Wednesday it was revealed that a story about a University of Notre Dame football player's supposed girlfriend's death is a hoax.  The player in question is Manti Te'o, who starred for the Fighting Irish during an unbeaten regular season which brought Notre Dame to the college football championship game.  His supposed girl by the name of Lennay Kekua was reported to have died on September 11th, just hours apart from the actual of death of Te'o's grandmother.  Lennay apparently never existed.  In fact, the picture of her that had been circulated was actually a real girl from Torrance CA, taken from her Facebook account.  This is either a really huge lie that Te'o helped to engineer, or a cruel joke that was played on the star linebacker.  His "relationship" with the "girl" was supposedly an on-line type which may have been set up by a friend of Te'os.  With friends like that, who needs enemies on the football field or in life.  I am a huge Notre Dame fan and really can't believe this whole story.  Let's remember that Te'o is still a kid, a guy in college who is famous for playing football.  Maybe even more famous now because of this bogus story.  But at heart he is a kid, one who I have seen interviewed numerous times and by all previous reports is supposed to be an upstanding person.  By all accounts he did nothing criminally wrong.  We'll see how this whole strange story plays out and who is actually at fault as Notre Dame is conducting a full investigation.  But for this to come out as America breathlessly awaits Oprah's interview with Lance Armstrong tonight on her OWN network (man, she can create hype, can't she?) there is much to learn from both of these athletes.  First, fame brings great scrutiny. And with it many strange bedfellows, imagined or not.  Be careful of Facebook and on-line "dating"...who really is on the other end? And the truth can hurt but always will free your soul.