{"id":881,"date":"2013-07-03T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T13:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=881"},"modified":"2013-07-03T09:00:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T13:00:30","slug":"tuesday-teabag-july-2-2013-aaron-hernandez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/?p=881","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Teabag, July 2, 2013 – Aaron Hernandez"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hernandez-ing<\/a>

Hernandez-ing is way cooler than Tebowing<\/p><\/div>\n

You knew this was coming.\u00a0 Like driving by a car accident, it\u2019s horrible yet you can\u2019t help but look.\u00a0 We knew this was tea-baggable weeks ago<\/a>, before any of the facts were revealed.\u00a0 So many questions are racing through your mind.\u00a0 How?\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Didn\u2019t he just sign a $40 Million Dollar contract?\u00a0 But if you\u2019re like The Machine, the one question that keeps coming back to you is:<\/p>\n

There are gangs in Bristol, Connecticut?<\/p>\n

Really?<\/p>\n

The Machine\u2019s been to Connecticut plenty of times.\u00a0 It\u2019s one big affluent suburb, complete with spoiled kids who think they\u2019re cool (and from NYC).\u00a0 They\u2019re hip, right now they are probably listening to dubstep\u00a0or rap (but only the popular songs).\u00a0 \u201cCan I get a\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 The tint on the windows of their Saab 9-5 is not legal.\u00a0 They all go to a snobby, private liberal arts college (Middlebury), the men have at least two pairs of capri pants, and the women judge you based on which boarding school you went to.\u00a0 And everyone pretends Hartford doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Thuglife?\u00a0 In Connecticut?\u00a0 Have the Crips taken over Greenwich Village?\u00a0 And Bristol of all places.\u00a0 Home of ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports.\u00a0 The Machine thought the worst thing that happens in Bristol is the Rick Reilly poetry slam at Starbucks.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to Hernandez.\u00a0 We know he\u2019s innocent until proven guilty (just kidding, he did that shit).\u00a0 But doing the crime doesn\u2019t automatically result in doing the time (right, Juice?).\u00a0 Eventually though, you\u2019ll probably end up in jail (right, Juice?).\u00a0 FYI, the prosecution better come up with a better motive than \u201che talked to the wrong people three days ago\u201d or else Aaron stands a chance of walking a free man.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regardless of the outcome of the trial, Hernandez deserves everything coming to him, including his release by the Pats and the (re)digging into his past.\u00a0 The guy\u2019s a scumbag, plain and simple.\u00a0 There were character issues coming out of college, that\u2019s why he slipped from the first round to the fourth.\u00a0 You thought he turned a corner with his recent comments about becoming a father and signing his new contract for a boatload of cash.\u00a0 But Biggie was right:\u00a0 Mo\u2019 money, mo\u2019 problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aaron clearly has never watched a Law and Order SVU\u00a0marathon, for if he did, he\u2019d know that destroying your security tapes and cellphone doesn\u2019t really destroy it, and that dumping a body a mile from your house doesn\u2019t really throw the scent off.\u00a0 Anyone else find it ironic that his own security cameras are being used against him?<\/p>\n

\"Proving<\/a>

Proving again that you can’t trust people with neck tats (close enough).<\/p><\/div>\n

And while Aaron is absolutely worthy of a teabag, the media\u2019s circus is also worthy.\u00a0 Jason Whitlock argues<\/a> the Patriots should have known Aaron was capable of murder.\u00a0 Saying the Patriots should have known he was going to kill someone because of his character issues in college is completely asinine.\u00a0 Prior to last week, he\u2019d never been arrested, and his character issues included smoking week and getting kicked out of bars (if that\u2019s the case 99% of all college students are going to kill someone).\u00a0 No, you cannot extrapolate what happened two weeks ago from his past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s get another thing straight too:\u00a0 The NFL does not have a gun problem.\u00a0 Gangs have a gun problem, but not the NFL.\u00a0 Because one player was (allegedly) in a gang and (allegedly, albeit probably) killed someone, doesn\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t cast a cloud on the entire league.\u00a0 If that\u2019s the case, all teachers sleep with their students, all financial investors run Ponzi schemes, and all strippers have daddy issues (ok so 2 out of 3 ain\u2019t bad).<\/p>\n

Point is:\u00a0 there are assholes in every profession.\u00a0 There are crooked cops, dirty politicians, and drug dealing stay at home moms.\u00a0 Why should professional athletes be any different?\u00a0<\/p>\n

What people need to accept is that being a professional athlete is just like any other profession.\u00a0 Just because they are well paid doesn\u2019t put them above a DWI or fighting a bouncer at a strip club, or the occasional lapse in child support payments.\u00a0 It makes them incredibly stupid (and tea-baggable), as the risks they take in engaging in that behavior is magnified given their public persona.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Machine, you say, 27 players have been arrested since the Super Bowl.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t that mean the NFL is out of control?\u00a0 No, what that means is things are improving.\u00a0 As our good friends at Deadspin<\/a> point out, the rate of criminal activity in the NFL has sharply decreased.\u00a0 In 2006, 68 players were arrested.\u00a0 Since then, crime has dropped nearly 40%, and only 2.8% of NFL players commit crimes (compared with 10.8% of all males age 22-34).<\/p>\n

Not by coincidence, but 2006 is the year Roger Goodell took over as league Commissioner.\u00a0 Player conduct has been one of his main goals, and thus far he has succeeded.\u00a0 People complain that he\u2019s too heavy-handed and dictatorial in meriting out punishment, but it\u2019s working.\u00a0 Sure, there are always going to be people who\u00a0don\u2019t get it (see Aaron Hernandez, Josh Brent, Titus Young, and Pacman Jones) and never will.\u00a0 But the average NFL player is a good dude, despite what the media will have you believe.<\/p>\n

When Larry Fitzgerald and Eli Manning start throwing up gang signs, then the NFL has a gun problem.\u00a0 Until then, some DUIs, bar fights, and a selfie\u00a0of a wannabe college thug holding a gun and being charged with murder isn\u2019t enough to discredit the entire league, and certainly isn\u2019t enough to discredit the work that RGI has done in cleaning up the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s mind-blowing to most people is that there is any crime by professional athletes.\u00a0 It\u2019s true, these guys are rich, young, and successful; are glorified by the cities they play in (except Mark Sanchez), their alma maters, and their hometowns.\u00a0 They have the world by the balls.\u00a0 What could possibly lead them to commit a crime?\u00a0 But that\u2019s a question for Outside the Lines (you feeling us Bob Lee, get us on your show).<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s bring it back to the man of the hour.\u00a0 We\u2019re not sure Aaron gets out of this one (the circumstantial evidence is strong).\u00a0 If not murder, he\u2019ll get convicted of a lesser charge.\u00a0 Either way:\u00a0 he\u2019s doing time, and he destroyed what was a promising career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We hope in your one hour of free time a day you\u2019re able to log on to The Machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Enjoy your teabag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You knew this was coming.\u00a0 Like driving by a car accident, it\u2019s horrible yet you can\u2019t help but look.\u00a0 We knew this was tea-baggable weeks ago, before any of the facts were revealed.\u00a0 So many questions are racing through your … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tuesday-teabag"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Bp3y-ed","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":884,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions\/884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bigredsportsmachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}