December 10, 1935: The 1st Heisman Trophy Is Awarded

Jay Berwanger

December 10, 1935, 90 years ago: The Heisman Trophy is awarded for the 1st time, to Jay Berwanger.

John Jacob Berwanger was born on March 19, 1914 in Dubuque, Iowa. Like every other football star of the era, he played both offense and defense, in the backfield in his case. Like baseball legend Honus Wagner, he was of German descent, but nicknamed "The Flying Dutchman."

In a 1934 game for the University of Chicago against Michigan, he collided with their center, and left him a permanent scar near his eye. That Michigan center was Gerald Ford, who later became the President of the United States. Both men ended up in the College Football Hall of Fame. In his senior year, 1935, he rushed for 577 yards, passed for 405, returned kickoffs for 359, scored 6 touchdowns, and kicked 5 points-after-touchdown. 

And yet, both seasons, the Chicago Maroons went only 4-4. This was part of a decline of a once-great program: In 1939, they went 2-6, closing on November 25 with a 46-0 home loss to Illinois. On December 22, the University of Chicago dropped its football program. It reinstated its program in 1969, on an NCAA Division III level, where they remain. The Big Ten Conference dropped to a Big Nine, until 1953, when they admitted Michigan State.

As a pre-television football star at a school that no longer plays at the top level, Berwanger probably would have been forgotten, if not for a vote made by the Downtown Athletic Club in New York. They decided to recognize "the most valuable college football player east of the Mississippi." The following year, the Club's athletic director, coaching legend John Heisman, died, and the award was renamed for him: The Heisman Memorial Trophy. It was also expanded to allow for the best player in the entire country.

The trophy, designed by sculptor Frank Eliscu, is modeled after Ed Smith, a leading player in 1934 for New York University (NYU). The two men were classmates at Manhattan's George Washington High School, and so, commissioned by the Downtown Athletic Club for a commissioned sculpture of a football player, he asked Smith to pose in his uniform.

Smith did not realize until 1982, when Sports Illustrated decided to have the model tracked down, that the sculpture for which he had posed had become the Heisman Trophy. The DAC presented Smith with a Heisman Trophy of his own in 1985, on its 50th Anniversary.

The trophy is made out of cast bronze, 13.5 inches tall, 14 inches long, 16 inches wide, and weighs 45 pounds. From its inception in 1935, the statue was cast by Dieges & Clust in New York, and later Providence, Rhode Island, until 1980, when Dieges and Clust was sold to Herff Jones. Since 2005, the trophy has been made by MTM Recognition in Del City, Oklahoma.

The 1st vote went to Berwanger, who received 43 percent of the votes. For as long as the Trophy is awarded, he will be remembered as its 1st winner. It was awarded at the Downtown Athletic Club in Lower Manhattan from 1936 to 2000. The DAC's facilities were ruined as a result of the 9/11 attacks, and so the Yale Club took over hosting duties in 2001.

The DAC went out of business, and the Heisman Trust was created to award the Trophy and to do the other things that the DAC had done. The Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square hosted in 2002, '03 and '04. From 2005 to 2019, the ceremony was held across the street at the PlayStation Theater in Times Square. The COVID-19 epidemic prevented a full ceremony for 2020, and so the award was presented at the ESPN Studios in Bristol, Connecticut.  Since 2021, it has been held at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

As the player of the year, Berwanger was an easy choice to be the 1st pick in the 1st-ever NFL Draft, the following February. He was chosen by the team with the previous season's worst record: The Philadelphia Eagles.

But the Eagles also made the 1st-ever puzzling Draft Day move: Team owners Bert Bell (later to be the Commissioner of the NFL) and Lud Wray had heard that Berwanger was going to demand $1,000 per game (NFL contracts were per game back then, not per season), and they didn't think they could afford that, so they traded Berwanger's rights to the Chicago Bears, in exchange for tackle Art Buss. Buss played 2 seasons for the Eagles, having already played 2 for the Bears, and this is the most interesting thing about him.

But at least the Eagles got something for Berwanger's rights. The Bears got nothing. At first, Berwanger chose not to sign for the Bears, or any team for that matter, because he wanted to maintain his amateur status, so that he could compete in the decathlon at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Certainly, a worthy goal, and one that Bears owner, general manager and head coach George Halas could respect. The Olympics would be in early August, and the Bears' 1st game wouldn't be until September 20. Halas could afford to bide his time.

But Berwanger didn't make the Olympic team, and the Gold Medal in the decathlon went to another American, Glenn Morris, who had also played football, at Colorado A&M University (which became Colorado State in 1958). So Berwanger went to Halas, and asked for $15,000 for the season -- which worked out to $1,250 a game, more than the Eagles thought he would demand.

Halas was known for his cheapness, but was willing to go as high as $13,500. Berwanger declined, and got a job with a Chicago-based rubber company, and also coached at the University of Chicago until it dropped its football program in 1940. He never played a down of professional football, and told an interviewer that he regretted not having accepted Halas' offer.

Ed Smith was chosen in the 3rd round of that 1st draft, by the Washington Redskins. He played for them in 1936, and for the Green Bay Packers in 1937. He later worked for the Otis Elevator Company, and lived until 1998. Trophy sculptor Frank Eliscu lived until 1996. Berwanger died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer, at his home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, Illinois, on June 26, 2002, at the age of 88.

December 2, 1975: Archie Griffin Is Awarded a 2nd Heisman Trophy

December 2, 1975, 50 years ago: Archie Griffin becomes the 1st player ever to be awarded the Heisman Trophy as college football player of the year for a 2nd time.

Archie Mason Griffin was born (as "Archie," not "Archibald") on August 21, 1954, in Columbus, Ohio, the seat of The... Ohio State University. Perhaps he was born to play football there. He started at running back as a freshman in 1972, the 1st year that freshmen were eligible to play in NCAA Division I. He ran for 867 yards.

Head coach Woody Hayes said, "He's a better young man than he is a football player, and he's the best football player I've ever seen." For the 1973 season, to better take advantage of Griffin's skills, Hayes switched from the T formation to the I formation, with Griffin at the back. He rushed for 1,428 yards, and was named a First Team All-American. Ohio State went 10-0-1, winning the Big Ten Conference title and the Rose Bowl.

Griffin finished 5th in the voting for the Heisman Trophy. At the time, this was considered an astounding achievement for a sophomore. His teammate, guard John Hicks, finished 2nd. In any era, this would be considered an astounding achievement for an offensive lineman. Griffin also finished behind John Cappelletti of Penn State (1st), Roosevelt Leaks of Texas (3rd) and Dave Jaynes of Kansas (4th), and just ahead of another Ohio State player, linebacker Randy Gradishar.

In 1974, Griffin ran for 1,620 yards, as Ohio State went 10-1, winning the Big Ten again, before losing the Rose Bowl. He won the Heisman in, appropriately enough, a runaway. He beat out fellow running backs Anthony Davis of USC and Joe Washington of Oklahoma.

In 1975, Griffin made the most of his senior year, rushing for 1,357 yards, making himself the 1st player ever to lead the Big Ten in rushing for 3 straight years. He remained the only one until Jonathan Taylor did it for Wisconsin from 2017 to 2019.

