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    ‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’ Premieres on FX and Hulu

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    The buzzy FX series delves into the N.F.L. star who murdered a friend less than a year after playing in the Super Bowl.The saga of Aaron Hernandez has riveted the sports world and beyond for more than a decade. An N.F.L. star on one of football’s best teams killed a man in 2013 even as he chased fame and glory on the field.Two years after his conviction in 2015, Hernandez hanged himself in prison, leaving unexplained his descent into crime, rumors about his sexuality, and how he was able to hide his off-field life while thriving at America’s most popular sport.Hernandez has been the subject of multiple books, true crime podcasts and documentaries. But his story is getting the Ryan Murphy treatment in a new 10-part anthology series, “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez,” premiering on Tuesday on FX and Hulu. Its showrunners are trying a playbook similar to one used for dramatizations of other well-known scandals like “The People v. O.J. Simpson” and “Impeachment,” about former President Bill Clinton’s sexual improprieties. But this time, they’re grappling with new terrain: pro football.Nina Jacobson, an executive producer of “American Sports Story,” said showrunners hoped to offer viewers a “more subjective experience,” rather than a rehashing of previously reported events.“I think we try, in all of these shows, to find a way to put people in the shoes of the characters and put themselves in the eye of the storm — not in a way to excuse anybody’s voices or behaviors,” she said, “but to give people a chance to maybe see them in a different light.”Ahead of the first installment, here are the key points to know about Aaron Hernandez’s football career and murder case, and the TV drama that will depict them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kendrick Lamar to Headline 2025 Super Bowl Halftime Show

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      The rapper, who’s had a big year thanks to a beef with Drake that led to the smash song “Not Like Us,” will perform in New Orleans in February.Kendrick Lamar will perform at the Super Bowl halftime show next February in New Orleans, the National Football League, Roc Nation and Apple Music announced on Sunday. It is the second time that the rapper, from Compton, Calif., will take part in the event, but will be his first as the headline act.The booking comes amid a busy year for the rapper. Earlier this spring, Lamar and Drake traded bars in a high-profile beef, which resulted in Lamar’s hit song “Not Like Us.”“Rap music is still the most impactful genre to date,” Lamar said in a statement. “And I’ll be there to remind the world why. They got the right one.”The league announced Lamar as the performer after the rapper posted a short video on social media set on a football field with a giant American flag as a backdrop during the opening Sunday of its season, when the majority of its teams will play their games.Lamar last performed on the Super Bowl stage in 2022, as part of the event’s first showcase for hip-hop music, led by the West Coast superstars Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, as well as Eminem, 50 Cent and Mary J. Blige.“Kendrick Lamar is truly a once-in-a-generation artist and performer,” Jay-Z, the founder of Roc Nation, said in a statement. “His deep love for hip-hop and culture informs his artistic vision. He has an unparalleled ability to define and influence culture globally. Kendrick’s work transcends music, and his impact will be felt for years to come.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Reporter Whose Beat Blends Sports and Culture

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      Emmanuel Morgan is enticed by how athletes and sports leagues are increasingly dipping into music, television and other media.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.When Emmanuel Morgan was hired as a sports reporter covering the N.F.L. and combat sports for The New York Times in 2021, the job felt familiar. After all, Mr. Morgan, who grew up playing football, had been writing about the sport since high school. He went on to cover the N.F.L. for The Los Angeles Times for nearly two years.“I knew the N.F.L. and the U.F.C. and all these other sports so well,” said Mr. Morgan, 27, who also covered high school sports and basketball for The Los Angeles Times, including helping report on the death of Kobe Bryant in 2020.So when The Times disbanded its Sports department last year, he took the opportunity to stretch himself and pitch a new beat: the intersection of sports and pop culture.“I’m not a movie critic or a Broadway-goer, but I follow pop culture, I watch Netflix and I listen to music constantly — in the shower every day, on the subway,” he said. “I had my pulse on it.” Over the past eight months, Mr. Morgan, now on the Culture desk, has written about the pop culture phenomenon of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the growing relationship between the N.F.L. and streaming services and the rise of athlete podcasts.In an interview, he discussed how his daily news consumption has changed and what his favorite reporting experience so far has been. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You’ve been in the role for a little over eight months now. How is it going so far?I have definitely had to be a lot more creative when it comes to finding story ideas. When I was with the Sports desk, I knew the N.F.L. and the U.F.C. so well — covering sports is very formulaic. You know you have to have previews for big events like the Super Bowl and the N.F.L. draft, and as the season goes on the major story lines and the targets for profiles and features become pretty clear. But with this new beat, I’m reporting on stuff you don’t see on TV or Twitter, and there are a lot more options, since I’m not just focusing on the N.F.L. and U.F.C. anymore. I have to make a lot more phone calls and talk to more people.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Netflix and the N.F.L. Sign a Three-Season Deal

