11 Apr, 2024, 2:25 PM ET
This Thursday the death of OJ Simpson, former NFL player who starred in the “Trial of the Century,” was announced.
OJ Simpson, considered one of the best players in the history of American football, died on Wednesday, April 10 after losing his fight against cancer. Simpson was one of the most important athletes in American sports, but his life was marked by being the protagonist of the “Trial of the Century.”
His early years
Orenthal James Simpson was born on July 9, 1947 in San Francisco. His aunt gave him the name Orenthal, which was supposedly the name of a French actor he liked.
At the age of two, he contracted rickets, leaving his legs thin, bowed and V-shaped. Because his family could not afford orthotics, Simpson wore a pair of shoes connected by an iron bar for several hours almost every day until he was five years old. Along with a brother and two sisters, he was raised by his mother (his father did not live with the family) in the rough, largely black Potrero Hill district of San Francisco.
OJ Simpson died this April 10, 2024 due to cancer. AP
Simpson was a problem child. He joined his first gang when he was 13 and his first “fighting” gang shortly after. One of his fights landed the 15-year-old high school student in a Youth Counseling Center for about a week, and while playing football at Galileo High School, having poor grades and receiving no scholarship offers, he managed to break records. at City College of San Francisco, a situation that sparked interest from many schools, but Simpson chose Southern Cal, the only school he wanted to play for.
OJ Simpson, the player
At 6’10”, 220 pounds, OJ Simpson was a record-setting running back for the Southern Cal Trojans and the Buffalo Bills. With the strength to break tackles and the fakes to embarrass defensive players, his movements were impressive.
As an undergraduate, his magnificent fielding career in 1967 against No. 1 UCLA led USC to the Rose Bowl and the national championship. As a senior, he won the Heisman Trophy, earning the most first-place votes (855) in the history of the award. That season, he set an NCAA single-season rushing yardage record with 1,709 yards while leading the Trojans to an appearance in the Rose Bowl, where they lost to top-ranked Ohio State, despite 171 yards and Simpson’s 80-yard touchdown.
In his two seasons at USC, Simpson was a two-time unanimous All-American and equaled or bettered 19 school, conference and NCAA records.
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With the Buffalo Bills, Simpson became the first National Football League player to break the 2,000-yard barrier, achieving this milestone in 14 games. He set records (now surpassed) by rushing for 273 yards in a game and scoring 23 touchdowns in one season. He led the NFL in yards per carry four times in a five-year span and finished his 11-year career with 11,236 yards, at the time No. 2 all-time.
OJ, who played two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
The “American Hero”
Off the field, Simpson made a conscious decision to project a positive image, distancing himself from the teenage OJ who was a troublemaker and spent time in a correctional facility. He had an innate way of communicating warmth and charm that elevated him to an almost mythical level and made him the first African-American athlete to be marketed on a mass scale.
His Hertz commercials showed a dashing OJ racing to catch up with a Hertz rental car, smiling as he jumped over the airport railing and passed the applauding old lady.
Openly, Simpson completely avoided the issue by remaining apolitical, which was accepted by the business community and audience, all of which catapulted him to a level of financial success unknown to most athletes of his time.
Editorial Selections
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There was this “Mr. Clean” image he presented, while others knew a darker side that existed in his youth.
After retiring from the fields, OJ Simpson dedicated himself to acting and participated in films such as “Cassandra Crossing”, “The Towering Inferno” and the “Naked Gun” trilogy. Simpson also served as a sports commentator, but while playing football It was easy for him, in broadcasting he was criticized However, his effervescent personality kept him popular with viewers.
OJ Simpson, the protagonist of the “Trial of the Century”
On June 12, 1994, OJ Simson’s life changed forever. Nicole Brown, who was his second wife, they divorced in 1992, was brutally murdered in Los Angeles along with Ronald Goldman. Five days later, Simpson was charged with both murders. The NFL legend pleaded “absolutely, positively, 100 percent not guilty.”
Regarding his defense team, OJ had the “Dream Team” formed by Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro and F. Lee Bailey.
OJ Simpson was the protagonist of the “Trial of the Century” for double murder. Getty Images
The OJ Simpson murder trial lasted 133 years, had 150 witnesses, and cost $15 million. The verdict was announced on October 3, 1995 and 91 percent of all television viewers were tuned into OJ, notably the jury took three hours to deliberate.
Despite being acquitted, in a civil wrongful death trial, Simpson was found responsible for the deaths of Brown and Goldman. In February 1997, the jury ordered him to pay $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages.
Life after trial
Simpson got into a series of minor legal troubles from a traffic incident in Florida in 2001 (he was acquitted) to a speeding violation on his boat in a manatee protected area in Florida in 2002 (he was fined). His most serious trouble came in 2007 when he and five others broke into a Las Vegas hotel room with guns and robbed memorabilia dealers of items that Simpson claimed were his. He served a nine-year prison sentence in Nevada and was released in 2017.
In 2019, in an interview with The Associated Press, OJ, who spent his last years in Las Vegas, noted that neither he nor his children wanted to look back to talk about June 12, 1994 and assured that his life had entered a phase which he described as a “non-negativity zone.”
“We don’t need to go back to relive the worst day of our lives. The topic of the moment is the topic I never want to relive. My family and I have reached what we called the ‘no negativity zone’. We focus on the positive “Life is good,” he said.
With reporting by Larry Schwartz, David Schoenfield and the AP
2024-04-11 18:25:00
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