Aaron Hernandez is actually doing some things right — and finding something to say.

It would not be unreasonable to contact you American Sports History: Aaron Hernandez with a certain level of concern. After all, the FX series is a true crime drama that was created by Ryan Murphy as an executive producer, among others. Given Murphy's other In the new true crime series, it wouldn't be a complete surprise if it also tended toward sensationalism about convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez. But somehow, American sports history does a lot of things right. A scene in the first episode is a jolt and turns many football fans into the one meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the screen: “That's Steve Addazio!” The Florida Gators assistant coach drives up in a limousine to meet Hernandez – a sought-after recruit in Connecticut. seven years before he would murder Odin Lloyd – to convince him to play college ball in Florida. Scot Ruggles, who plays Addazio, looks so much like the coach that it's uncanny. This is just the first indication that, among other decisions, the show's cast was on the safe side.

Ruggles is just one of several cast members American sports history to be a real eye-catcher for her character. Former Hamilton Stage actor Josh Rivera makes a pretty convincing Hernandez. The most impressive part of the cast is Tony Yazbeck as Urban Meyer, Hernandez's national championship-winning head coach at Florida and the man widely believed to have led an out-of-control program that lacked accountability from its players demanded. I'm a college football writer and podcaster by trade, and the moment that highlighted how real this show looks was a long shot of Yazbeck, who plays Meyer, dressed in the same oversized long-sleeve T-shirt and gym shorts , which Meyer would normally wear to practices in Florida in the 2000s.

This is an enduring strength of this season American sports history. It looks exactly like the world it takes you into, not just in its cast but in its depictions of locations, from the dreary suburbs of New England to the football stadiums of the Southeastern Conference to the National Football League. The story is based on its source material, a 2018 Boston Globe podcast. Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc. Most of the events depicted in the series are supported by extensive coverage of Hernandez, with the series' most important move being that it assumes that Hernandez was a closeted gay man whose sexuality profoundly affected his relationships. The records generally support this too, although Hernandez never confirmed this before he died by suicide in prison in 2017 at age 27.

American sports history is not new territory for our understanding of Hernandez, the New England Patriots' star tight end who murdered his associate Odin Lloyd, which the series (along with the real-world evidence) portrays as a gruesome but planned execution. There's not much new to learn about a man whose murder trial was one of the most public of his decade and who died without elaborating on his crime. This may have been because, after being acquitted in another murder case, Hernandez was still trying to overturn his conviction for killing Lloyd when he took his own life.

The show doesn't penetrate the mind of a murderer. But it paints a useful – if imperfect and sometimes tenuous – picture of the places the killer inhabited as he took a darker turn. American sports history evokes empathy for Hernandez without expressing sympathy, and it does so by showing his world as it was. At the very least, it offers a plausible interpretation of Hernandez's surroundings as he neared the end. It goes through his life chronologically, starting around age 17, and shows how Hernandez's support systems coddled and tormented him. The series can't tell us why Hernandez murdered Lloyd, but it can throw a few jabs at various people and institutions that may have changed his path at some point.

As a teenager, Hernandez is a high-profile recruit, but he's also a kid who was never good enough for his abusive father Dennis (Vincent Laresca). He is a victim of child sexual abuse by an uncle. His mother Terri (Tammy Blanchard) is both a victim of his father's abuse and a lousy mother herself. The family wants Hernandez to follow in his father and older brother's footsteps and play tight end for the University of Connecticut, and that's exactly the plan – until Florida steps in. Another nice piece of college football realism, as the show suggests that UConn's head coach will punish Hernandez's less talented brother after his highly touted younger brother abandons his commitment to the school.

The show's portrayal of the college recruiting process is forceful and specific, right down to the naming of the most popular website for nationally ranking high school players at the time. (Yes, it was Rivals.) And once Hernandez is in Florida, the show delves into the athletic department's lax approach to players who get into trouble. Hernandez knocks out a bartender and is briefly arrested, but a fixer arrives to keep him out of trouble and urges him to channel his aggression into games against the University of Georgia.

Hernandez is a good player at Florida, a bona fide star by the end of his time there, and the Patriots take him in the NFL draft. There, American sports history shows how the league prepares him for success and failure. He takes a trip to the NFL's rookie symposium, where he receives a stark warning about how the league's players can ruin their money and their careers. He joins a Patriots locker room believed to have a strong culture, led by Tom Brady (Ross Jirgl). He signs with an agent who represents him well and provides him with solid training facilities and a trainer who becomes Hernandez's sexual liaison.

But Hernandez also deals with NFL pitfalls. An ankle injury leads to an addiction to painkillers as he tries to get back on the field. Repeated blows to the head add up. Hernandez becomes cold and distant towards his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins (Jaylen Barron). When Hernandez asks Patriots coach Bill Belichick (Norbert Leo Butz) to trade him to another team so Hernandez can be further away from a former friend who now wants to kill him or take his money, Belichick, in true real life, refuses.

For Hernandez, a temper that has always been quick-tempered becomes increasingly short as his life gets worse. When he murders Lloyd on a construction site, you feel like you've gotten a good glimpse into his descent. Later, a prison guard hits Hernandez in the head with a baton while breaking up a fight, and the slow-motion impact is reminiscent of all the blows to the head Hernandez suffered as a player.

The show wants you to be aware of how many things failed Hernandez before he did evil. To achieve this goal, the text is sometimes a bit cheap. For example the series Really wants to highlight how big of a star Hernandez was in college to highlight how detrimental the spotlight may have been to his development. After Florida won the national championship, a bevy of cameras on the field surrounded just Hernandez — an odd thing for a tight end who was third on the team in receiving. In another scene, Hernandez receives spontaneous applause from a group of students walking across campus, apparently overwhelmed by their classmate's fame and the tight end. (Tim Tebow may have received this treatment in Gainesville. It seems doubtful that Hernandez did.)

Later, police arrive at Hernandez's home to respond to a domestic dispute in which he threatened Jenkins. However, the police leave without incident, and one of them jokes with Hernandez as they leave that he is on her fantasy football team. In another scene, a group of girlfriends and wives of Patriots players talk in gold-digger-like terms about marrying their wealthy partners, all the while realizing that those players will likely cheat on them with hot young women – a seemingly too-easy move Cliche a disservice to both the players and their wives. In many ways, the NFL really is a big, rapacious machine, but to make that point, the series also underestimates the extent to which Hernandez's crimes shocked people in the sport. For example, American sports history Belichick issued a terse statement about the killing, saying he would not discuss it again. In reality, the typically grumpy Belichick gave a long and thoughtful press conference after Hernandez's arrest.

The series doesn't have to work so hard to show how an NFL career can fail so badly. Hernandez's biography speaks for itself, and there are so many dangers in college football and the NFL that most people who watch the show will understand the message themselves. Towards the end of the series, viewers see a collection of real-life media commentators comment on Hernandez's diagnosis of unusually severe chronic traumatic encephalopathy in the brain. Some mourn Hernandez more than others. Belichick, his last head coach, isn't particularly interested in discussing Hernandez's brain at all. (In this regard, the show is on the right track.) FX took creative liberties, but the systems it faithfully portrayed were strained enough.