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      Football joins pro wrestling and comedy specials in an expansion of the streaming service’s live offerings, a key step in the company’s overall live TV strategy.Netflix is no longer simply in the “sports-adjacent” business. On Wednesday, the streaming giant announced a three-season deal with the National Football League that will include showing two Christmas Day games on its service this year. It’s the first time Netflix has become partners with a major sports league, and it likely won’t be the last.The move follows Netflix’s increasingly aggressive push into the business of live events. In the past two weeks, “The Roast of Tom Brady” was its most-watched English-language TV show; a quirky six-day John Mulaney talk show went viral as part of the Netflix Is a Joke live comedy festival in Los Angeles; and the stand-up special “Katt Williams: Woke Foke” was viewed 4.3 million times.“Last year, we decided to take a big bet on live — tapping into massive fandoms across comedy, reality TV, sports and more,” Bela Bejaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, said in a statement. “There are no live annual events, sports or otherwise, that compare with the audiences N.F.L. football attracts.”The two Christmas games will pit the Houston Texans against the visiting Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers against the visiting Kansas City Chiefs (raising the odds for greater viewership with a potential Taylor Swift sighting).The streaming business has matured in the United States, and though Netflix is the dominant service, it still needs to keep growing. With subscriptions relatively maxed out in America, the growth of other revenue streams has become crucial to the company’s success. Advertising is chief among them.At a time when more people are dropping their traditional cable subscriptions, live sports remain catnip for advertisers because they are one place where audiences are guaranteed in real time. That is especially true for the N.F.L., which remains a ratings juggernaut.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      They Loved Taylor Swift. They Loved Football. Then Their Worlds Collided.

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      The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce romance has brought together two of the internet’s most engaged fan bases. What happens when you’re already in both?Emily Calhoun remembers the moment she realized her worlds were colliding. It was in the early days of the 2023 N.F.L. season, and suddenly her phone was buzzing nonstop.“Twelve people called me,” she said. “‘Are you seeing this?!’”Ms. Calhoun, who was raised on Denver Broncos football, sure was. It was impossible to miss the seismic overlap. Her love of football was fusing with her fandom of another pop culture phenomenon: a onetime country singer whom Ms. Calhoun, 38, had come to love in the early 2000s.We’re talking, of course, about one of the most consequential mergers of our time, one that united two of the world’s most rabid fan bases in unholy internet matrimony: Taylor Swift and the N.F.L., via her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.For the sliver of fans like Ms. Calhoun, it’s been a joyful, and complicated, overlap of identities and algorithms. They have been in fantasy drafts and in the Ticketmaster queues. They’re in the same stadiums for the Eras Tour as they are on a Sunday in September. They’re probably even in your football groupchats, the middle section of the Venn diagram that has animated American sports for the last year: Swifties who grew up football die-hards.“It was like two elemental forces that shouldn’t be allowed to touch,” Prof. Galen Clavio, who studies sports and social media at Indiana University, said of the collision.In the months since the Swift-Kelce relationship started, a considerable amount of ink has been spilled on the dynamics of their romance. There was the outrage over the pop star supposedly usurping substantial camera time during N.F.L. broadcasts (she really wasn’t), the navel-gazing over whether the relationship was a publicity stunt, and then, finally, the spiral into conspiracy, with some right-wing commenters speculating that the relationship was somehow a scheme to support President Biden in the 2024 election. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Dynasty’ Got the Secretive New England Patriots to Speak

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      For an Apple TV+ docuseries, the tight-lipped sports franchise provided insight into six Super Bowl victories as well as darker moments.The New England Patriots, a modern N.F.L. juggernaut with six Super Bowl wins and two cheating scandals, are the perfect subject for a docuseries. They are also one of the most secretive franchises in professional sports.But the filmmakers behind “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” an Apple TV+ docuseries premiering on Friday, convinced more than 25 players, coaches and executives to open up on camera. Among those interviewed are Robert Kraft, the team’s longtime owner; Bill Belichick, who has the most playoff wins of any N.F.L. coach; and Tom Brady, a three-time league M.V.P. who is widely considered the greatest quarterback ever.In an opening montage for the behind-the-scenes look into the rise and fall of the Patriots, Brady’s voice cracks and he appears to hold back tears while reminiscing on his New England career, which had a tense ending.“The Dynasty” largely focuses on the Patriots’ inner power dynamics and the team’s football mystique — Brady unleashes a comical, profanity-laced defense of a favorable but controversial play in 2002 — but the series devotes three of its 10 episodes to darker moments. Those include the murder conviction of Aaron Hernandez and league punishments for spying on an opponent and playing with deflated footballs. (Hernandez killed himself in prison in 2017.)“I can’t overstate how impressed I was with the honesty that people demonstrated with really difficult content,” said Jeff Benedict, who wrote a book about the Patriots before pitching the docuseries. “Some of the things that we were asking people to talk about were not pleasant.”The Patriots were one of the league’s most tight-lipped teams under Belichick, who left the organization last month after a 4-13 season. His weekly news conferences often consisted of short, unrevealing answers; the team’s “Do Your Job” mantra referred to both on-field assignments and limiting distractions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Will Taylor Swift Be at the Super Bowl? Stay Tuned.

