When news of Aaron Hernandez's guilty verdict and subsequent life sentence without the possibility of parole was announced on Wednesday morning, I couldn't help but think of Rae Carruth, the former Carolina Panthers' receiver who shamefully decided to hire someone to murder his pregnant girlfriend back in 1999. Unfortunately, Cherica Adams didn't survive the attack and although his unborn son did survive, he suffered permanent brain damage after his oxygen supply was cut off for over an hour.
This unspeakable crime immediately stained the Panthers organization for what seemed like an eternity. In time, the blemish eventually faded, but questions will always remain. Like, why would someone who seems to have it all make such an egregious decision? Or, why did the Panthers draft this monster in the first place and how come they didn't vet him more thoroughly? Sadly, the truth of the matter is that no one could have predicted this type of sordid outcome. After all, Carruth grew up in a rough Sacramento neighborhood, but he steered clear of illegal activities and defied the odds by earning a scholarship to the University of Colorado, where he succeeded both athletically and academically. Furthermore, he was known to live a alcohol and drug free lifestyle. Ostensibly, his only vice was that he was a notorious womanizer.
While the pattern of alarming behavior was mostly absent in the case of Carruth, the same cannot be said of Hernandez, who always seemed to escape the consequences of his nefarious dealings. In fact, up until his arrest for the murder of Odin Loyd, he had a clean record. But the company he kept suggested a more sinister reality. You see, it is no secret that star athletes are provided a longer leash than their lesser talented counterparts. With that being said, I suspect that Hernandez was the beneficiary of special treatment from his late teens all the way up until his early twenties, which begs one more question:
How much blame should be placed at the feet of friends, family members, coaches, agents, institutions and organizations, namely the ones who perpetuated the lie that he was above the consequences of his bad choices?
Now I'm the first person to preach personal responsibility, but there has got to be a better way than assisting and enabling the elite athletes to dig their own graves. The last thing that an impressionable Hernandez needed after losing his father at 16 years of age was an underground trail of feckless authority figures willing to sweep his growing collection of indiscretions under the rug. It would be a travesty if this pivotal detail was absent from his life story. More importantly, it would be a shame if these tragic events don't lead to change.