Notre Dame football star Manti Te’o has a lot of explaining to do.

News surfaced yesterday that his girlfriend, who died in September from leukemia, wasn’t real at all. Yes, you read that correctly: She didn’t even exist.

Te’o is now claiming that he was fooled by the entire situation. ”This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online,” Te’o said in a statement Wednesday. “We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her.”

He added: “To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone’s sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating.”

What made the story so heartbreaking was that Te’o's grandmother died the same week that his girlfriend, who he knew as Lennay Kekua, died. It was reported during the time of her death, that Kekua whispered “I love you” to Te’o just before she took her last breath.

Notre Dame has released a statement, clearing Te’o and saying that he approached the school later in the year after he realized he had been a pawn in the hoax.

“On Dec. 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed by Manti Te’o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax,” the university said in a statement Wednesday. “Someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia.”

“While we still don’t know all of the dimensions of this … there are certain things that I feel confident we do know,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said at a press conference. “The first is that this was a very elaborate, very sophisticated hoax, perpetrated for reasons we don’t understand.”

Swarbick continued, wiping tears: “The thing I am most sad of is, the single most trusting human being I have ever met will never be able to trust in the same way ever again.”

The sports blogosphere has exploded with doubts that Te’o is telling the truth. Many football supporters think that the star player could’ve fabricated the story in an effort to guarantee the Heisman Trophy, which went to Texas A&M’s Johnny Manziel.

An investigation has been launched by the college and is ongoing.