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      There has been much ado about whether the pop singer will travel across the globe to the big game. Here’s what we know so far, and answers to other Taylor-related questions.On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs will be making the team’s fourth Super Bowl appearance in the last five seasons. While some N.F.L. players go their entire career without playing for a championship, one of Kansas City’s newcomers had their ticket punched after only 12 games.As Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic said on X, shortly after the Chiefs’ championship win: “Taylor Swift makes the Super Bowl in her first year in the league. Elite.”Ms. Swift, who has been dating Travis Kelce, Kansas City’s star tight end, has changed the N.F.L. conversation all season, attracting a new audience for the league and inspiring strong emotions (both positive and negative) among fans. Her critics as well as her detractors may have some burning questions ahead of the game. First and foremost: Will she be there?The Big QuestionsHas Taylor hinted at her Super Bowl plans?But wasn’t she in Tokyo … last night?Why is this getting so much attention?If she makes it to the game, who might she sit with?This is Taylor, surely there’s some numerology involved?Has Taylor hinted at her Super Bowl plans?Ms. Swift, as you may have heard, is good at keeping secrets. Her plans, beyond concert dates, are rarely announced in advance. That has led some to devise their own methods for figuring out what she’s up to. Ahead of a Kansas City game in October, for example, an NBC producer said he had a spotter plane searching the area around MetLife Stadium for police escorts in hopes of alerting the television crew if she showed up (she did).Mr. Kelce was inundated with questions about Ms. Swift last week, and while he said he had heard some of her upcoming album — spoiler: he likes it — he did not offer any details about whether she would be at the game.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Timeline

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      All the Times That People Have Hyperventilated About Taylor and TravisThe planet’s biggest pop star met America’s biggest sport, and heads collectively exploded. Here are the moments people got happy, sad, angry or annoyed.Emmanuel Morgan and Way back in July, Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs’ star tight end, publicly offered himself as a potential suitor for Taylor Swift, whose Eras Tour had catapulted her beyond her already stratospheric fame.Few could have imagined that on the eve of the Super Bowl, we’d all be here.During the six months between Travis’s metaphorical Hail Mary and Sunday’s very real sports contest, most of America — and much of the world — has been horse-collared into their romance. There is a relentless, inescapable and, sometimes fatiguing quality to this Swift-Kelce monocultural vortex. Boy met girl, football fans met Swifties and each new development became a cause for hyperventilation.Now, as kickoff approaches, we look back at some of the key meetings and the extreme emotions those meetings have engendered.♥ ♥ ♥Sept. 24 and Oct. 1Taylor meets footballTaylor Swift at Arrowhead Stadium for the first of many games this season. Jason Hanna/Getty ImagesSurprise! Taylor shows up at Arrowhead Stadium for a Chiefs Game. Yay for Travis! Taylor and Travis leave together after the game in a “Getaway Car.” A “seemingly Ranch” frenzy ensues.Taylor shows up again in New Jersey the following week for Sunday Night Football. She brings her friends and meets the parents.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Super Bowl Broadcaster With Slime and Swagger

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      Nate Burleson spent 11 seasons playing in the N.F.L. He now balances several TV assignments, and will announce the Super Bowl with SpongeBob SquarePants.Nate Burleson, far removed from the 11 seasons he spent toiling in the National Football League, pulled up his shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead during a well-deserved break.Burleson was in a buzzing laboratory with green slime-filled industrial containers, recording Nickelodeon’s “NFL Slimetime” days after explaining the challenge of overcoming turnovers on “The NFL Today,” the CBS football show that was in Baltimore for the A.F.C. Championship Game. Hours before the Nickelodeon taping, he had provided updates about the widening conflict in the Middle East on “CBS Mornings,” the network’s flagship morning newscast.After a productive but unglamorous football career, Burleson, 42, has found high-profile success in the television industry. Now he faces a daunting schedule this week in Las Vegas, where the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers will face off in the Super Bowl.Burleson is setting 1:30 a.m. alarms to anchor “CBS Mornings” from the Las Vegas Strip throughout the week. And on Sunday, he will announce Nickelodeon’s first alternate Super Bowl telecast for children, changing into a suit and racing down Allegiant Stadium’s elevator with help from security to join his “NFL Today” colleagues for halftime analysis.“I never played in a Super Bowl, so I feel like this is my Super Bowl,” Burleson said.Tony Dokoupil, left, Gayle King and Burleson on “CBS Mornings.” Burleson impressed producers with the energy he brought to segments while guest hosting.Mary Kouw/CBSNickelodeon’s alternate telecasts are an attempt to attract younger viewers by infusing N.F.L. games with augmented-reality animations on the field — yes, there will be plenty of virtual slime — and incorporating popular cartoon characters. Burleson will call the Super Bowl with the voice actors for SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star. (Jim Nantz and Tony Romo are announcing the traditional broadcast on CBS.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More