voting revealed the names of the players on both teams and wouldn’t you know it, Carmelo and KG are going to be starters for the East. Should be an interesting team breakfast.
Its awesome that Shump is back and to see him drill a corner three early was just incredible. And I mean incredible. One of the hardest things I’m having to come to grips with is the fact that Shump will eventually disappoint me in some way. We’ve all built him up as this major key and forget this is a second year player who blew out his knee in his very first playoff game. He played in a handful of high intensity ball games and so the kid, yes he’s still a kid, has a long way to go. We don’t know if he’s exactly a 100% but we do know that he’s 100% what the team needs. He brings energy, enthusiasm and a youthfulness that, let’s be frank, the Knicks don’t have. But that corner three represents what his role will be on offense from a scoring standpoint. If he can drill that corner three on a regular basis it can open things up for Melo, and Amar’e to drive and for their point guards, Jason Kidd, Pablo Pepperoni, and Raymond Felton to make plays and get the ball in the right player’s hands. Remember, if he hits 40% of those corner threes this offense easily jumps a good 6-8 points nightly. And with his ability to be a lock down defensive presence, which he’s still not entirely there yet and the Pistons had nobody on the court able for us to truly say was going to be a test, it gives the Knicks a guy to put pressure on other teams. Their team defense has been excellent but the Knicks sorely need guys who can stay in front of their man and can use his range and athleticism to alter shots and hinder views of the rim. Shump’s presence on the court, no matter how inflated the Knicks fans will argue it is, is big but needs baby steps to get back to where even our minds can wrap ourselves around it.
And is there a need for the KG/Carmelo joke anymore? They patched it up, but I just couldn’t help myself.
What to watch for tonight:
Part of the sit down between Lance Armstrong and Oprah on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Chicago/Boston is always a good time. That’s a 7 PM tip on ESPN, and then for those with League Pass, Golden State/San Antonio at 8:30 is a very good game on the slate as well. Watch that. Eff Lance Armstrong. I still love you Oprah!
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