Ohio State won the Big Ten again, going undefeated, until losing the 1976 Rose Bowl in Griffin's last college game. Overall, the Buckeyes went 40-5-1 with him in the starting lineup. Overall, he rushed for 5,589 yards and 26 touchdowns.

No player had ever won the Heisman twice. Four players had won it as juniors before Griffin: Doc Blanchard of Army in 1945, Doak Walker of Southern Methodist in 1948, Vic Janowicz of Ohio State in 1950, and Roger Staubach of Navy in 1963. Each had good senior years. But, in each case, another player simply had a better season. (In Blanchard's case, it was his Army backfield mate, Glenn Davis.)

But in 1975, the Heisman voters saw no problem with giving the Trophy to Griffin again, as he won by about as big a margin as he had the year before. And he beat a better crop of running backs, too: Joe Washington again, Chuck Muncie of California, Ricky Bell of USC, and the one who ended up winning it the next year, Tony Dorsett of Pittsburgh.

Winning 2 Heisman Trophies has never happened again. The closest call so far has come in 2008, when Tim Tebow of Florida came within 151 votes of a 2nd Heisman. And with players leaving after their junior year having become common, it is unlikely that there will ever be another.

In 1992, Ron Powlus, the most sought-after high school quarterback in the country, signed a letter of intent to play at Notre Dame. Beano Cook of ESPN, a shameless Notre Dame fan, predicted that Powlus would win 2 Heismans. He had a decent college career, but went 0-3 in bowl games, and never came close to winning the Trophy. Having sustained 2 notable injuries in that time, he went undrafted, and, despite having signed with 3 different NFL teams, he never played a down in the League.

Griffin? He was taken in the 1st round of the 1976 NFL Draft, by his home-State Cincinnati Bengals, where his teammates included a pair of Ohio State teammates: His brother Ray Griffin and Pete Johnson. But injuries limited him to 2,808 career rushing yards. He did help the Bengals win their 1st AFC Championship in the 1981 season, but he had a fumble (which he recovered himself) in Super Bowl XVI, and the Bengals lost.

After playing a season with the Jacksonville Bulls of the United States Football League, he retired from playing, and became a successful businessman. He served as President of The Ohio State University Alumni Association, and as an assistant athletic director. He is, essentially, an ambassador for the University, and speaks to the team before every game. Although his pro career was a disappointment, he is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. 

In 1991, he filmed a commercial for the University, one of those ads you see colleges air during their football games. He spoke briefly about his experiences, and two Heisman Trophies were shown. He closed by saying, "I received something no one else in the world has: A degree from The Ohio State University with my name on it." A clever piece of misdirection.

November 23, 1984: Doug Flutie's Miracle In Miami

November 23, 1984, 40 years ago: It is the day after Thanksgiving, and this was the early days of retail treating it as "Black Friday," the biggest shopping day of the year, which has come to, traditionally, set the tone for the Christmas season: Either they will make big profits, and be "in the black"; or they will be wearing black for mourning.

Thanksgiving weekend is also a time for football. The day before, many high school games were played, much more so than are played today. I was a sophomore at East Brunswick High School in Central New Jersey, and my Bears came back from a 27-13 deficit to beat Colonia High School of Woodbridge, 33-27, and clinch the Championship of the Middlesex County Athletic Conference and an undefeated regular season. It's often regarded as the greatest football game in the school's history. Unfortunately, we lost the Central Jersey Group IV Final, costing us a "State Championship" and an undefeated full season, something, to this day, we've never had.

There was only one college football game that Thanksgiving Day, a minor rivalry to everyone but those connected to the schools playing: Miami University of Ohio beat the University of Cincinnati, 31-26 at Nippert Stadium in Cincinnati. Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, was founded in 1809, 8 years before Ohio gained Statehood. In contrast, the University of Miami, in suburban Coral Gables, Florida, wasn't founded until 1925.

In the NFL, both of the traditional home teams won: The Detroit Lions beat the Green Bay Packers, 31-28 at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan; and the Dallas Cowboys beat the New England Patriots, 20-17 at Texas Stadium in Irving.

There was only one college game played on the day after Thanksgiving, on CBS. So anybody who wanted to watch a football game at that point was watching it. At the time, there was a Big East Conference, but they did not sponsor a football competition. If they did, this game would have decided its Championship. The fact that both teams involved have since moved to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) should not attract from what that meant.

The University of Miami were the defending National Champions, having shocked the University of Nebraska in the previous season's Orange Bowl game, in the stadium of the same name, which was the Hurricanes' usual home field.

Bernie Kosar quarterbacked them as a freshman, and now, as a sophomore, had led them to an 8-3 record. They had won the Kickoff Classic at the Meadowlands, beating then-Number 1 Auburn. They beat Number 17 Florida on neutral ground in Tampa. They beat Number 16 Notre Dame away. But they had lost to Number 14 Michigan away, losing the Number 1 ranking in the process. They had lost to Number 15 Florida State at home.

And, in their last game before this one (they had a week off in between), they lost an embarrassing one: They led Maryland 31-0 at the half, and lost, 42-40. For many years thereafter, it was the biggest comeback in NCAA Division I-A (now FBS, the Football Bowl Subdivision) history. The Maryland quarterback was Frank Reich, substituting for the injured Boomer Esiason. In the 1992 NFL Playoffs, subbing for the injured Jim Kelly -- who had played at Miami -- Reich led the Buffalo Bills to what is still the biggest comeback in NFL history, from 35-3 down to beat the Houston Oilers, 41-38 in overtime.

Their opponents for this game would be Boston College. BC had some good teams in the 1930s and '40s, but hadn't done much since. In 1981, they were struggling, losing to the University of Pittsburgh, ranked Number 2 in the country, and coach Jack Bicknell turned to a 5-foot-9 3/4-inch freshman quarterback from nearby Natick, Massachusetts, and said, "Okay, Flutie, see what you can do."

And Doug Flutie went in, and nearly pulled the upset. They ended the season 5-6. The next season, Sports Illustrated noted that Flutie would be the starting quarterback, and whoever was writing the article finished with, "Good luck, Flutie."

Flutie made his own luck, leading BC to an 8-3-1 record. Their non-wins were all against then-ranked teams: A tie away to Number 16 Clemson, and losses away to Number 16 West Virginia, home to Number 8 Penn State, and to Number 18 Auburn in the Citrus Bowl. It was their 1st bowl game in 39 years.

As a junior in 1983, Flutie led them to a 9-3 season, losing at home to Number 12 West Virginia, away to unranked Syracuse, and in the Liberty Bowl to Notre Dame. On October 29, in a game too big for their 32,000-seat on-campus Alumni Stadium, they played defending National Champion (but, at the time, unranked) Penn State at Sullivan Stadium, home of the NFL's New England Patriots (later renamed Foxborough Stadium). Before a crowd of 56,605, and millions more watching on ABC, the Eagles beat the Nittany Lions, 27-17. Flutie, already the classic "local boy makes good," became a national star.

BC were 7-2 going into their game with Miami. They had beaten Number 9 Alabama in Birmingham, but had lost 2 games, away to Number 20 West Virginia and away to Penn State -- by a combined 8 points. BC were ranked Number 10, Miami Number 12. In spite of these rankings, Miami were a 6-point betting favorite. (Keep in mind: In football, home-field advantage is traditionally said to be worth 3 points.) Flutie was the favorite for the Heisman Trophy, although Kosar was also a contender for it. The winning quarterback would get his Heisman vote totals boosted significantly.

