Aaron Hernandez was football’s shooting star – the big, fast and tough receiver you couldn’t take your eyes off. Deployed as a tight end, the name for the double duty players on offense who block as well as catch passes, Hernandez quickly emerged as the nation’s best while winning a college championship at the University of Florida in 2009. After joining the NFL the following year at the tender age of 20, Hernandez helped evolve the tight end position from complementary to headlining role on the way to reaching the Super Bowl and signing a $40m contract extension. Ultimately, though, his penchant for self-destruction proved greater than his knack for wrecking game plans. In 2017 Hernandez was found dead at age 27 while serving life in prison for fatally shooting a close friend who played semi-pro ball. His spectacular fall from grace became the biggest media scandal since the OJ Simpson saga – so it’s no wonder that Hernandez has also received the Ryan Murphy treatment.
This week marks the debut of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez – a 10-part Murphy-branded limited series chronicling Hernandez’s star-crossed sports celebrity. Created and executive produced by Stuart Zicherman, best known for his work on The Americans, American Sports Story is the first fictional treatment to follow the raft of journalistic projects that sprang up after Hernandez was found dead by suicide, days after he was acquitted of charges in an unrelated double homicide. The show is based on a six-part newspaper series produced by the Boston Globe’s award-winning Spotlight investigative arm, which delves more deeply into Hernandez’s tortured upbringing and troubled teenage years.
