It was August 30, 2008, the first game of Aaron’s sophomore season at the University of Florida. UF was playing Hawaii, but Aaron was on the sidelines, dressed in the #81 jersey that marked his position as a tight end but wearing the kind of walking boot used by injured athletes. Among Gator fans, rumor had it that the walking boot was worn by players who had gotten themselves into trouble. Other players had worn it previously, and the word in those cases had usually been that the players had failed drug tests and been made to wear the boot as punishment.
Aaron had spent his freshman year protecting the kickoff returner on special teams (as units who are only on field when the ball is kicked off, punted, or returned, are known). “He’d be part of the wedge and just block,” a teammate remembers.
As a sophomore, Aaron was determined to show Urban Meyer what he could do.
“Only so many can play, especially for Coach Meyer,” the teammate explains. “Aaron was on special teams to start, but he just took off from there. He was an animal out there. A force to be reckoned with. He could block. He was strong. He was fast for his size, he could catch, and that package of awesomeness—they just exploited it.”
And yet, despite all he had done to prove himself, here Aaron was, on the sidelines, wearing the boot, watching his team trounce Hawaii 56-10.
Luckily for Hernandez, Meyer believed in second chances. The following week, in a game against Miami, the coach finally put Aaron in. In the Gators’ first possession, Hernandez caught a fourteen-yard touchdown pass from Tebow.
The roar that went up in the stadium set the tone for the rest of the game. The Gators went on to crush Miami, 26-3.
For their third game of the season—their first away from home—the Gators faced Tennessee. Hernandez read the Bible with his coach in the morning. Once again, Meyer had picked him to start in the game.
Football was big in Tennessee—Knoxville’s Neyland Stadium could hold 100,000 people. The teams were evenly matched. In 2007, the Volunteers had won the SEC East title—whereas the Gators had come up empty, finishing the season at 9–4. But, the Gators had beaten the Volunteers in their last two meetings, the last time by a margin of just one point.
There was no part of this game that Urban Meyer was taking for granted.
The Gators’ first possession against the Volunteers resulted in a forty-four-yard drive. Just over three minutes into the game, the Gators were positioned at 1st and goal. In the huddle, Tim Tebow—who had won the Heisman the previous year—gave out instructions: Fake pass to Percy Harvin, run right, touchdown. But Tennessee’s defensive line was jumpy after letting the Gators’ offense get so deep into their territory on the first drive. When Harvin broke right, he found himself up against a wall of orange jerseys.
Tebow faked the pass, but the Volunteer tackles rushed through cracks in the Gator line. The quarterback’s options were running out fast. Dodging a tackle, Tebow spun and drove left to run the ball in himself.
Somehow, he saw, Hernandez had managed to get himself into the open.
Tebow jumped and made the toss.
The ball hit Hernandez square between the eight and the one on his jersey. For two games running, he’d scored the first Gator touchdown on passes from Tebow. Now, in the end zone, Aaron let the ball drop at his feet, spread his arms out like Christ on the cross, and felt the crowd roar all around him.
By the end of the season, the Gators were back in the number-one slot in the college rankings, having lost just one game (to Ole Miss)—by one point—in the season.
It had been a stellar showing for the team—and, especially, for Aaron Hernandez. The sophomore tight end was the talk of the town.
On January 8, 2009, the Gators traveled to Miami Gardens for the BCS National Championship Game against the second-ranked Oklahoma Sooners. Almost 80,000 fans jammed the stands of Dolphin Stadium—this was beyond capacity, and nearly twice the number of fans that would scream for Madonna, at the same stadium, later that year. The fifty million people watching at home set a record for a college game, and in eighty-two movie theaters in thirty cities across the nation, thousands of people paid to watch a 3D broadcast.
Tim Tebow, who been writing “Phil 4:13” (“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”) in his eye black during the season, had switched to “John 3:16” for this game:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
During the game, more than ninety million people Googled the verse, which also trended to #1 on Twitter and Facebook.
“John 3:16” made an even greater impression on Aaron Hernandez. Years later, when he was alone in his prison cell, it would come back to him in a way that continues to haunt his friends and loved ones.
The game got off to a slow start. By halftime, the score was still 7-7. Then, in the locker room, Tebow gave his teammates a motivational speech that Bear Bryant himself would have been proud of.
“Get in here!” he said. “Get in here right now! Thirty minutes! For the rest of your life!...I promise you one thing. We’re going to hit somebody and we’re going to move the ball down the field and score a touchdown. I guarantee you that.”
Consciously or not, Tebow was quoting—and mangling—James Van Der Beek’s speech in the 1999 film Varsity Blues. But the quarterback’s delivery was everything, and his teammates responded in kind.
“Look at me!” Tebow shouted. “Look at me! We got thirty minutes for the rest of our lives. Thirty minutes for the rest of our lives! Let’s go!”
In the second half, Tebow made good on his promise. By the end of the game, he’d completed eighteen of thirty passes for 231 yards and two touchdowns.
Playing on a sore ankle, wide receiver Percy Harvin managed 121 yards and scored a touchdown.
Aaron Hernandez caught five passes for fifty-seven yards—another impressive showing.
The final score, 24-14, won the Gators their second National Championship in three years.
All in all, Aaron had finished the season with thirty-four receptions, 381 yards, and five touchdowns.
Eight days later, Terri Hernandez married Aaron’s cousin Tanya’s ex-husband, Jeffrey Cummings, in Las Vegas.
It appears that Aaron did not attend the ceremony.