The game was played at the Orange Bowl, in a driving rainstorm throughout. It was almost as if there was a real hurricane going on. It kicked off at 2:30 PM Eastern Time, and BC jumped out to a 14-0 lead. Miami scored a touchdown before the 1st quarter ran out, and tied the game with a touchdown early in the 2nd quarter.

BC scored on a run by Flutie, then Miami scored on a Kosar touchdown pass, then BC did so on a touchdown pass from Flutie to his college roommate, Gerard Phelan. At halftime, the score was Boston College 28, Miami 21. So there had already been as much action as in most full games.

In the 3rd quarter, Miami scored another touchdown, and the teams traded field goals. The quarter ended with the game tied, 31-31. BC kicked another field goal to make it 34-31, but Melvin Bratton broke off a 52-yard run to make it 38-34 Miami. It seemed like Miami had the game won. Flutie led a drive that ended with a touchdown, and it was 41-38 BC. But Kosar led a drive that ended with another touchdown run by Bratton, and it was 45-41 Miami.

BC got the ball back with 28 seconds left in regulation, on their own 20 yard line. Flutie got the Eagles to the Hurricanes' 48-yard line. There were 6 seconds left. Time for one more play. A field goal wouldn't have helped, it would have been 65 yards anyway, and the weather and the wet grass would have made it a tricky proposition regardless of how close it was. There was no choice: The play had to result in a touchdown.

Before the play, CBS announcer Brent Musberger said, "One thing is certain: Those brave folks who sat out here in the Orange Bowl, and put up with this terrible weather, saw a whale of a football game, and they should give both teams a rousing ovation when this one is over." His broadcast partner, former Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian, whose career included a 10-10 tie with Michigan State in 1966, known as "The Game of the Century," followed this with, "This is one of the better ones that I've seen."

Flutie called "55 Flood Tip": No running backs, and all eligible receivers run straight routes to the end zone. He was flushed out of the pocket by the Miami defense, and had to scramble. He had to attempt his 46th pass of the game, on the run, throwing from his own 37-yard line, meaning the ball had to fly at least 63 yards, into a 30-mile-per-hour wind, and through the rain.

Flutie heaved the ball. Since a Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson play in the 1975 NFL Playoffs, such a pass had been known as a "Hail Mary." Some Catholics find the expression offensive. In this case, given that Boston College is a Catholic school -- specifically, Jesuit -- it might have been appropriate.

Three Miami defensive backs blanketed receiver Kelvin Martin. There would be no way he could catch the ball. Phelan was behind them. It would require perfect placement of both man and ball for him to catch it. He did. Boston College 47, Miami 45. Ballgame. No chance to try for an extra point, with everyone running onto the field, and no need for it.

"Caught by Boston College!" Musberger yelled. "I don't believe it! It's a touchdown! The Eagles win it! I don't believe it! Phelan is at the bottom of that pile!" The entire team piled onto Phelan. As Musberger noted, "Jack Bicknell is the only person over there on the sidelines! He couldn't get the headset off fast enough! Doug Flutie has done it! And your heart goes out to Bernie Kosar. He did everything he could."

Kosar had passed for 447 yards, then a school record, with 2 touchdowns. And Bratton had run for 4 touchdowns. It was all for naught, as Flutie passed for 472 yards, becoming the 1st major college quarterback with 10,000 career passing yards. He also threw for 3 touchdowns. Miami punted only once all game; BC, just 3 times.

The game became known as the Miracle in Miami, and if there was any doubt before the game that Flutie would win the Heisman Trophy, that doubt disappeared into Phelan's hands. Ohio State running back Keith Byars finished 2nd. Robbie Bosco, who quarterbacked Brigham Young University to a controversial National Championship, finished 3rd. Kosar was 4th. Jerry Rice of Mississippi Valley State, who went on to become the greatest receiver in football history, finished 9th. Bo Jackson of Auburn, who would win it the next season, did not finish in the Top 10 this season.

Miami went on to lose the Fiesta Bowl to UCLA. Kosar would have a good pro career with the Cleveland Browns, before winning a Super Bowl ring as Troy Aikman's backup on the Dallas Cowboys.

Flutie's last college game was in the Cotton Bowl, and BC beat the University of Houston. But NFL teams passed on him due to his lack of height. This was so dumb. How dumb was it? Well, let's absolve the following teams, because they drafted Hall-of-Famers: The San Francisco 49ers, Rice; the Buffalo Bills, Bruce Smith; and the Minnesota Vikings, Chris Doleman. And, besides, the 49ers had Joe Montana, while the Bills had the rights to Jim Kelly. And several other teams drafted All-Pros. But lots of teams needed a quarterback, and didn't draft Flutie, and struggled for years to come.

Flutie signed with the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League, and led them to the Playoffs. When the USFL folded, the Chicago Bears signed him, against the wishes of head coach Mike Ditka. Ditka refused to start him over an already-injured Jim McMahon, and the Bears haven't won a Super Bowl since. In 1987, the Bears traded Flutie to his hometown New England Patriots, but they kept him as a backup to Tony Eason, and didn't get too far, and released him after the 1989 season, and got even worse.

Flutie signed with the Vancouver-based BC Lions of the Canadian Football League. In 1992, he was traded to the Calgary Stampeders, and he led them to the CFL Championship, the Grey Cup. He did the same for the Toronto Argonauts in 1996 and '97. All 3 times, he was named the game's Most Valuable Player. He was named the CFL's Most Outstanding Player 6 times in 7 years from 1991 to 1997.

Finally, at the age of 36, the NFL could ignore him no longer. With Kelly having retired after the 1996 season, the Bills signed Flutie, and he led them to the Playoffs, made the Pro Bowl, and was named the NFL Comeback Player of the Year. He got them back into the Playoffs in 1999, but coach Wade Phillips benched him for the Playoff game against the Tennessee Titans, in favor of Rob Johnson. The Bills lost, and didn't make the Playoffs again for 18 years.

Flutie played 4 years for the San Diego Chargers, and closed his career with the Patriots, as a backup to Tom Brady. In his last game, against the Miami Dolphins, on New Year's Day 2006, he did something no NFL player had done since 1941: He converted a dropkick. It was good for a point-after-touchdown, and the Patriots won.

Doug Flutie is not in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It is, quite specifically, not "The National Football League Hall of Fame." It includes a few players who would not have made it if not for their performances in the All-America Football Conference (1946-49) and the 1960s version of the American Football League, including Billy Shaw, who played 9 seasons for the Bills, all in the AFL, and never played a down in the NFL.

Still, voters for it tend not to consider CFL statistics. There are really only 2 NFL players who are not in the Hall whose qualifications would be noticeably boosted if their CFL tenures were included, and they're both quarterbacks: Joe Theismann and Doug Flutie. Another quarterback, Warren Moon, is the only player in the Hall with significant CFL performance, although Bud Grant won 4 Grey Cups as a coach in Winnipeg before becoming a Hall of Fame coach in Minnesota.

