Jan 16 (Reuters) - Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o, whose on-field excellence after his grandmother and online girlfriend purportedly died made him a hero in the sports media, was the victim of a hoax because the girl never existed, the university said on Wednesday. School spokesman Dennis Brown said on the football team's Facebook page that the girlfriend, a Stanford graduate who called herself Lennay Kekua, was merely an online persona who "ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia. ... More...