Somehow the local TV news avoided asking whether it was the unfortunate publicity, or just Belichick’s control-freak tendencies:
New England Patriots have cut Aaron Hernandez over murder charges. Now they’re offering fans a chance to get rid of his jersey in an unusual trade-in that starts Saturday morning.
A week after the former tight end was charged with murder, the Patriots are encouraging parents to swap his No. 81 jersey for that of any other team player…
The exchange program applies only for Hernandez jerseys purchased from the Patriots’ ProShop and PatriotsProShop.com. Jersey owners must go to the ProShop in Foxborough, Massachusetts, during store hours Saturday and Sunday to exchange.
While the Patriots try to scrub Hernandez’s jerseys from the public eye, it’s a different story on eBay, where they are fetching big bucks.
Official Hernandez jerseys are selling for as much as $1,500 online as former fans try to cash in on the athlete’s fall from grace and others try to snatch a bizarre collectible…
craigie
I got nothin’
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
Reposted to the new thread:
I made it to Xi’an. LAX sucks. Let’s put it this way: the domestic terminal in Beijing was more customer friendly. (The international terminal was great.) And I have no idea why Yutsano warned me about domestic air travel in China. Not only did the Beijing to Xi’an leg of my trip go off without a hitch, I had more leg room than I can remember ever having on a U.S. domestic flight. It was almost comfortable.
And cyclobenzaprine is wonderful stuff. I not only got about seven hours of sleep on the LA-Beijing flight I didn’t even ache from sitting in that seat the whole time.
Mike S.
dat free market vs dat pr consulting machine
MoeLarryAndJesus
Those old Ted Bundy Yankee uniforms go for big bucks.
Amir Khalid
I don’t know how likely this is, but what if Aaron Hernandez is acquitted?
TriassicSands
@Amir Khalid:
This is America, where you’re guilty until…whenever. Yawn.
We don’t even pay lip service anymore to the antiquated “presumed innocent.”
Joseph Nobles
The more the Patriots swap out, the higher in value the remaining ones will be. I think they should have let well enough alone, or maybe just swap out for people that asked about it.
scav
between the weird and the greed . . . .
is it too late to become a used paperback? Penguin, preferably, green and cream cover. Or a LBB, they seem to have fun. How much of the proper karma do I need to accumulate for a transfer?
NotMax
Will the number be retired, or will some unfortunate newbie be assigned it?
(Really don’t care a fig about football; just mildly curious on a slow night.)
raven
@NotMax: They’ll let it blow over before they assign it again.
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid:
Somebody might recruit him if he’s a good player. Right now they’ve refused bail so he’s sitting in jail awaiting trial. He can’t play, even if the Pats wanted him. If he’s acquitted there’s no reason why he shouldn’t play.
Amir Khalid
@MikeJ:
Actually, I was asking about the Hernandez shirts.
Tehanu
@TriassicSands:
Yeah. I hold no brief for the guy, don’t even know who he is really, but jeez … how much of a schmuck do you have to be so your employer doesn’t even wait to see if you’re actually guilty before kicking you out?
raven
@Tehanu: Teams release players for a lot less than this.
geg6
@raven:
This.
And I have little sympathy for the Pats in this matter. First, because it’s the Pats…duh. And second, his problems were well known when they drafted him. There’s a reason he was still available when their pick came around. Not that they could have foreseen that he’d be a murderer, but there were plenty of signs in college that he could be trouble. Them’s the chances you take when you sign a player with a troubled past. The Pats took the chance and lost on this one.
MikeJ
@Tehanu: And even if they did have absolute faith in him and were 100% certain they wanted him when his trial is over why on earth would they keep somebody who can’t play on their roster? Not only do they not want to pay him while he’s in jail awaiting trial, there’s a maximum number of players they’re allowed to have.
Ramalama
@Amir Khalid: Yes I thought just the same thing. I guess the marketplace of idears will prevail if he gets acquitted and certain people will make some money on those jerseys. But who knows if he himself has enough personality branding (inc.) to make a go of it in the Canadian football league or as a lead character in the new NBC reality tv hit Dude, where’s my jersey?
