What is there to say about Aaron Hernandez, other than that he has apparently taken the opportunity of a lifetime and flushed it down the toilet?Here is a kid (he’s only 23), who signed a lucrative contract that would have made him, provided he’d played it out, rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. He was already well on his way. How does someone with that kind of opportunity lying ahead of him destroy it so thoroughly?I don’t know. Nobody knows. Everyone has an opinion, but most of them aren’t sociologists or psychologists and none of them have ever talked to the man to get a good read on him. It’s all speculation. It is all simply conjecture.Did Hernandez show too much allegiance to people from his past who would seemingly bring him down? It’s possible. But it’s just another theory.Lord knows there’s plenty of evidence that people who find themselves with money and prestige being showered upon them suddenly find friends who care more about the cash and the notoriety than they do about the person. But that cuts across all kinds of racial and social lines. Just ask anyone who’s ever won a big lottery prize about it.Is this just another example of a kid who got too rich, too soon, and thought of himself as impervious to harm’s way? Again, it’s possible. And again, he wouldn’t be the first guy to get intoxicated by fame and fortune, and to get it in his head that he’s indestructible.Could Hernandez’ case be the confluence of a myriad of social circumstances? Maybe. He could be a product of a system that coddles and protects elite athletes, and keeps them – through its various methods of intervention – from ever suffering the consequences of their actions.And it could just as easily be that Aaron Hernandez, provided his guilt is proven, is a sociopath who masked his tendencies until now, and who killed merely because his victim had a conversation with the wrong person. Personally, I cannot fathom anyone who devalues life to the point of committing murder over such a seemingly insignificant slight.It’s easy to listen to the prosecution sum up its case, as it did Wednesday, and conclude that Hernandez is guilty as sin. But if I recall, I thought the same thing about O.J. Simpson and look how that turned out. If you were to reduce this matter to football terminology, we are probably halfway through the first quarter. There’s a lot of game left.The defense will get its chance to poke holes in the state’s case. And Hernandez does have the means – if he was even halfway intelligent about his money – to hire good lawyers with plenty of resources.But if even half of what the prosecution charges is true, this is one seriously bloodless individual. This isn’t some naïve kid who found himself in a situation, lost his head, and started shooting. This was apparently coldly planned, and even more coldly executed. I’m pretty hard-pressed to find any reason to empathize or sympathize with him.Thankfully, few people in sports-crazed Boston wasted much time Wednesday talking about what this does to the Patriots. That is so far down on the list of things to worry about.As for the Patriots, they had to cut him loose. Keeping him on the roster in light of all this would have been unconscionable.There once was a time when pro sports and the real world rarely mixed. It’s why the late Howard Cosell called sports “the toy department of life.”Sadly, that’s not the case anymore. Since the Super Bowl alone, some 13 NFL athletes have been arrested for various infractions. There has to be an underlying cause. But I’ll be darned if I can figure out what it is.Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].