Oddly, for all the exposure BC got from the Flutie years, their Alumni Stadium wasn't expanded to its present 44,500 seats until the 1994 season.

O.J. Simpson, 1947-2024

 

When I was a kid in the 1970s, the Weekly Reader would poll kids of various ages, boys and girls alike, and ask them who their heroes were. O.J. Simpson, a running back who never appeared in a winning NFL Playoff game, always finished 1st. Finishing 2nd was Neil Armstrong.

The 1st man to walk on the Moon was Number 2.

(Note: I originally wrote this for his 70th birthday, after seeing someone compare him with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who had turned 70 3 months earlier. I updated it for his 75th birthday, and have updated it again.)

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Orenthal James Simpson was born on July 9, 1947, in San Francisco. He was always known by his initials, O.J., or "Orange Juice," or, more commonly, just "Juice." He grew up in the Portrero Hill neighborhood, graduated from San Francisco's Galileo High School, named for the legendary Italian scientist because it was built in, at the time, an Italian neighborhood.

Other notable Galileo alumni include fellow athletes the DiMaggio brothers, former Yankee 3rd baseman and American League President Bobby Brown, early basketball legend Hank Luisetti, Levi Strauss chairmen Peter and Walter Haas (Walter was also, for a time, the owner of the Oakland Athletics), and O.J.'s best friend, later a teammate at City College of San Francisco, the University of Southern California, and the Buffalo Bills, Al Cowlings.

After CCSF, O.J. went to Los Angeles, and led USC to the National Championship in 1967, 50 years ago, defeating crosstown UCLA and their quarterback Gary Beban in one of those occasional "Game of the Century" hypefests, one that lived up to the billing.

Beban won the Heisman Trophy as national college football player of the year anyway, but O.J. had another year of eligibility (under today's rules, he would have given it up and become eligible for the NFL Draft), and won the Heisman in 1968.

It's been suggested that the reason Philadelphia Eagles fans threw snowballs at a guy dressed as Santa Claus during the halftime show of their 1968 season finale at Franklin Field is that they were angry that the Eagles had refused to tank in order to get the Number 1 pick in the 1969 Draft, and won 2 games that they shouldn't have, and thus lost out on the right to draft O.J., and instead got Purdue University running back and defensive back Leroy Keyes.

Keyes played 4 seasons for the Eagles and 1 for the Kansas City Chiefs, and was a decent safety. He later returned to Purdue as an assistant athletic director, and died on April 15, 2021, at the age of 74. From 1994 to 2021, O.J. would probably have been willing to trade lives with him. And Eagles fans don't have to explain to their kids that O.J. played for them, and then what happened.

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Buffalo Bills fans do have to explain that. O.J. was not used well by Bills coaches John Rauch and Harvey Johnson. The Bills brought Lou Saban, who coached their 1964 and '65 American Football League Champions, back, and he rebuilt the offense around O.J. The Bills' offensive line, led by Hall-of-Famer Joe DeLamielleure and All-Pro Reggie McKenzie, was nicknamed The Electric Company, because "we make the Juice flow." ("Juice" is a nickname for electricity.)

On December 17, 1973, in a snowstorm at Shea Stadium against the Jets, O.J. set a new single-season NFL rushing record (since broken), becoming the 1st NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.

I chose the picture above, from around that time, of him at the peak of his playing career, because it makes him look as perplexed about his future as we all became.

The next season, the Bills went 9-5 and won the American Football Conference Wild Card (only 1 Wild Card per Conference at the time), and on December 22, 1974, O.J. Simpson played in an NFL Playoff game for the 1st time. The Bills went into Three Rivers Stadium and were beaten by the Pittsburgh Steelers, 32-14. The Steel Curtain defense held O.J. to 49 rushing yards, although he did catch a touchdown pass. The Steelers went on to win the Super Bowl, the 1st of 4 they'd win in a 6-year span.

O.J. never played in another Playoff game. The Bills went 8-6 in 1975. In 1976, despite O.J. rushing for 273 yards against the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day (a single-game record that would be broken the next year by Walter Payton), they went 2-12. Much as the New England Patriots have dominated the AFC Eastern Division since 2001, the Miami Dolphins dominated it from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, and it was hard for the Bills, the Jets or the Patriots to break through.

O.J. played 2 more seasons, for his hometown San Francisco 49ers, but they were terrible, going 2-14 in 1979, his last season, before they turned things around under coach Bill Walsh and quarterback Joe Montana. Had O.J. hung around for 2 more seasons, he would have been just 34, and would have gotten a Super Bowl ring, if only as a banged-up backup. But his knee injuries made that impractical.

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But, as with certain other sports legends -- Don Mattingly, Anna Kournikova, and O.J.'s contemporary Pete Maravich come to mind -- not winning didn't matter. O.J.'s talent, good looks, and winning personality made him a bigger star than more successful running backs such as the Dolphins' Larry Csonka, the Steelers' Franco Harris, and the Dallas Cowboys' Tony Dorsett.

He starred in commercials for Hertz Rent-a-Car, and had already acted on episodes of TV shows, including Ironside, a police drama set in his native San Francisco). He was cast in The Towering Inferno (as the tower's chief security officer, he was one of the few big names whose character survived the movie), The Cassandra Crossing, Capricorn One, and, most notably, Roots, as Kadi Touray. He became a sideline reporter for NBC's NFL telecasts, and was very good at it.

He starred on the HBO series 1st & Ten as a star player forced by injury to turn to coaching (with fellow USC Heisman winner Marcus Allen as the player who takes his place), and showed a talent for slapstick as Detective Nordberg in the Naked Gun films. Ironically, the 1st one, in 1988, showed an L.A.-based athlete attempting a murder: Reggie Jackson, wearing his old California Angels uniform, played a player brainwashed to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, stopped by Leslie Nielsen's usually-inept Lieutenant Frank Drebin.

In 1983, James Cameron was casting The Terminator. He wanted O.J. to play the seemingly unstoppable cyborg from the future. But focus groups told him that there was no way that O.J. would be taken seriously as a killing machine.

In 1994, he had finished filming Frogmen, an action film about U.S. Navy divers, and had been interviewed on the set for Entertainment Tonight. He seemed enthusiastic about this film.

He was 46 years old, going on 47. He was dating budding actress Paula Barbieri. He was a member of the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame. He had a fabulous house in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He walked with kings, presidents and his fellow stars. He was rich, famous and popular beyond most people's wildest dreams.

Like Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby, he had transcended his status as a black man in a white-dominated society, to become one of the biggest celebrities in America, and he remained one even though he hadn't played a down of football in nearly 15 years.

But, as happened to Jackson the year before, and has happened to Cosby since -- and as had recently happened to white celebrities Pete Rose (also an ex-athlete) and Woody Allen (also involved in movies), his image was about to change in ways that we could not have possibly imagined.

Oh yeah: Frogmen has never been released. It remains in someone's vault, never seen by the general public. And O.J. was never cast in another feature film.

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When we went to bed on the night of June 12, 1994, we thought of O.J. Simpson as one of the greatest football players ever, a good sideline reporter on NBC's NFL telecasts, and a decent actor. If he had been the one who died that night, by whatever means, it would have been sad -- as far as the public knew at the time.