While much of Foxboro MA is geared toward everything Patriots football, a little footnote: there’s a fantastic raw milk farm that abuts the stadium. The farmer used to be a health inspector in MA and has implemented better standards for her cows and farm. The Boston Glob quoted some inspector who stated that if all dairy farms worked like Terri’s did, there’d be fewer outbreaks of dairy bugs, microbial conundrums. I forget the phrase he used, but it was a solid thumbs up to her farm. Anyhoo, I can’t imagine football fans might also want farm fresh eggs, but who am I to dictate?
HL Guy
It’s a pretty small risk that they took on him, given that there are no guaranteed contracts in the NFL. You can cut a player and the only loss to you incur is a penalty against your next-years’ salary cap, based on a pro-ration of that player’s remaining signing bonus. A 4th round draft pick? Those are hit-or-miss picks… you can lose on of those at the buffet table before they ever play a down for your team.
In Hernandez’ case he’ll be costing the Pats a relatively high amount of cap room, because he got a $12M signing bonus last August- they will be able to pay their team about 3% less in total salary than they would if he were still on the team, for the next two years. They will largely avoid paying HIM though, which would be a much larger cost.
Ecks
Ah, the Pats don’t care what the jerseys go for on EBay, they just want their middle class fan base to feel safe buying a jersey and not worry that it would become something they couldn’t later wear. They are pricey, there is risk in buying them.
Also too, reducing the number of his jerseys that show up in crowd shots.
Narcissus
Help a multimillion dollar profit making concern not be embarrassed or make bank on eBay. Gee.
Ultraviolet Thunder
According to legend Fidel Castro was scouted by US major league teams while a college baseball player in Cuba. If he’d played ball in the US before the whole Batista thing imagine what that jersey would be worth.
Punchy
@Amir Khalid: He wont be.
JPL
How many people will trade in the shirt? I’m fixated on the trial that is going on in Boston, now and wondering who will play the FBI agent Connolly and Morris.
Yesterday the sun came out for fifteen minutes and the pups were overjoyed. They laid on the patio while birds and chipmunks ran around fifteen feet away. The forecast calls for more rain today and tomorrow.
ThresherK
All I can think of are the plethora of “Gen-yoo-wine Bonnie and Clyde Death Cars” populating carnival sideshows in the late 30s and beyond.
NickT
@Amir Khalid:
I think it’s more likely that we shall discover that he killed Jimmy Hoffa and buried him under the Foxborough stadium.
p.a.
Non-New Englanders may not know he is also a person of interest in a double murder drive by last year in Mass. Silver SUV like he owns
NickT
@p.a.:
Not to mention the retrieval of a silver SUV with RI plates from his uncle’s house. Not to mention the secret flophouse and the ammo dump found there.
It’s the Patriot Way in action.
Leadpipe
Now the Ravens can hire Hernandez, Their murderer retired.
dr. bloor
@geg6: They got three years of high-level production out of a first-round talent earning fourth-round pay until it blew up. For all the tut-tutting some of the other teams are doing right now, you can bet there is more than a handful of GMs out there who would take that deal.
NickT
@dr. bloor:
Given how much they blew on the Hernandez extension, it’s safe to say that they paid rather more than 4th round pay for those 3 years. Plus, the stink that this leaves on the Patriots isn’t going away soon. Not too many GMs are going to look at that and think “Good deal!”.
dr. bloor
@Tehanu: I live in NE, so I’ve been following the case fairly closely (thus far). If a tenth of the evidence presented by the DAs office at the arraignment holds up in trial, Hernandez isn’t getting outside prison walls anytime soon. The most puzzling thing about the case is that someone capable of mastering the Patriot’s playbook appears to have
“planned” and carried out the most inept hit in recent history.
As for the Patriots cutting him loose, it’s about protecting their brand. They’re not compelled to presume innocence in the same way that a jury is.
dr. bloor
@NickT: They’re going to take something like 7.5 million cap hit for one year, and that’s if they can’t claw anything back from the bonus. The salary for future years was not guaranteed. That’s still a deal a bunch of GMs make.
NickT
@dr. bloor:
No, it really isn’t. Enough teams have now informed the world that they wouldn’t have drafted Hernandez in the first place that we can safely say that no GM would look at this disaster in retrospect and think “Yeah, three years, no Superbowl, a costly extension – and a massively embarrassing series of revelations – I want a piece of that!”
