NBC’s ‘The Voice’ season 4, and the bizarre Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax connection

When we first heard the news about Notre Dame superstar and Heisman Trophy finalist Manti Te’o being the victim of alleged hoax about the existence of his girlfriend, who supposedly died this past fall, we thought to ourselves one thing: this is a bizarre story, and one that is probably either heartbreaking or disgusting depending on whether or not you think Te’o knew that the “girlfriend” was a hoax all along. We imagined that this would be a story (reported by Deadspin, who was amazingly the first outlet to really do some proper research on it) that was still contained within the world of sports, but no; it has instead crossed over into reality TV.

Us Weekly is reporting that Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the man whole allegedly pulled the strings on the whole Te’o operation, actually auditioned for season 4 of “The Voice” not long after all the girlfriend’s “death” was really getting picked up by the media. Not only that, but he tried to sell himself with a sob story about him allegedly being involved in a near-fatal automobile accident on his way to a youth conference, one in which everyone miraculously escaped without any life-threatening injuries.

To be fair to NBC, it’s not like they had any knowledge of what Tuiasosopo was doing to Te’o from halfway across the country at the time of his blind audition; they did do a background check on him as they do for all contestants, and there not any problems that came up. This makes for a pretty bizarre coincidence, but at the end of the day it is still simple for novelty’s sake? Why? (Spoiler alert!) Blake Shelton, Shakira, Adam Levine, and Usher all declined to turn their chairs around for him. His song of choice? Matisyahu’s “One Day,” a song about people coming together in peace and happiness.

The only question we have left now is pretty simple: is NBC even going to show this audition? We’re betting not, since it looks embarrassing on them now that he auditioned, even if they obviously did not know at the time the horrible things that this guy was supposedly a part of. This will likely just be something left on the cutting room floor, and had he made it through he would have likely been dropped and replaced with someone else.

“The Voice” season 4 premieres on NBC March 25. Want to know more details? Be sure to check out the story here.

Photo: HBO