The top 10 most searched athletes on Google in 2022

5. Manti Te’o

Though Te’o hadn’t played football in over a year by 2022, he jumped back into the spotlight thanks to the release of the Netflix documentary “Untold: The Girlfriend who Didn’t Exist” in August. The documentary took a deep dive into Te’o’s catfishing scandal in which he was fooled into thinking that his girlfriend, whom he had only met and communicated with online, had died.

Given the shocking nature of the story, the documentary proved to be incredibly popular. With Te’o and other key characters also sitting down for interviews in the movie, it became one of the most popular pieces of sports media during the year.