Jones: Aaron Hernandez has no one to blame but himself

Probably the question I've gotten over 100 times in the last year or so? What is Aaron Hernandez really like?

I dealt with the guy for three years. He seemed OK most of time. Did I really know him? Are you kidding? In today's world of major college athletics, you could have covered him during his entire time at the University of Florida, but if you claim as a journalist you knew him well with the way athletes are protected, kept at distance and controlled, you're not telling the truth.

Two stories.

I can remember his freshman season, Hernandez sprinting past me after a practice showing the speed that would make him an All-American tight end for the Gators and a great tight end in the NFL with the Patriots. Looking around to try to figure out what was going on, Hernandez picked up steam as a football from a teammate went flying into the air and hit him in the back of the head.

Almost falling to the ground, he turned with a huge smile on his face in embarrassment as other players couldn't help but laugh at the goofy freshman who seemed at that moment like just another kid.

Second memory.

As the clock was winding down in 2009 at the end of an upset loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship Game and came closer and closer to zero, Hernandez looked almost numb, confused at what was happening. He almost seemed in denial.

It was the same look I saw on his face on Wednesday in a court room when the guilty verdict was read. It was like he was saying all over again that he couldn't understand how he could lose.

I grew up surrounded by great athletes, a couple who are multi-millionaires. One thing I quickly realized, if you could do something special with a ball or a stick, people tended to look the other way. It was just the norm.

They had been told their whole lives they could do no wrong. And when they did, someone was there to clean up the mess. So I've seen that mentality first hand and frankly, I understood the way their minds had been trained by others.

Not this time.

While Hernandez was being taken away to serve a life sentence for murder, the natural instinct is to think you're looking at a monster. The second thing that passes through your head is, who failed him?

And that's where I have to part ways from really feeling sorry for the guy. Did he have a troubled life? Yes. The loss of his father, the few times I heard him say anything about it, was very obvious and sad. Did he like to smoke weed? Apparently a lot more than anyone really understood. Did Urban Meyer create a culture that in some ways fed the beast?

Yes. Yes he did.

Were the Patriots just as guilty as anyone for not addressing things a little better with the guy? Yes.

But before we start to condemn all those around Aaron Hernandez, let's take a step back for just a second. There are a lot of kids who lose fathers. There are a lot of spoiled, pampered athletes out there. Meyer, deep down? He just had his own attitudes and beliefs about how to help kids. We all do. And we all fail at times. Even with our own children.

So who failed Aaron Hernandez?

He failed himself.

Hernandez was given every opportunity in life, every chance to overcome any obstacle. How many of you know someone who grew up in horrible circumstances, much worse than this guy, and turned out just fine. Ultimately, no matter who you are in life, the mirror tells the truth.

What did I think about on Wednesday afternoon? In 20 years on the Gators beat, as far as I know, Hernandez is the only one who will serve a life sentence for being convicted of taking someone else's life. But many years ago, I sat in a prison with another athlete. He'd been to an Olympic training camp.

His family was dirt poor. He was all alone and was trying to figure things out. We were about the same age. I was a reporter. He was part of a murder in which a store owner was stabbed 50 times with pennies in his cash register and $11 in his wallet. Yes, drugs and alcohol were involved. He went from potential fame to being in prison.

Are you OK?

Not really, he told me with a sad smile during that visit.

Almost 20 years later, while sitting in an attorney's office, I told him the former athlete's name that I had been curious about if, frankly, he was still alive. The attorney bent over, hit a few dozen keys on a computer and there magically appeared the latest prison photo of the guy I had not seen in two decades.

You want to see the reality of paying a price for your mistake. There it was in front of me.

He was barely recognizable. He'd had several conflicts while in prison and had been moved from where I visited him, an office in the middle of a prison yard in central Florida.

I started to reflect on that first meeting.

Still relatively new to the newspaper business, a guard had opened the final gate to the yard and told me to walk to the designated room we were to meet about 400 yards away, by myself. As I make the trek, the first thing I thought was hoping a guard in the tower had bullets in his gun as dozens of prisoners in the dirt yard stared at the dude carrying a tape recorder which I doubted would save me if they charged my way. Couldn't imagine spending more than an hour there much less the rest of my life.

Talk about happy to get out of that place. I almost ran back to security and never looked back.

Back to the photo.

There were deep bags under the eyes that had seen 20 years behind those gates. He looked haunted and dead. Never seen eyes like that. A man who should have been in his 40s looked 80. I couldn't help but look into those eyes over and over.

No one in the room spoke. For several minutes others looked over my shoulder at the computer screen, cleared their throats and said nothing about the horrifying photo. I finally closed the screen. We didn't talk about that photo again.

Hernandez will pay a deeper price than any of us will ever realize. I have that glimpse at a photo to show me what's coming next.

Hell.

You can point fingers, you can blame society. You can blame gun laws. You can blame drugs. Deep down? I think Hernandez had a lot of hope, a lot of good in him. I remember the goof who a teammate picked off with a football and that crazy smile on his face. I remember the guy who, quite frankly, did seem troubled while passing through Gainesville. I emailed or talked to several people who dealt with Aaron Hernandez in the last day or so.

Everyone seemed to say the same things. Many knew that he had issues. Many knew he could struggle in life. Many reached out to him, many tried. Nobody thought he was capable of this. Nobody.

Bottom line? You can be the greatest athlete on earth, you can have the greatest help to right a weakness. But as Hernandez looked around the court room and looked numb as they put handcuffs on him I had to think, I've seen that expression. He always thought he was unbeatable.

A good trait at games. A bad trait at life. The photo 20 years from now will back that up.

Contact Jones at djones@floridatoday.com or follow on Twitter: @DaveJonesSports