Sports star probed for girlfriend hoax

American football star Manti Te’o is facing questions over whether he was really duped by a bizarre lie about a fake dead girlfriend.

The linebacker, who plays for the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, played a leading role in a crunch game just days after his girlfriend supposedly died from leukaemia.

Now, Te’o and the university are both facing questions over whether they were complicit in a hoax to mislead the public, perhaps to improve his chances of winning an award for the sport’s best player.

It has also emerged that Te’o perpetuated the story twice after he supposedly discovered his online girlfriend of three years never existed. He talked about his doomed love in an interview on Dec 8 and again on Dec 10.

Yet he and the university have admitted that he learned on Dec 6 that it was all a hoax — that not only was she not dead, she was not even real.

Te’o grandmother died — for real — the day his girlfriend supposedly died.

Gregg Doyel, columnist for CBSSports.com, said: “I cannot comprehend Manti Te’o saying anything that could make me believe he was a victim.”