On an unnerving night when it was hard to know what to believe and who to trust, Jack Swarbrick convinced me.

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Chin quivering and voice catching, the Notre Dame athletic director fought emotion in describing Manti Te'o as "the single most trusting individual I have ever met." I know Swarbrick fairly well over the course of maybe two dozen interactions, both professional and personal – well enough to have a read on his personality. This was not a high-paid suit engaged in damage control; this was a man who sincerely believes that the most popular Fighting Irish football player in decades was wronged far more than he was wrong.

Swarbrick came to his Wednesday news conference armed with enough information to be certain that Te'o was the victim, not the perpetrator, of a vile hoax.

After listening to him, I believe Notre Dame.

The next step will be to see whether we can believe Manti Te'o when he addresses the story that stunned America. He has some explaining to do, but I believe that task was made easier by what Swarbrick said Wednesday.



[Related: Notre Dame AD: 'Incredible tragedy' | Statement about hoax]





He spent about 45 minutes describing, very clearly, the sequence of events behind the school's investigation of a macabre ruse: Te'o's well-publicized "girlfriend," who allegedly died of cancer in September, never existed. Her "death," said to be on the same September day as the linebacker's grandmother, had become part of the compelling Te'o narrative that captivated the nation.

The storyline went like this: star athlete plays through tragedy, delivers an inspired performance just days after the deaths of loved ones, and perseveres nobly through his grief in the coming weeks as he and his team deliver a storybook season.

The media, of course, bathed in it. Due to the rapidly accelerating news cycle (and probably outright laziness), we have developed a bad habit of simply repeating stories without independently verifying them.

While I don't believe I would have come away from a Te'o interview on this subject smelling a rat, I am now reminded of an old journalistic axiom that needs reviving: If your mother says she loves you, believe her. But check it out.

[Related: Report: Notre Dame star Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend never existed]

We didn't check it out. Not well enough. And so it perpetuated.

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