Urban Meyer: King of Looking The Other Way. Before this bleepshow at Ohio State, he was the college coach of Aaron Hernandez at Florida.
— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) August 3, 2018
Through the years, when real-world issues have visited the Sports Department, there have been some bad stories. Some of them strained the limits of believability. Others were simply sad.It gets better:
Harry Agganis and Reggie Lewis died while they were in their 20s. Len Bias killed himself via cocaine intoxication before he played a game for the Celtics. The Patriots lost a Super Bowl, then revealed an in-house drug scandal. Tony Conigliaro had his career cut short by a beanball, then suffered a stroke and died at the age of 45. Rocky Marciano died in a plane crash. Ted Williams’s head was separated from his body and cryogenically frozen in the hours after his death.
More than a few of our professional athletes have landed on the police blotter. Players who were cheered at Fenway, Foxboro, and the Garden turned out to be gun-toters, wife beaters, drunks, drug abusers, thieves, and deadbeat dads.
But there has never been anything like this.
Please. No need piling on the franchise here. Hernandez’s associates and alleged actions are not the Patriots’ fault. But at a time when “Patriot Way” has become a sickening parody of its own mythical origins, New England’s front office needs to stop with the self-congratulation.So, what does Shank do later on in the column? He piles on, of course!
The Hernandez saga brings up questions about the collective judgment of a conservative franchise that typically does exhaustive research before making the smallest decisions. How did the Patriots arrive at the conclusion that Hernandez was worthy of a $40 million contract extension, which included a $12.5 million signing bonus? Where were the background checks and red flags? What about Belichick’s deep roots with Hernandez’s college coach at Florida, Urban Meyer?I know that there are a few things worse than being a raving, disingenuous hypocrite; right now, I can't think of them...
Traditionally, the Patriots take the field to the tune of “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne. It’s part of all-important game presentation.Generally speaking, that's what separates successful sports franchises from the others. It looks to me that the Patriots have been better at this sort of thing than, for instance, the Cincinnati Bengals.
Might be time to switch to Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.’’
The Patriots are a football team. They are all about winning football games. Nothing more. The deadly serious Aaron Hernandez situation is the latest reminder of this hard fact.
Bob and Jonathan Kraft need to stop trying to make us think the Patriots are different from all those bad boys in the NFL. You know, all those guys who only care about winning.
“If you’re going to be a part of this organization, there’s a responsibility and a sense of obligation that comes with it, because in my family’s mind, you’re carrying our last name as well,’’ Jonathan Kraft said after the Patriots signed Albert Haynesworth in 2011. “We just want [them] to understand what it means to be a Patriot and that there are certain things that are as important to us, and in some cases, more important to us, than winning.’’I do recall Shank bringing up the issue of character with respect to the Patriots bringing in Haynesworth; memory and research both indicate that character was not an issue for Shank when Hernandez was drafted. To paraphrase a comment to Shank's article, when Mother Teresa lines up at tight end, consider the problem resolved.
No. The Patriots are no different than any other team. They’ll take a chance on trouble, which apparently is what they did when they drafted Hernandez in the fourth round in 2010.
Hernandez slipped in the draft because of maturity issues and failed drug tests while at the University of Florida. A lot of teams passed on him, but the Patriots took a shot. And so he came here and he played well. In August of 2012, the Patriots broke from standard operating procedure and rewarded Hernandez with a $37 million contract extension, which included a $12.5 million signing bonus. When Hernandez immediately gave $50,000 to the Myra Kraft Giving Back Fund, Bob Kraft called it, “one of the touching moments since I’ve owned the team.’’