And, as it turned out, a lot of people would have been better off. Himself included.

We knew he had been married and divorced twice. What most of us did not know was that he had beaten both of his wives. The 2nd wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, had repeatedly called the police about it. One of the times, one of the responding lawmen was a young Detective named Mark Furhman.
Nicole told lots of people that she believed O.J. would kill her one day. On the night of June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson had dinner with her mother, Juditha Brown, at Mezzaluna Trattoria, an Italian restaurant in the Brentwood section of the Westside (it's always spelled as 1 word) of Los Angeles, where a friend of hers, Ronald Goldman, was a waiter.
Nicole drove her mother home. When she got home to 875 South Bundy Drive, about half a mile southwest of the restaurant, her mother called, saying that she left her sunglasses at the restaurant. Nicole called the restaurant. The glasses were found, and Ron agreed to deliver them.
Both Nicole and Ron were murdered at Nicole's house that night, brutally stabbed to death. She was 35, he was 25.
The middle of June 1994 was a weird time in America. Republicans were pushing hard against the agenda, and indeed the legitimacy as President, of Democrat Bill Clinton. We were beginning to hear about something called the Internet. Nirvana bandleader Kurt Cobain committed suicide at age 27. The threat of a baseball strike loomed, a threat that was, unfortunately, realized in August.
And both the Madison Square Garden teams, the Knicks and the Rangers, reached their sport's Finals. (This had previously happened in 1972: The Knicks lost to the Los Angeles Lakers; the Rangers, to the Boston Bruins.) On June 14, the Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the 1st time in 54 years, defeating the Vancouver Canucks in Game 7. By that point, O.J. was already a suspect in the murders.

On June 17, Game 5 of the NBA Finals was played at The Garden. While the Knicks were on their way to beating the Houston Rockets that night (though the Rockets would win the series in Game 7 in Houston on June 22), NBC went to a split screen.
Because Al Cowlings was driving a white 1993 Ford Bronco, California license plate 3DHY503, on Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, with O.J. Simpson in the back seat, with a gun to his head, and the police were following it. It was one of the most surreal events in television history.
Some time later, on the talk show The View, panelist Star Jones, a former Brooklyn prosecutor, defined friendship this way: "Who do you want driving the Bronco?" In other words, if you're in as much trouble as O.J. was in, who do you want to help you attempt to get out of it? Frankly, I think a better definition is, "For whom would you drive the Bronco?"
But since, by that point, everybody knew "A.C." not as a former football player, but as O.J.'s yes-man, Star did not have to explain her point. We all knew what she meant.
A.C. drove O.J. back to the house, where he was arrested. The ensuing legal process, including the "Trial of the Century," has been blamed for everything from the ruining of the American criminal justice system to the worsening of American race relations, from the dumbing down of American culture through "reality TV" to the rise of the Kardashian family (one of O.J.'s "Dream Team" lawyers, and one of his best friends, was Robert Kardashian Sr., ex-husband of Kris Jenner, and father of Rob, Kourtney, Kim and Khloe).
In hindsight, the evidence is overwhelming. But the verdict that was announced on October 3, 1995 was correct: "Not Guilty." Why? Because a conviction can only be achieved if all 12 jurors are convinced that the prosecution has proven the defendant's guilt, as the saying goes, beyond a reasonable doubt.
As soon as prosecutor Christopher Darden put Fuhrman, who'd been part of the LAPD's investigative team at the murder scene, on the stand, the case against O.J. was blown. Fuhrman had tampered with evidence, and evidence of his racism was presented.
Moreover, if Fuhrman had not been put on the stand, the bloody gloves would never have been put into evidence, and we never would have found out that, for whatever reason, they didn't fit. That's reasonable doubt, right there. The leader of O.J.'s Dream Team, Johnnie Cochran, was right: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

While morally wrong, the verdict was legally correct.

O.J. regained his freedom. But a civil suit was brought by the Brown and Goldman families. With a different standard -- only a preponderance of the evidence is necessary to decide, although the jury must still be unanimous on that -- he was found liable for the victims' deaths, and forced into a whopping fine.

He lost the estate at 360 North Rockingham Avenue, about 2 miles northwest of the murder scene. He lost his trophies, including the Heisman. He lost his TV and film residuals. Even any income he would get from books (he did write one, cheekily and cruelly titled If I Did It) and any memorabilia shows he was hired for (and he was hired for some) would go to the Brown and Goldman families. Pretty much the only income that legally couldn't be touched was his NFL pension.

*

O.J. moved away from his beloved L.A., to Miami, where the stigma against him wasn't as strong. In Miami, pretty much the only thing that will make people hate you is support for the Castro regime in Cuba.

But O.J. did not act like an innocent man who wanted to rebuild his life after his exoneration. He continued to act like a guilty man who wanted to rub in your face the fact that he got away with it. He found income and ways to keep it that the Browns and the Goldmans couldn't do anything about. He appeared in rap videos. And, just as Donald Trump, one year older, did instead of his job, he played lots and lots of golf in Florida, instead of doing what he promised he would do: "Look for the real killer."

A joke made the rounds in 2017: The future didn't turn out the way we expected. O.J. Simpson killed somebody, Pete Rose is banned from baseball, Bill Cosby is a rapist, Michael Jackson is dead and a pedophile, Tom Selleck is selling reverse mortgages, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura became Governors, and Donald Trump is the President.

Now, let me ask you a question. Suppose someone you love had been murdered. And you had been arrested for it. And, after a long process, you had been acquitted. Would you ever again do anything that might get you put in prison?

Of course not. Even if you actually did it, you wouldn't want to risk putting yourself back in that position. How stupid -- or how crazy, or how mentally impaired -- would you have to be to do that?

Eventually, even South Florida didn't want O.J. anymore, and he moved to Las Vegas. On September 13, 2007, he led a group of men into a room at the Palace Station Hotel, where sports memorabilia dealer Bruce Fromong was staying. They pulled guns on Fromong, and stole O.J.-related items. O.J. later said the items had been stolen from him, and denied that he and the others broke in, and that they had weapons.

On October 3, 2008, 13 years to the day after his acquittal in Los Angeles, O.J. was convicted in Las Vegas. He was sentenced to 33 years in prison -- meaning that, if he lived and served his entire sentence, he would get out in 2041, at the age of 94.

On July 20, 2017, the Nevada Parole Board decided to grant O.J. parole. He was released on October 1, having served nearly 9 years for armed robbery. That's more than many killers serve for murder.

*

I have another question: With what we now know about what contact in football does to the human brain, is it possible that O.J. has brain damage, resulting in the kind of impairment that feeds narcissism, male privilege, racial anxiety, and the sense of entitlement that comes with fame and fortune?

Or, to put it another way: Suppose that, for whatever reason, O.J. didn't kill Nicole and Ron in 1994, and that both were still alive to this day; but, instead, he eventually remarried, and, sometime after we began to learn about football-related brain damage, killed his next wife. Or, suppose that didn't happen, but something like the Vegas robbery did, and only then did we learn about all the crazy things that O.J. had also done.

Would his defense team have gotten him off for that crime by citing his impairment? Maybe. Had they tried that in the history that we know, in 1994 and '95, it would have been shamed out of court. But if the Vegas robbery had been his first offense, who knows?

