Having Manti Te’o isn’t all good for Notre Dame. That’s right, I said it. And I see your responses. Utter shock. Gasps. The drilling a screw into your hand with your 18v Li-ion Rigid, instead of the new primed swimming pool deck board. Blasphemy, you say.

There is a reason I say this, so let me explain.

Sure, the Flyin’ Hawaiian looks to be a “once every 10 year” type of player. He looks like Andy Katzenmoyer. He looks like Jevon Kearse. He looks like Julius Peppers. Or Lawrence Taylor (without the zeal for Coke-and not the same kind that Mean Joe Greene liked). He looks like he can forget his helmet on the bench, get fooled by the play-action fake, chase down the running back who indeed does not have the ball, toss him to the side like he was Bridget Moynahan after he realizes this, do a 180 and reverse field, and then steam engine into the quarterback that thought he was safe after the masterful fake, then sack him for a 10 yard loss, killing the threat of USC. In other words, he is a difference maker.

He proved this when he maxed out the stat line with 10 tackles in his first real action against Washington. When he got to the ball carrier so fast, the ball wasn’t even in his hands. When he opened up the field for everybody else (like Brian Smith), and the Irish front 7 played its best game yet.

But, with the good comes the bad. And that bad (if you like to get a dose of Irish news occasionally) is going to be a whole lot of overkill when writers try to get us a closer look at “Manti Te’o the person” by throwing in lines about how cold he gets in the Indiana weather.

You see, Te’o is from Hawaii, the land of beaches and pineapple. Notre Dame is in the midwest-and in case you didn’t know, midwest winters are cold. Obviously, the move from a warm-weather place to a cold-weather is an adjustment. Who wants to live in freezing weather? And writers just can’t seem to resist using this lead-in when talking about Te’o. It will get old quick (it already has for me). And it will never die, even though the market will continue to be saturated with “Manti is cold” stories.

Some samples ( warning: may include sarcasm):

-For most freshman football players, adjusting from the speed of the high school to college game is a major concern.
And so are classes.
While those may be on the radar for standout Irish freshman linebacker Manti Te’o, they are no where near his top concern.
For the Hawaii native, concern number one is the South Bend weather.
“It’s been hard, it’s been very hard,” Te’o said this week with a laugh. “I haven’t really gotten used to seeing the temperatures in the 40s so often in my life.”
40s?
You may want to get ready Manti. It’s going to get worse.

-In the aftermath of Notre Dame’s 37-30 overtime extinguishing of Washington, Te’o was not thinking about how his young career had just turned its first corner, was not fast-forwarding to the Oct. 17 matchup with USC, was not preoccupied about how much his body ached and his mind felt lighter
“For me it was just a big relief to get out of the cold,” said the 6-foot-2, 244-pound linebacker from Laie, Hawaii. “That’s the main thing. That’s all that was on my mind.”

-Manti’s gift from his parents for his birthday? 36 pairs of gloves for South Bend winters.

-What class does Manti wish was on his schedule? “How To Use A Windshield Scraper”

- Manti’s one vice? “Hot Chocolate to soothe the cold.”

-Manti showed the heart of a champion like this once before when the odds were stacked against him. In a snowball fight.

Maddening.

Okay, we get it, South Bend is cold. And if Notre Dame wants to be relevant in today’s college football, there better be a whole bunch of warm-weather elite recruits who are like Manti and don’t care.