A Detail Hard to Explain

As l'affaire Te'o morphs into it's own social media meme -- Teoing, a photo with your imaginary significant other, not unlike gratuitous Tebowing, kneeling in prayer after a significant accomplishment -- the New York Daily News' Dick Weiss brings out a detail of the story missed here:

Te’o told Sports Illustrated that he would phone her in her hospital room and stay on the line with her as he slept through the night. Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice. If the conversations took place, who was on the other end of the line?

That's a little more than some swapping back and forth of social media contacts or emails.  That, my friends, is the land of Arkansas head football coaches, both Houston Nutt and Bobby Petrino.

Because phone records are very easy to produce.

And to request.  So even if you aren't a public employee who's cell phone records are available for FOIA -- and you can scream invasion of privacy all day -- to save your reputation, you will produce them.

We will see Thursday if Te'o meets the press.  Weiss wonders at the close of his column if he can recover from this.  To that I have one name:  Michael Vick.