Linebacker Manti Te'o has spearheaded the undefeated Irish's return to glory

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Manti Te'o is not Tim Tebow minus a few letters in his last name and a few million sonnets written about his amazing exploits.

That's too shallow a description for the inspirational leader of Notre Dame's No. 1 football team. It puts Te'o in competition with another man's legend, which isn't fair, and suggests that there is some kind of blueprint that the purest and most humble of college football heroes must follow.

There isn't. Fact is, there has never been anyone like Te'o, who forged a path from Oahu to Notre Dame; a Mormon among Catholics; a Samoan among Hoosiers; and, here at the golden end of his Irish career, a linebacker among Heisman Trophy finalists.

Alabama would never go looking for a guy like this, a talent so far outside the usual SEC recruiting trails and norms that he might as well be from Mars, but Crimson Tide quarterback AJ McCarron surely will be searching for Te'o prior to every snap in Monday night's BCS championship game.

We're only talking about the boulder in the middle of every Notre Dame goal-line stand, and the stubborn senior who has carried the best of Fighting Irish tradition through the worst of times, including a 6-6 record under Charlie Weis and losses to South Florida, Navy, and Tulsa under Brian Kelly.

Te'o could have entered the NFL draft a year ago but chose to stick it out for the entire college experience, the good, the bad, and the occasional spark of culture shock. Here is how he described the trip to New York last month for the Heisman ceremony, with two proud parents, Brian and Ottilia Te'o, in tow.

"I see my dad taking pictures of food in New York and videotaping us driving around New York and I'm like, 'Dad, we complain about the tourists in Hawaii and them driving 10 m.p.h. on the highway,' " Te'o said. " 'It's just water. It's just coconut trees, but what are you guys doing? You're taking pictures of lasagna.' "

The rest of his comments were serious, straightforward, mature. It's the voice of a linebacker who has studied enough film to put himself where the passes are (Te'o's seven interceptions are tied for second-most in the nation) and lifted enough weights to throw down 427 struggling ballcarriers (third-most on Notre Dame's career tackles list).

If Te'o and not Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel had won the Heisman last month, no fancy nickname like Johnny Football would have been needed. Manti is The Man, period. Nobody has to say it to know it.

Should a BCS title and a perfect 13-0 season get stacked on top of the Lombardi and the Bednarik and all the other awards that Te'o already has collected, the Irish will be able to thank this one player for waking up several seasons of elite recruits to the newness of Knute Rockne's old program.

"Walk through the locker room," Te'o begins his Notre Dame sales pitch, "and movies are made about that locker room. Movies are made about that stadium."

After the aloha moment of Monday night, Te'o will prepare to start all over again as an NFL draft prospect. Middle of the first round? This guy's story is always developing. It will never be sweeter, though, than the opening chapter, when Te'o settled on the uniform number that he still wears today.

"My dad and I were driving around Laie, where I grew up," he said, "and he asked me, 'Son, when you play football, what number do you want to be?' Since I was 5 years old, I said: '5.' "

Te'o strongly considered Southern Cal and Brigham Young during the recruiting process but settled on the school that will remember him forever, or for as long as Notre Dame Stadium stands, whichever is longer.