It has been a little more than four months since that insane Deadspin article blew open one of the most absurd hoaxes in sports, at least in this Internet era, as it revealed that Lennay Kekua, the reported dead girlfriend of Notre Dame star Manti Te’o, was the fabrication of a man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo. Sure, we all had a ton of additional questions and would have loved to have a little more insight into how a grown man fell for such a trick, but Te’o and Tuiasosopo sort of told their stories and were content to leave us believing that Te’o is just a big, dumb schmuck.
Of course, between that January article and today, plenty of other things happened in sports and we’ve turned our attention elsewhere, because we thought that we’d beaten this joke into oblivion. That suggests, however, that sports fans are all on the same wavelength, and obviously Te’o jokes were going to be made during and after the NFL Draft. But today? Talk about timely.
The Frontier League’s Florence Freedom doesn’t seem to care, because on Thursday night, the minor league team will offer the first 1,000 fans through the gate a free Lennay Kekua bobblehead doll. The joke, naturally, is that it’s an empty box. Of course, as our friends at Larry Brown Sports point out, this promotion just falls in line with several others, including Maxim ranking Lennay at No. 69 on the Hot 100 list. And, of course, that joke was outdone when Maxim named Miley Cyrus No. 1.
Look, friends, I love jokes. I get jokes. But sometimes we need to let jokes go away for a while. Forget them and move on, as we make fun of Tim Tebow being released or Dwight Howard trying to get his fourth coach fired in one year.
Then, when the 2013 NFL season begins and Te’o and the San Diego Chargers play their first away game, revive that joke and welcome him to the NFL properly by ordering a customized Kekua Chargers jersey for the seat next to you.