What we do know is that, for better or for worse, O.J. Simpson will never leave our public consciousness.

Orenthal James Simpson died of cancer, in Las Vegas, today, April 10, 2024. He was 76 years old. It was nearly 30 years after the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

The most recent photo of him that I could find

The film The Dark Knight featured Aaron Eckhardt as fictional District Attorney Harvey Dent, who said, "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." And he went on to prove it.

The film The Sandlot featured Art LaFleur as the ghost of Babe Ruth, saying, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."

O.J. Simpson was a hero. He is a legend. It's worth remembering that not all legends are heroic ones, or have happy endings. He remains a legend. And a villain.

Johnny Lujack, 1925-2023

Western Pennsylvania has produced many great quarterbacks. In reverse chronological order, they include Terrelle Pryor, Rich Gannon, Jim Kelly, Jeff Hostetler, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Chuck Fusina, Terry Hanratty, Joe Namath, Johnny Unitas, Willie Thrower, Babe Parilli and George Blanda.

The first was Johnny Lujack.

John Christopher Lujack was born on January 4, 1925, outside Pittsburgh in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. His brother Aloysius, or Al Lujack, starred in basketball, playing for Georgetown University and the NBA's Washington Capitols.

At Connellsville High School, Johnny Lujack lettered in football, baseball, basketball and track; and was also the senior class president and valedictorian. The school wanted him to go to the U.S. Military Academy, thinking it would keep him out of World War II, at least at first. But radio broadcasts and the influence of the Catholic Church made him a fan of the University of Notre Dame.

After 2 seasons in South Bend, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and Ensign Lujack hunted Nazi submarines. In 1946, he returned, and Army, having lost out on him twice (to Notre Dame and to the Navy), faced Notre Dame in "the Game of the Century" at Yankee Stadium. Both schools came in undefeated, Army ranked Number 1 and not having lost in 3 years, Notre Dame ranked Number 2 and the last team to beat Army. The game did not live up to its hype, and ended 0-0.

Lujack became only the 3rd person to win "monograms" (they didn't call them "varsity letters") in 4 different sports at Notre Dame, and led them to back-to-back National Championships in 1946 and 1947 (in the latter year, sharing with Michigan, whom they did not play that season).

In 1947, he was named Associated Press Athlete of the Year, and won the Heisman Trophy, beating out such contenders as Michigan running back Bob Chappuis, Southern Methodist running back Doak Walker (who won it the next year), Mississippi quarterback Charlie Conerly, Texas quarterback Bobby Layne, and University of Pennsylvania center and linebacker Chuck Bednarik.

He was the 1st Polish-American to win the Heisman. Only one has followed him: Vic Janowicz of Ohio State, in 1950.

In 1949, Lujack married Patricia Schierbrock of Davenport, Iowa, and they had 3 children: Mary, Jeff, and Carol.

He was drafted by the Chicago Bears, intended to replace the great Sid Luckman as their starting quarterback. In 1949, he led the NFL in passing yards and passing touchdowns. In the season finale, on December 11, the bears pounded their crosstown rivals, the Chicago Cardinals, 52-21. Lujack through 6 touchdown passes, and threw for 468 yards. That was an NFL record, although it stood for only 2 years: In 1951, Norm Van Brocklin of the Los Angeles Rams passed for 554 yards in a game, and that remains the record.

Very unusual for a 20th Century quarterback, Lujack actually led the NFL in rushing touchdowns in 1950, with 11. And, in those days, he also played in the defensive backfield. He made the Pro Bowl in 1950 and 1951.

And that was it. He only played 4 seasons in the NFL. He returned to Notre Dame, as an assistant coach to his former head coach, Frank Leahy. Together, they won a National Championship in 1953. Leahy then retired, and wanted Lujack to succeed him. But university president Theodore Hesburgh instead appointed Terry Brennan, one of Lujack's teammates at Notre Dame, who was then coaching the freshman team. It was a reasonable choice, and it was a good choice in 4 out of 5 seasons: He went 9-1, 8-2, 2-8, 7-3 and 6-4.

Lujack joined his father-in-law's Chevrolet dealership, and ran it until 1988. In 1958, CBS teamed him with Chris Schenkel on New York Giants broadcasts. But in 1962, Ford became a sponsor, and, since Lujack ran a Chevy dealership, he was fired. But this turned out to be good for NFL history: His replacement was former Giant player Pat Summerall, who became perhaps the greatest announcer in the sport's history, later teaming with John Madden to form the greatest football announcing team of all time.

Lujack wasn't done as a sportscaster, though: He teamed with Jim McKay, first on CBS, then on ABC. He was named to the College Football Hall of Fame and the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame. He wasn't named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but on the team's 100th Anniversary in 2019, he was named one of the 100 Greatest Bears of All Time.

Johnny Lujack died today, July 25, 2023, in hospice care near his home in Naples, Florida. He was 98 years, 6 months and 21 days old, making him, easily the longest-lived Heisman Trophy winner. (Jay Berwanger, the Trophy's 1st winner, in 1935, has been, so far, the next-longest: 88.)

With his death, the earliest living Heisman Trophy winner is Pete Dawkins of Army, in 1958.

June 2, 1943: The Death of Nile Kinnick

June 2, 1943, 80 years ago: Ensign Nile Kinnick is killed in a U.S. Navy training flight. He was a month short of his 25th birthday.

Nile Clarke Kinnick Jr. was born on July 9, 1918 in Adel, Iowa, the grandson of George Clarke, a Republican who served as Governor of Iowa from 1913 to 1917. His family were devout Christian Scientists, and, while Nile Jr. was already a sports star at Adel High School, Nile Sr. got a job in Omaha, Nebraska, and the family had to move. At Benson High School, he won a State Championship in baseball, and starred in basketball.

But his best sport was football, and he chose to attend the University of Iowa, supposedly because their program, then in a down period, would represent a better test for him than his other major option, the University of Minnesota, then one of the best programs in the country -- and Iowa's arch-rival.

Iowa still struggled, going just 1-7 in his sophomore year, 1937. (Freshmen were not eligible for varsity sports under NCAA rules until 1972, with occasional exceptions, such as during the upcoming World War II.) They went 1-6-1 in 1938. Head coach Irl Tubbs was fired, and Eddie Anderson was lured away from Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

He turned the team around in just 1 year: Iowa went 6-1-1, beating South Dakota and Indiana at home, losing away to Michigan, then winning away to Wisconsin and Purdue, beating then-Number 3 Notre Dame and then-Number 20 Minnesota at home, rising to Number 9 in the country, before closing the season with a tie away to Northwestern.

The loss to Michigan cost Iowa the Big Ten Conference title, throwing it to Ohio State, whom Iowa did not play. They did not receive an invitation to a bowl game. But the Notre Dame game became their signature win, and it was recognized as Kinnick's signature performance, scoring Iowa's only touchdown and pinning Notre Dame deep in their own end zone with a late punt, to secure a 7-6 win.

Kinnick was awarded the Heisman Trophy. In his acceptance speech, he said:, "I thank God I was warring on the gridirons of the Midwest, and not on the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the players of this country would much more, much rather struggle and fight to win the Heisman award than the Croix de Guerre." Another writer cited a pair of famed speechmakers from classical times, saying that his remarks "tackled Demosthenes and threw Cicero for a 15-yard loss."

