It’s time for Manti Te’o to talk.

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If we haven’t heard from him by Friday afternoon, it will be 48 hours since Deadspin deconstructed the myth of the former Notre Dame linebacker’s dead girlfriend – a central part of Te’o’s very compelling storyline this past fall. The sole response so far from Te’o has been a statement saying he was the victim of "a sick joke" – that Te’o was duped by online connivers into believing Lennay Kekua was real.

And 48 hours is too long to let something like this fester without addressing it and answering questions, in public, for everyone to see. Not with his credibility at stake.

Sources with both Notre Dame and ESPN told me an interview was arranged with Jeremy Schaap for Thursday night, but then it was called off "for now," according to one source. No explanation was offered as to why it was called off, or who called it off.

The interview needs to be rescheduled for Friday. This needs to get done. Silence isn’t helping the Heisman Trophy runner-up’s contention that he’s the victim in all this.

[Sources: Manti Te'o's team passed on chance to control the story]

It is still a believable contention, at least in part. The intersection of love, death, fame and a scam is a crowded, complicated place. Nev Schulman, creator and executive producer of "Catfish," the documentary about people conned by online predators, told ESPN he believes Te’o’s version of events. And as much as we’d all like to think we’re armchair experts on this stuff, Schulman really is.

But even at the risk of considerable embarrassment and pain, it’s time to say something.

There have been at least two delays in getting the story out. As Yahoo! Sports reported Thursday, Notre Dame officials were expecting a public acknowledgement of the hoax from Te’o and his agent, Tom Condon, on Monday of this week. That didn’t happen, which gave Deadspin control of breaking the story.

Notre Dame was quick to hold its own press conference Wednesday night, in which athletic director Jack Swarbrick detailed a timeline of events that included the school hiring a private investigative firm to look into the matter. Swarbrick said the investigative report given to the school concluded that Te’o was the victim of a hoax and not a perpetrator of it.

But the linebacker needs to back up that report with his own words – and some documentation would be nice, too. Sources told Yahoo! Sports he shared phone records and other information with investigators, and it would help to make those part of whatever presentation he makes.

In the meantime, since nature and the news cycle abhors a vacuum, more stories came out Thursday while Te’o stayed off-radar. Among them was an ESPN report that an unnamed player said Te’o’s Fighting Irish teammates knew Lennay Kekua wasn’t really the player’s girlfriend, but Te’o went along with the storyline because of the positive attention.

[Related: Johnny Manziel shocked by Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax]

So we can add that to the list of questions Te’o needs to answer. These are some others I mentioned in my column Wednesday night:

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