MAYBE JOE KNOWS: Sometimes it’s OK to be wrong

Posted 4/21/15

I centered my examination on former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who at the time was in police custody on murder charges.

On Wednesday, Hernandez, 25, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2013 killing of his supposed …

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MAYBE JOE KNOWS: Sometimes it’s OK to be wrong

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In December 2013, I wrote a column for a newspaper in Illinois examining the abundance of crimes and lack of punishments present in professional sports.

I centered my examination on former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who at the time was in police custody on murder charges.

On Wednesday, Hernandez, 25, was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2013 killing of his supposed friend, Odin Lloyd. Hernandez was convicted by a Massachussetts jury and given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

He will never again step foot on a football field.

In my column, I predicted Hernandez would eventually walk free as yet another beneficiary of a long line of light punishments — or none at all — handed down to professional athletes (see: OJ Simpson, Dante Stallworth, Ray Rice and co.). It was hard to ignore that Hernandez had already evaded charges on other incidents during his time at the University of Florida, and in 2012, when he was linked to a double homicide (Hernandez was eventually indicted on murder charges linked to this incident in May 2014).

But on Wednesday, I was OK with being wrong. Actually, I was thankful for it.

Maybe this is another brick — possibly the biggest to date — falling from the Berlin Wall-like divider between celebrities and everybody else. Maybe the Hernandez trial — albeit lengthy and convoluted — will set the standard for celebrity justice and bring it back to the “people level.” While there’s plenty of room for criticism of the American criminal justice system, there’s no arguing that a functioning justice system does exist for most Americans, while a “just-us” system has long been at work for the privileged.

Hopefully, those systems grew a little closer to merging on Wednesday.

When it comes to the stars, it’s OK to get caught up in the hype and fandom. Afterall, that aura is part of what makes them stars in the first place. What’s not OK, however, is to allow that admiration and prestige to morph into invulnerability when those stars fall back to earth. An aura is fine until it becomes armor for the wrong knight.

When I had my first taste of covering professional athletes at the Chicago Bears’ training camp in the summer of 2011, I remember nerves affecting me to the point that I’d refrain from asking questions during group media sessions. As a 22-year-old rookie reporter, I had difficulty separating the star power from who these guys really were: people, just like you and me.

Four years later, I don’t get nervous anymore.

Whether they’re on T.V. or not, whether their bank accounts carry seven digits and yours only three, or whether they endorse the shaving cream you put on your face every day, professional athletes are just people. And when people make mistakes — like murder, DUI manslaughter and domestic violence — they should be punished like people ... career touchdown totals notwithstanding.

Wednesday’s verdict proved that somebody understands that.

Hernandez’s story must serve as a continuous, driving force for one of the most basic facts of life: If you commit a crime, you have to pay for it. Hernandez did, and he is.

Welcome back to our side of the wall, Aaron.

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