Amateur and semi-pro leagues, stocked mostly with ethnic-backed teams and players, had been around for decades. The openness and enthusiasm has really blown me away. Hernandez, 27, is already serving a life sentence for the 2013 killing of Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player who was dating the sister of Hernandez’s fiancee. The former tight end for the New England Patriots wept quietly as the verdicts were read in Boston.