Good article criticizing the coverage of Manti Teo vs. Tyrann Mathieu

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The writer who did the most to popularize Te’o’s tale of triumph over tragedy was Sports Illustrated’s Pete Thamel

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If Thamel or anyone else at SI had used Nexis or Google, they would’ve discovered that Lennay Kekua (not to mention her brother and sister) didn’t exist

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But a reporter, especially at a fact-checked magazine like SI, also doesn’t generally put someone’s name into print and say that she smashed up her car on April 28 without confirming the spelling and the wreckage. That assumption of basic competence filters down to everyone else in the sports media ecosystem: If Manti Te’o’s story of woe is in Sports Illustrated, then it must be true.

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And Te’o’s character, it seemed, was unimpeachable. After all, there had been all these stories about how humble and religious he was, and how he’d been led to Notre Dame to do something.

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There must be sports villains to stand alongside the heroes, of course. That brings us to Pete Thamel’s other recent college football opus, and the other kind of confirmation bias. In the Oct. 22 issue of SI, Thamel and Thayer Evans wrote a cover story on Tyrann Mathieu called “Trials of the Honey Badger.” Mathieu, a 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist, was kicked off the LSU football team prior to the 2012 season, reportedly because he smoked marijuana. For the SI piece, Thamel and Evans went to Louisiana and performed the kind of dogged shoe-leather journalism that nobody bothered to do when reporting on Manti Te’o, humble Boy Scout.

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The Honey Badger’s crime is smoking weed—he was arrested on marijuana possession charges after the SI piece came out—a practice that doesn’t land the typical college student on the cover of a national magazine. Mathieu’s father, by contrast, is in prison for killing a man. Thamel and Evans want us to believe, I guess, that Mathieu’s going to murder someone if he doesn’t straighten up.

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The Honey Badger, like Manti Te’o, is a cartoon character. But since Mathieu found himself on the sports world’s naughty list—troubled athlete, at the crossroads—he was the athlete who got a vetting more suited for a presidential candidate.

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