A still from Netflix Manti Te'o documentary "The Girlfriend Who Didn't Exist."

When Netflix announced Tuesday their Untold Vol. 2 sports documentary series will start with an Aug. 16 premiere of a two-part documentary on former Notre Dame and NFL player Manti Te’o, titled The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, the response from social media was mixed.

Everyone knows the tale of how Te’o was catfished into believing that his online girlfriend had died during his senior season.

What we all didn’t know is that there was no girlfriend and that a friend tricked him. This documentary (a still of Te’o in it is seen above) dives into that story and the aftermath of the hoax.

Until now, Te’o has never really talked about what happened since then. So when this premiere date was announced, fans’ reaction was mostly positive.

Some, however, weren’t as excited about watching a documentary on the Te’o catfishing scandal. And some even used this to make fun of Te’o.

While Netflix has done some sports documentaries in the past, ESPN has been the more prominent player in that space. But some fans are saying that ESPN haven’t done their own documentary because they played a large part in promoting Te’o during his Heisman campaign and they also fell hard for the hoax.

The Te’o story is a sad reminder how much of an impact one lie can have on one player.

[Top image supplied by Netflix]

About Stacey Mickles

Stacey is a 1995 graduate of the University of Alabama who has previously worked for other publications such as Sportskeeda and Saturday Down South.