The star linebacker who attends a prestigious college and came in second place in the Heisman trophy voting getting tricked by a fake woman online who was said to be dead is a story that obviously would dominate the news.

When that school is Notre Dame and the linebacker is Manti Te'o, the story is going to go global. But what does the response to the incident say about sports and the media in general? What does it say about an institution like Notre Dame?

One thing it does say, is that Notre Dame is a bunch of hypocrites who will do anything to protect the football team.

As written by Salon.com and pointed out by other sites, more has been written about Te'o and his fake dead girlfriend over the past 24 hours than has been written in months about student Lizzy Seeberg, a girl who committed suicide after being intimidated by members of the same Irish football team after reporting a sexual assault by one of their other teammates.

According to Deadspin, the player "was found 'not responsible' and didn't miss a day of football practice. In fact, he played in the BCS National Championship game last week."  

Going even further, Salon writes that another girl "was taken to the hospital for a rape exam declined to formally accuse another Notre Dame football player after getting a series of bullying texts from players."

According to reports, Seeberg first contacted her therapist at the end of August in 2010, writing to the doctor and her friend in a text message: "Something bad happened." According to the friend: "She looked really flushed and was breathing heavily and talking really fast; I couldn't understand her. I just heard her say 'boy,' 'Notre Dame,' 'football player.' She was crying and having the closest thing to a panic attack I've seen in my life. I told her to breathe and sit down and tell me everything."

The following day, she spoke to campus police about the assault and said that a "Notre Dame football player sexually assaulted her in his room after two other students left them alone there."

On Twitter the response to the story was overwhelmeing, with @Amaditalks writing: "Football: where a woman who never existed is worth much much more discussion than the real women victimized every year by the players."

There are still a lot of details on information to be filled in for the Te'o story, but to see the athletic director Jack Swarbrick cry at a press conference about the linebacker is a disheartening sight when looked at in the context of the rape story.

Melinda Henneberger at the Washington Post wrote a long piece about the situation in December, titled "Why I won't be cheering for old Notre Dame."

According to the article: "Two years ago, Lizzy Seeberg, a 19-year-old freshman at Saint Mary's College, across the street from Notre Dame, committed suicide after accusing an ND football player of sexually assaulting her. The friend Lizzy told immediately afterward said she was crying so hard she was having trouble breathing."

She describes in detail how Seeberg went to the police and that soon after she was targeted by players on the Notre Dame football team in a number of texts, saying things like "Don't do anything you would regret" and "Messing with Notre Dame football is a bad idea."

The article also says that once the story broke, Notre Dame convened a closed-door disciplinary hearing in which the player said "until he actually met with police, he hadn't even known why they wanted to speak to him."

Months later, according to the story, an RA in a dorm at the school "drove a freshman to the hospital for a rape exam after receiving an S.O.S. call." The quote following that reads: "She said she'd been raped by a member of the football team at a party off campus," the R.A. told me (Henneberger).

On September 10 of 2010, 10 days after the original incident, Seeberg took her own life and overdosed on the anti-depressant Effexor, committing suicide.

According to Huffington Post, at the time, "Records show that Seeberg, 19, took all the right steps: she went to the hospital for a DNA evidence kit; she consulted with a campus group that helps victims of sex crimes; and she filed a report with Notre Dame campus police."

The whole idea of the story is horrible and shocking. Likely to most people it is even more shocking than the Te'o story. But this story did not dominate sports news coverage or sports talk radio. It was basically thrown aside by the higher ups in the Notre Dame community.

To link things bask to Te'o situation now; the school felt it was necessary to hire a private investigator to look into the internet hoax. That costs time and money. The school did not hire anyone to look into the rape situation. Clearly, the priority was about protecting the Notre Dame brand and not in figuring out the truth.

The Chicago Tribune originally printed many of the early stories, but Notre Dame never took it seriously. Look at this exchange with coach Brian Kelly, who joked about the investigation with the newspaper, which was dealing with bankruptcy issues.

According to the Huffington Post: Coach Brian Kelly has repeatedly demurred when asked about the player's status, saying it was up to the university to investigate. He even joked with reporters on the subject -- when four separate Tribune writers asked him about the case, he said, "I didn't know you guys could afford all those guys," a crack at the Trib's ongoing bankruptcy.

Okay, so he wasn't joking about the girl, just about the investigation into the story, but does that make it any better? The coach of the football team didn't take it seriously, so why should anyone else in the Notre Dame football community?

Here is another quote from Kelly, which came after the incident first came to light.

"I am not going to get into the specifics.  I can tell you this.  From my standpoint as the head football coach, I think it was made clear that the university is going to deal with any matters of this nature. And that for me... one of the reasons I came to Notre Dame is that I have the same standards that our University does.  We are in lock-step relative to the standards that we hold her at the university of Notre Dame.  That's really for me all I can give you relative to the specifics." 

Even worse, according to the Washington Post story, the player had a history of this type of behavior before he came to the school, something that should have been a red flag during recruitment. The article also states that the president of the school Rev. John Jenkins, refused to meet with the Seeberg family on advice of counsel.

"We just say 'No, not too excited, really not a big fan any longer,' " says Lizzy's father, Tom Seeberg, who's remarkably indifferent to the team's success: "When tragedy rocks you to your core, all the little stuff is stripped away."

 More from the article:

"I've watched almost every game this season and there's not a single time that I don't feel extreme anger when I see [the accused] on the field," said Kaliegh Fields, a Saint Mary's junior who went with Lizzy to the police station. "Once I start thinking about the people who put the school's success in a sport over the life of a young woman, I can't help but feel disgust. Everyone's always saying how God's on Notre Dame's side," she added. "And I think, 'How could he be?' "

The end of the Salon article sums things up perfectly:

"Dave Zirin, who has long called for the Notre Dame football program to be shut down as irredeemably corrupt, pointed out that the university had hired a private investigator for the Te'o case but not the numerous other allegations of wrongdoing by players. Zirin said of the school's athletic director, "It says so much that Te'o's bizarre soap opera has moved [Jack] Swarbrick to openly weeping but he hasn't spared one tear, let alone held one press conference, for Lizzy Seeberg ... The problem at Notre Dame is not just football players without a compass; it's the adults without a conscience." We live in a country that officially condemns rape and sexual assault but when confronted with the real possibility of it, rarely strays from denial and excuses. That's the biggest scam of all."

Notre Dame should feel embarrassed and ashamed for the way they treated this girl and her family. Manti Te'o's girlfriend's death was fake. This death was real.