Untold: The girlfriend who didn't exist (Netflix limited series)

This is another edition in one of my favorite sports documentaries that goes by the major title of "Untold." Basically it is just documentaries about sports facts or people that haven't seen widespread documentary-related exposure. This particular story was one that I wasn't very familiar with, but as I went through it I do recall seeing something about this in the news years ago.

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The story here follows a star football player from Hawaii, who went on to become a huge star at Notre Dame University as a linebacker and rose to the top of the pile and was later nominated for the much-coveted Heisman Trophy, which is awarded to only one player in the NCAA and is considered the highest award for an individual in college football.

His name is Manti Te'o and he was at the center of a rather huge scandal that wasn't his fault but is still quite embarrassing for him to have been involved in.

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While Manti's performance at Notre Dame was certainly commendable and impressive, it was because of non sport related reasons that he rose to the top. There was a day during his senior year at college that he got word that his grandmother had died and within the same day, he got news that his "girlfriend" had also dies as she succumbed to leukemia and died in a tragic turn of events for the football player. This got him a ton of attention that he might not have otherwise received and a lot of this has to do with the fact that he played defense for Notre Dame.

Now I don't know a ton about football but I do know that a team with a stellar defense will almost always defeat a team with a stellar offense. It is a lot more important than people give it credit for but just like in most sports, we tend to put the spotlight on the people that put points on the board. Whether this is fair or not remains a subjective thing but that is the way it is. It is very easy to argue that Manti Te'o, while a very good football player that ended up going to the NFL, wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention had it not been for the very unfortunate double death that he experienced during the season.

There was a very big problem with the girlfriend death part of the story though in that this person was a girl that he had never met face-to-face and it turns out that "she" was a man who was catfishing in an elaborate ruse.

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When the situation was eventually exposed there was a lot of negative publicity put over Manti's way because the public opinion was that he made the story up but in reality he was just a very naïve and immature 20 year old that came from a very conservative household. His entire life was about football and he didn't date in his own town even though he probably could have. He was also brought up Mormon so the idea of hitting the clubs and picking up ladies was not something that he engaged in.

When Untold exposes the entire truth behind the situation it becomes more and more believable that Manti really didn't have anything to do with the lie but it was a lie that he truly believed himself. This was very difficult to convince the public of though and it was a very embarrassing time for Manti and his family since the media seemed to be dead-set on making him appear as though the situation was all his creation. Later, rumors about him being gay and refusing to admit it was brought up and this was also a difficult situation for Manti, and his very conservative family to deal with.

I think they did a fantastic job with this documentary because even if you are somewhat familiar with the story from the late 2000's and early 10's you probably don't know all the details. If you aren't familiar with them at all or even if you don't like football, this story has a lot of twists and turns especially since they were able to secure extensive interviews with the man who was doing the catfishing.

Should I watch it?

It is just two one-hour episodes in total and this is something I commend them at Untold for doing. A lot of the time when these limited series are dropped, they make them unnecessarily long, sometimes dragging it out for 2-3 times as long as it needs to be just to be able to have more episodes. They did not do this with this special and they don't even do very much backtracking at all in the 2nd episode. If I remember correctly there was barely any sort of recap in the beginning of EP 2. The story flows well, the interviews are wonderfully intermingled with old footage, and everything that they put on screen is relevant to the overall story.

This is a crazy story that fortunately has a happy ending for everyone involved, including the one person in the story who very clearly has mental problems. I think that this documentary is a good way to spend a couple of hours and I am glad I watched it. I believe that most other people will as well, even if they don't like football or even sports for that matter.