The Manti Te'o Affair

Have you ever been pranked or had a joke played on you? If so, then you may know how it feels to be collegiate football player Manti Te'o, who was hoaxed by Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.
Manti believed he had a relationship with a girl named Lennay Kukua exclusively online. He was in an imaginary relationship with this girl, who was a figment of Ronaiah's imagination.
This story is very confusing to me and many news reporters. I think this happened because it lasted for a long period of time. So feelings he had established with this woman turned into pain and anger when he was told the truth about her not being real.
Just imagine how it feels that after all this time that you have been talking to a person and having phone conversations with her, you come to find out that it was somebody's joke and the person you loved never existed.
Also Ronaiah, the man behind the hoax said that he had a female be the voice of the girl Manti Te'o was talking to all this time. It's just very disturbing to me why someone would go through all this trouble to play a sick joke like this one on Manti Te'o.
But there are still questions that pertain to whether or not Manti knew about the joke and just played along with it for the huge publicity stunt.
What really is hard for me to understand is that Manti Te'o had interviews and talked about his girlfriend's car accident and supposed death from leukemia. That interview showed his emotions unfold as he talked about this girl that he seemed to love. So it's kind of hard for me to believe that he knew anything about this practical joke.
This story is most disturbing because of how this man, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, went through these great lengths just to humiliate Manti Te'o. But all I want to understand is why Manti Te'o and not anyone else?
I think it was probably because of his star power and his being a collegiate athlete who is NFL bound. No matter what, his heart was broken, and his feelings were smashed. This will be an incident that Manti Te'o will never forget.