He was elected student body president, maintained a grade-point average of 3.4, and gave the commencement address for his Class of 1940. That Summer, he played for the College All-Stars in the Chicago College All-Star Game at Soldier Field, losing to the defending NFL Champion Chicago Bears, 45-28.

But he never played football again. The NFL version of the Brooklyn Dodgers drafted him, but he turned down a $10,000 salary to go to the University of Iowa College of Law. He also served as an assistant coach at Iowa in the 1940 and '41 seasons, as the team went 4-4 and 3-5, respectively.

He spoke before the Young Republicans, and introduced Wendell Willkie, the 1940 Republican nominee for President, at an Iowa campaign rally. An Iowa newspaper, the Marion Sentinel, endorsed him for the 1956 Presidential election, the 1st in which he would be eligible, having met the minimum age requirement of 35.

He enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve, and reported for induction -- 3 days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He received leave to visit his family in Omaha in September 1942, and attended Iowa's season opener, at home at Iowa Stadium in Iowa City, a 26-7 win over Washington University of St. Louis.

On June 2, 1943, Ensign Nile Kinnick was stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, off the coast of Venezuela. He was on a routine training flight in a Grumman F4F Wildcat, when it developed an oil leak. Radio contact was made, determining that he was 4 miles from the carrier, and was forced to carry out an emergency landing in the water. Rescue boats arrived 8 minutes later, but they found only an oil slick.

His body was never recovered. It took until 1996 for the plane to be found but, given that he might have still been inside, it was decided not to disturb the site.

A legend developed that the deck of the Lexington was covered with planes preparing to take off, and that trying to land on it would have caused an explosion that would have killed many of his crewmates, so Kinnick sacrificed himself to save them. The Navy later determined that it wouldn't have mattered: He couldn't have reached the carrier anyway, so the choice was out of his hands.

With the award's establishment in 1935, he was the 1st winner of the Heisman Trophy to die. There wouldn't be another until 1963, when 1961 winner Ernie Davis of Syracuse died from leukemia.

For nearly 30 years, Nile Kinnick Sr., having outlived his son, refused all requests by the University of Iowa to honor his son, not wanting to single him out over all other students who died in World War II. Finally, in 1972, he consented to the renaming of Iowa Stadium, which opened in 1929, as Kinnick Stadium. It remains the only stadium in American college football named for a Heisman Trophy winner. A statue of Kinnick was placed outside in 2006. His Number 24 was retired. The school plays an excerpt from his Heisman Trophy acceptance speech at every home game, before playing the National Anthem.

The coin flipped at the start of every Big Ten football game bears his image. He was a charter inductee into the Iowa Sports Hall of Fame in 1951. That same year, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. In 1999, Sports Illustrated named him Iowa's 3rd-greatest sports figure, behind only wrestler and wrestling coach Dan Gable, and Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller, who had been on a youth baseball team with Kinnick.

Feller, also a U.S. Navy veteran, went to his grave believing that, had he lived, Kinnick would have been elected Governor of Iowa, and would have beaten John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election. 

O.J. at 75

July 9, 1947, 75 years ago: Orenthal James Simpson is born in San Francisco.

(Note: I originally wrote this for his 70th birthday, after seeing someone compare him with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who had turned 70 3 months earlier; and have slightly updated it for his 75th.)

When I was a kid in the 1970s, the Weekly Reader would poll kids of various ages, boys and girls alike, and ask them who their heroes were. O.J. Simpson, a running back who never appeared in a winning NFL Playoff game, always finished 1st. Finishing 2nd was Neil Armstrong.

The 1st man to walk on the Moon was Number 2.

*

He was always known by his initials, O.J., or "Orange Juice," or, more commonly, just "Juice." He grew up in the Portrero Hill neighborhood, graduated from San Francisco's Galileo High School, named for the legendary Italian scientist because it was built in, at the time, an Italian neighborhood.

Other notable Galileo alumni include fellow athletes the DiMaggio brothers, former Yankee 3rd baseman and American League President Bobby Brown, early basketball legend Hank Luisetti, Levi Strauss chairmen Peter and Walter Haas (Walter was also, for a time, the owner of the Oakland Athletics), and O.J.'s best friend, later a teammate at City College of San Francisco, the University of Southern California, and the Buffalo Bills, Al Cowlings.

After CCSF, O.J. went to Los Angeles, and led USC to the National Championship in 1967, 50 years ago, defeating crosstown UCLA and their quarterback Gary Beban in one of those occasional "Game of the Century" hypefests, one that lived up to the billing.

Beban won the Heisman Trophy as national college football player of the year anyway, but O.J. had another year of eligibility (under today's rules, he would have given it up and become eligible for the NFL Draft), and won the Heisman in 1968.

It's been suggested that the reason Philadelphia Eagles fans threw snowballs at a guy dressed as Santa Claus during the halftime show of their 1968 season finale at Franklin Field is that they were angry that the Eagles had refused to tank in order to get the Number 1 pick in the 1969 Draft, and won 2 games that they shouldn't have, and thus lost out on the right to draft O.J., and instead got Purdue University running back and defensive back Leroy Keyes.

Keyes played 4 seasons for the Eagles and 1 for the Kansas City Chiefs, and was a decent safety. He later returned to Purdue as an assistant athletic director, and died on April 15, 2021, at the age of 74. From 1994 to 2021, O.J. would probably have been willing to trade lives with him. And Eagles fans don't have to explain to their kids that O.J. played for them, and then what happened.

*

Buffalo Bills fans do have to explain that. O.J. was not used well by Bills coaches John Rauch and Harvey Johnson. The Bills brought Lou Saban, who coached their 1964 and '65 American Football League Champions, back, and he rebuilt the offense around O.J. The Bills' offensive line, led by Hall-of-Famer Joe DeLamielleure and All-Pro Reggie McKenzie, was nicknamed The Electric Company, because "we make the Juice flow." ("Juice" is a nickname for electricity.)

On December 17, 1973, in a snowstorm at Shea Stadium against the Jets, O.J. set a new single-season NFL rushing record (since broken), becoming the 1st NFL player to rush for 2,000 yards in a season.

I chose the picture above, from around that time, of him at the peak of his playing career, because it makes him look as perplexed about his future as we all became.

The next season, the Bills went 9-5 and won the American Football Conference Wild Card (only 1 Wild Card per Conference at the time), and on December 22, 1974, O.J. Simpson played in an NFL Playoff game for the 1st time. The Bills went into Three Rivers Stadium and were beaten by the Pittsburgh Steelers, 32-14. The Steel Curtain defense held O.J. to 49 rushing yards, although he did catch a touchdown pass. The Steelers went on to win the Super Bowl, the 1st of 4 they'd win in a 6-year span.

O.J. never played in another Playoff game. The Bills went 8-6 in 1975. In 1976, despite O.J. rushing for 273 yards against the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day (a single-game record that would be broken the next year by Walter Payton), they went 2-12. Much as the New England Patriots have dominated the AFC Eastern Division since 2001, the Miami Dolphins dominated it from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s, and it was hard for the Bills, the Jets or the Patriots to break through.