You also forget the signing/workout bonus(es) etc that Hernandez received. Sure, the Patriots will try and claw it back, but that’s not going to be easy, will run for months, and keep the embarrassment alive just that bit longer.
Suffern ACE
@NickT: and he is being sued by a former assistant for shooting him in the face last February. If these allegations are true, that means three shooting incidents in 15 months, three deaths, and one maimed assistant.
You would think someone might have said something after the first incident.
Last weekend I overheard two men talking in a store about how Hernandez surrounded himself with bad friends. It’s kind if looking like he might be the bad friend in this case.
dr. bloor
@NickT:
Right. Mike Brown of the Cincinnati Bengals–who deserve their own fucking RICO indictment given the propensity for criminal behavior and otherwise shitty citizenship on their team–climbed on his soapbox earlier this week to declare that there’s no place in the NFL for Aaron Hernandez.
Apparently he forgot that he employs Reggie Nelson, who was implicated in a shooting while at Florida a few years ago along with…Aaron Hernandez!
NickT
@dr. bloor:
Mike Brown wasn’t the only one – and Reggie Nelson may have been “implicated” in a shooting, but in that case he wasn’t found guilty and nor was Hernandez.
Can you name three GMs who would take the Hernandez gamble knowing what we know now? And no, Undead Al Davis doesn’t count.
dr. bloor
@NickT:
Cam Newton, Chris Rainey, Matt Elam, Carlos Dunlap, Janoris Jenkins, Riley Cooper, Jermaine Cunningham, Brandon James and Louis Murphy were among the 31 players arrested for various low-level-to-violent incidents at Florida during Urban Meyer’s reign. They are/have been employed by the Jaguars, Steelers, Ravens, Bengals, Rams, Eagles, Patriots, Colts and Giants.
Rainey plays for the Steelers with Ben Roethlisberger, who the Rooneys gave a sternly written letter after his exploits in South Carolina. Let’s not get into Michael Vick. Or players with black marks at other programs who made their way into the league.
The NFL is not looking for good citizens.
Redshirt
Nothing matters in the NFL than winning, baby. Just win!
Hernandez was worth the risk, from a football perspective. From a personal/citizen/human level, he seems like a monster. But if the monster can catch and get yards after the catch, so be it. But not anymore, not for Hernandez.
Sports radio in Maine is pretty polite, generally, but yeah, the torrent of prison jokes from the callers (“He’s a Tight End? Not for much longer HAHAHAHA!”) are sick. I hate prison jokes, because of what it says about us.
NickT
@dr. bloor:
True -but not quite what you were arguing about Aaron Hernandez. I don’t see you putting forward any GM who would take your three years of football followed by extreme embarrassment deal. None of the players you mention have achieved the level of infamy that Hernandez has so far managed.
Ronnie Pudding
Cam Newton was arrested at Florida during Urban Meyer’s reign? What?
Anyway, lots of young men going into the NFL have character issues. Sometimes it is low level crap that is the function of where they came from, sometimes it isn’t.
Citizen_X
@Leadpipe: about five minutes after the charges against Hernandez were announced, people were joking that the Raiders have made him an offer.
Bostondreams
@Ronnie Pudding:
I think it was for stealing laptops. I vaguely recall it. He then transferred because he sat behind Tebow.
dr. bloor
@NickT: Well, even the Patriots wouldn’t take him knowing what they know now, if only because it would reveal the sociopathic core of professional football franchises. Hindsight is 20/20.
But all of those guys I cited–just a sampling–raised (or should have raised) the possibility with GMs that they had the potential to blow up into something Hernandezesque. And they all got drafted. Moreover, Hernandez might have been off of five or so draft boards, which means he was still on 20+ boards. The GMs were just jockeying for the right price on him, and the Patriots stepped up first.
There is no enduring shame or penalty to be paid in the NFL for transgressions. Just ask Big Ben and the Rooneys.
NickT
@Bostondreams:
He stole a laptop from another student and then threw it out of the window when the cops turned up. Rocket scientist material, maybe not, but hardly in the same league as Aaron Hernandez and his troubles.
Bostondreams
@NickT:
Never implied it was.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshirt:
That’s Undead Al Davis, right there!
Mr Stagger Lee
The Dallas Cowboys or the Oakland Raiders would get him if he is somehow acquitted.