True colors in ex-player’s cowardly exit

In the end, maybe … just maybe ... Aaron Hernandez was not the hard guy he so meticulously painted himself to be. And I do mean painted.

The fallen Patriot tight end with the $40 million contract turned his upper body into a gallery of tattoo art that was both the envy of gangbangers and a continuing source of study for prosecutors in both Bristol and Suffolk counties.

But there are tattooed hard guys who adapt to prison. And there are those who don’t … or can’t.

Before dawn yesterday, Hernandez was found hanging at the end of a bedsheet tied to the window of his prison cell.

On Friday, he had been acquitted of the murders of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado. His marquee lawyer, Jose Baez, was vowing to formulate an appeal of Aaron’s earlier conviction for the murder of Odin Lloyd. His future, such as it was, appeared to look a bit brighter.

Brighter to everyone except Aaron Hernandez.

Before Hernandez left a Suffolk Superior courtroom on Friday, Judge Jeffrey Locke imposed a five-year jail sentence for the conviction of illegal gun possession. The fact that Locke specifically imposed the gun charge after the life sentence meant that regardless of what happened with any appeal of Odin Lloyd’s murder charge, Aaron Hernandez was still going to remain behind bars for at least another five years.

Was that really enough for Aaron Hernandez to end it all? Or did he finally come to realize he wasn’t quite as hard as the gang members he gravitated toward in jail?

Aaron Hernandez had tasted something few, if any, of his fellow prison brothers had come to know. He had caught touchdown passes on a world stage. Yet he was still obsessed with maintaining his contacts with an assorted cast of lowlife characters who could satisfy his need to smoke blunts.

Aaron Hernandez ended his life on a day when he might very well have taken his place among those Patriots who went to the White House to celebrate a fifth Super Bowl crown.

In the end, his death did not constitute so much as a ripple in yesterday’s White House ceremony.

Jose Baez and his legal team are talking about inquiries into the circumstances surrounding Hernandez’s demise. Good luck with that.

What they may well come to discover is that a 6-foot-1 NFL star was not strong enough to last in prison.

Despite the story of violence and bravado Aaron Hernandez had elaborately carved across his chest, his back and his arms, in the end he was not tough enough to endure a life sentence remembering the glorious life he threw away.