Where Do the Lies End, and the Truth Begins?

Editor's note/warning: Parts of the following post will use quotes from an anime that I enjoy even though it confuses the hell out of me. This is probably because one has to be on some sort of mind-altering substances to fully understand what's going on in it. Please keep this in mind and don't judge me. There is a point to all this, I swear.

"You're Puss in Boots, the one who tricks the prince. He hides who he really is and pretends to be someone else forever. So in time he becomes that person, so his lie becomes the truth, see? He transcends the mask. Well, don't you get it? That's how he finds happiness. That's pretty good, right?"
-Eri Ninamori, FLCL

When I was trying to comprehend what all this news out of South Bend or Hawaii means, I ended up coming back to this show about a boy's coming of age, but also deals a lot with relationships and a lot of other things that are weird and deeply confusing. So it seemed like it fit well with the news and conflicting reports of what exactly happened.

It's far too soon to know what to make out of this news story without all the facts, but this much appears to be clear: the woman known as Lennay Kekua did not exist, but whose legend was built up as quickly as Notre Dame's "championship" credentials and Manti Te'o's Heisman campaign this college football season.

Theories abound as to what the truth actually is, and there seem to be 3 prevailing theories.

1. Manti Te'o is an idiot who fell for someone who wasn't who they claimed to be and was too naive to question it. I don't think this one is the case, I'd like to belive he's smarter than that, but it's certainly possible.
2. Manti Te'o is actually gay, and Lennay Kekua was a cover for it. Could be, given the stigma homosexuality still seems to have in sports. Regardless of your views on homosexuality and whether you think it's right or not, we should not villify or hate the person involved.
3. Manti Te'o knowingly participated in a hoax about all this as a publicity stunt with hopes for a Heisman, team accolades, and boosted NFL draft stock, or some combination of the above. I hope this isn't the case, but something is off about the whole situation that could mean this is true, and we have another situation of football being too prioritized in this culture.

It's impossible to know how involved Te'o actually was at this point, but his stories are contradicting themselves over time. Something is up. None of us know what, but this story is so riveting, given how duped the media as a whole was about this story. There have been retractions about it all everywhere, as well as contradictions from varying sources until Deadspin broke this story yesterday on my train ride home.

To quote FLCL's protagonist, Naota: "I don't know where the lies end and the truth begins." But I'm anxious to find out.