I’m not sure what to believe. Was Manti Te’o in on the hoax? Or simply the victim of it? We may never know, even if Te’o tells his story. But based on what we do know, I’m having a hard time believing he was a willing participant in the hoax.

Sports Illustrated’s Pete Thamel went back and transcribed his interview with Te’o from his September 23 visit to South Bend. It was the day after Notre Dame’s 13-6 victory over Michigan, and just ten days after his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia. In Thamel’s interview, he asked Te’o about Kekua’s time at Stanford. Te’o did not know when she graduated or what her major was, two things 99.9% of people know about their closest friends. When Thamel told Te’o “I can call Stanford and check. They have to have some record or note that she passed,” Te’o did not react.

Put yourself in his shoes. If you were making up a girlfriend to garner more publicity, and a well-respected journalist of Sports Illustrated’s caliber said he would fact-check you, don’t you think you’d try to prevent him from doing so? Wouldn’t you make something up? Thamel did indeed fact-check his interview with Te’o. A Stanford athletic department employee could not find her in the alumni directory, so they took her attendance at Stanford out of the story.

When asked about some details of Kekua’s death, Te’o responded “I don’t know the details of it”. He was asked for more details of her injuries in the car accident, and replied “I don’t know”. More details you’d think Te’o would try to make up if he was in on the hoax.

When the story really gets intriguing is when Thamel and Teo’ talked about how the couple “met”.

SI: Where did you meet her in California?

TE'O: She actually came to one of the games. She saw me at one of the games.

SI: October 15, I assume is USC?

TE'O: That was in November. But she saw me at the USC game of my sophomore year. We were still just friends, we were acquaintances.

Never did Te’o said that they met after the game. They didn’t meet in the parking lot, or the locker room, or the bar down the street. Te’o deliberately said she saw him at the USC game. And he didn’t say it just once, he said it twice in the same interview.

If this doesn’t start to sway you, let’s look at the timeline of his relationship. Deadspin initially reported that Te’o met Kekua on November 28, 2009, “after Stanford's 45-38 victory over Notre Dame in Palo Alto.” But wait, in his interview with Thamel, Te’o said she saw him in his sophomore year in a game at USC, not Stanford.

They were supposedly friends for about two years before starting a relationship. One of Te’o’s first tweets on his account (@MTeo_5) included Kekua (@lovalovaloveYOU).

Check the timestamp on that tweet. December 5, 2011.

What was Te’o doing then? He wasn’t in the midst of a Heisman campaign. He wasn’t practicing for the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama. His team wasn’t ranked as the #1 team in the country. He was practicing for Notre Dame’s December 29 bowl game against Florida State. The Fighting Irish were 8-4 and unranked.

So my final question is, why? Why would a kid, you remember he is still a kid, create an imaginary girlfriend two years in advance of his Heisman campaign? Why wouldn’t he try harder to cover it up? Why, if he was in on the hoax, wouldn’t he have a better back story after Kekua died? You would think that if he was smart enough to concoct this idea, he’d be smart enough to continue it, rather than answer “I don’t know”.

But what do I know?