This seems rather obvious. I don't know whether or not he killed anyone or did anything else illegal. However, I do know that when the cops come to your door and then you smash your security system and phone, you did something you weren't supposed to do. And even though people might say "Of course he shouldn't have done whatever it was that he did for reasons X,Y and Z", the question is really why. What is it about people that brings them to risking the life that they built for themselves?
Let's think about this, every athlete is physically gifted far beyond the normal person. You have to work hard of course, but you also need to be born with certain capacities that give you that extra edge in the world of professional sports. If you're born with such capacities and skills, you need to protect and bolster them by taking care of yourself physically, but also mentally and emotionally. So what does that mean? It means, cut the shit. If you get angry, talk to someone. If you hang out with dopes who do dumb things, get new friends. If you can't control your drinking or drugs, pay a guy to follow you around and grab the tequila out of your hand and smack the blow straw out of your hand. Natural gifts are rare so letting your bullshit get in the way of that is a slap in the face of those without such physical traits.
Moreover, if you are a professional athlete, you are a monetary investment. I don't believe that every athlete has to live squeaky clean and do everything like a choir boy. I actually don't care what people do outside of the game. Wanna smoke, drink, have sex with random women or hookers, party like a fool? Go right ahead. Show up on Sunday ready to go though. Teams invest so much into players that without them being able to play or being viable marketing pieces, they lose lots of cash. Which makes other teams unwilling to pay for them.
Vice is fine in my book. Sex, drugs and booze are all kosher provided you don't hurt anyone in pursuit of them or while engaging in them. But once you break out and do something with the express intent of injuring a person, you suck and deserve a hearty and harsh penalty.
Despite all of these things. Despite how simple it seems for an average person just to stay out of trouble, I don't think these guys who have gotten in trouble can help it. What this entire rambling mess boils down to is that people cannot control who they are sometimes. I'm not saying either way what Hernandez should have done or if he did anything at all, but there is a long line of athletes, actors, politicians and electricians who have done things they shouldn't do and then we all ask why. And the why is this, it's who they are. Most things about you have been decided before you were born. There are physically gifted people born everyday. That physical gift may translate to football if you're born in America, hockey if in Canada, Soccer if in England. Or it may translate into a job, physical trainer, actor. You have to have the capacity from birth to look like Brock Lesnar. On the same side, people who have the capacity for murder or rape are born everyday. You're born in a poverty torn country somewhere, you become a child soldier. You're born into a gang-laden neighborhood, you become a gangster. Sometimes you're born with the capacity to be an athlete and a killer. An actor and a rapist. We can't be surprised or shocked when anything happens because anyone you know could be born with the capacity to do something horrible. With the skills to catch a ball sometimes comes the skill to pull a trigger. And when those two abilities are in the same person, it's quite tragic when they act on the less desirable of those two traits.
So in short, why do athletes risk everything doing dumb shit? Because it's who they are as a person.
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