O.J. played 2 more seasons, for his hometown San Francisco 49ers, but they were terrible, going 2-14 in 1979, his last season, before they turned things around under coach Bill Walsh and quarterback Joe Montana. Had O.J. hung around for 2 more seasons, he would have been just 34, and would have gotten a Super Bowl ring, if only as a banged-up backup. But his knee injuries made that impractical.

*

But, as with certain other sports legends -- Don Mattingly, Anna Kournikova, and O.J.'s contemporary Pete Maravich come to mind -- not winning didn't matter. O.J.'s talent, good looks, and winning personality made him a bigger star than more successful running backs such as the Dolphins' Larry Csonka, the Steelers' Franco Harris, and the Dallas Cowboys' Tony Dorsett.

He starred in commercials for Hertz Rent-a-Car, and had already acted on episodes of TV shows, including Ironside, a police drama set in his native San Francisco). He was cast in The Towering Inferno (as the tower's chief security officer, he was one of the few big names whose character survived the movie), The Cassandra Crossing, Capricorn One, and, most notably, Roots, as Kadi Touray. He became a sideline reporter for NBC's NFL telecasts, and was very good at it.

He starred on the HBO series 1st & Ten as a star player forced by injury to turn to coaching (with fellow USC Heisman winner Marcus Allen as the player who takes his place), and showed a talent for slapstick as Detective Nordberg in the Naked Gun films. Ironically, the 1st one, in 1988, showed an L.A.-based athlete attempting a murder: Reggie Jackson, wearing his old California Angels uniform, played a player brainwashed to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, stopped by Leslie Nielsen's usually-inept Lieutenant Frank Drebin.

In 1983, James Cameron was casting The Terminator. He wanted O.J. to play the seemingly unstoppable cyborg from the future. But focus groups told him that there was no way that O.J. would be taken seriously as a killing machine.

In 1994, he had finished filming Frogmen, an action film about U.S. Navy divers, and had been interviewed on the set for Entertainment Tonight. He seemed enthusiastic about this film.

He was 46 years old, going on 47. He was dating budding actress Paula Barbieri. He was a member of the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame. He had a fabulous house in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. He walked with kings, presidents and his fellow stars. He was rich, famous and popular beyond most people's wildest dreams.

Like Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby, he had transcended his status as a black man in a white-dominated society, to become one of the biggest celebrities in America, and he remained one even though he hadn't played a down of football in nearly 15 years.

But, as happened to Jackson the year before, and has happened to Cosby since -- and as had recently happened to white celebrities Pete Rose (also an ex-athlete) and Woody Allen (also involved in movies), his image was about to change in ways that we could not have possibly imagined.

Oh yeah: Frogmen has never been released. It remains in someone's vault, never seen by the general public. And O.J. has never been cast in another feature film.

*

When we went to bed on the night of June 12, 1994, we thought of O.J. Simpson as one of the greatest football players ever, a good sideline reporter on NBC's NFL telecasts, and a decent actor. If he had been the one who died that night, by whatever means, it would have been sad -- as far as the public knew at the time.

And, as it turned out, a lot of people would have been better off. Himself included.

We knew he had been married and divorced twice. What most of us did not know was that he had beaten both of his wives. The 2nd wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, had repeatedly called the police about it. One of the times, one of the responding lawmen was a young Detective named Mark Furhman.
Nicole told lots of people that she believed O.J. would kill her one day. On the night of June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson had dinner with her mother, Juditha Brown, at Mezzaluna Trattoria, an Italian restaurant in the Brentwood section of the Westside (it's always spelled as 1 word) of Los Angeles, where a friend of hers, Ronald Goldman, was a waiter.
Nicole drove her mother home. When she got home to 875 South Bundy Drive, about half a mile southwest of the restaurant, her mother called, saying that she left her sunglasses at the restaurant. Nicole called the restaurant. The glasses were found, and Ron agreed to deliver them.
Both Nicole and Ron were murdered at Nicole's house that night, brutally stabbed to death. She was 35, he was 25.
The middle of June 1994 was a weird time in America. Republicans were pushing hard against the agenda, and indeed the legitimacy as President, of Democrat Bill Clinton. We were beginning to hear about something called the Internet. Nirvana bandleader Kurt Cobain committed suicide at age 27. The threat of a baseball strike loomed, a threat that was, unfortunately, realized in August.
And both the Madison Square Garden teams, the Knicks and the Rangers, reached their sport's Finals. (This had previously happened in 1972: The Knicks lost to the Los Angeles Lakers; the Rangers, to the Boston Bruins.) On June 14, the Rangers won the Stanley Cup for the 1st time in 54 years, defeating the Vancouver Canucks in Game 7. By that point, O.J. was already a suspect in the murders.

On June 17, Game 5 of the NBA Finals was played at The Garden. While the Knicks were on their way to beating the Houston Rockets that night (though the Rockets would win the series in Game 7 in Houston on June 22), NBC went to a split screen.
Because Al Cowlings was driving a white 1993 Ford Bronco, California license plate 3DHY503, on Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, with O.J. Simpson in the back seat, with a gun to his head, and the police were following it. It was one of the most surreal events in television history.
Some time later, on the talk show The View, panelist Star Jones, a former Brooklyn prosecutor, defined friendship this way: "Who do you want driving the Bronco?" In other words, if you're in as much trouble as O.J. was in, who do you want to help you attempt to get out of it? Frankly, I think a better definition is, "For whom would you drive the Bronco?"
But since, by that point, everybody knew "A.C." not as a former football player, but as O.J.'s yes-man, Star did not have to explain her point. We all knew what she meant.
A.C. drove O.J. back to the house, where he was arrested. The ensuing legal process, including the "Trial of the Century," has been blamed for everything from the ruining of the American criminal justice system to the worsening of American race relations, from the dumbing down of American culture through "reality TV" to the rise of the Kardashian family (one of O.J.'s "Dream Team" lawyers, and one of his best friends, was Robert Kardashian Sr., ex-husband of Kris Jenner, and father of Rob, Kourtney, Kim and Khloe).
In hindsight, the evidence is overwhelming. But the verdict that was announced on October 3, 1995 was correct: "Not Guilty." Why? Because a conviction can only be achieved if all 12 jurors are convinced that the prosecution has proven the defendant's guilt, as the saying goes, beyond a reasonable doubt.
As soon as prosecutor Christopher Darden put Fuhrman, who'd been part of the LAPD's investigative team at the murder scene, on the stand, the case against O.J. was blown. Fuhrman had tampered with evidence, and evidence of his racism was presented.
Moreover, if Fuhrman had not been put on the stand, the bloody gloves would never have been put into evidence, and we never would have found out that, for whatever reason, they didn't fit. That's reasonable doubt, right there. The leader of O.J.'s Dream Team, Johnnie Cochran, was right: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."

While morally wrong, the verdict was legally correct.

O.J. regained his freedom. But a civil suit was brought by the Brown and Goldman families. With a different standard -- only a preponderance of the evidence is necessary to decide, although the jury must still be unanimous on that -- he was found liable for the victims' deaths, and forced into a whopping fine.

He lost the estate at 360 North Rockingham Avenue, about 2 miles northwest of the murder scene. He lost his trophies, including the Heisman. He lost his TV and film residuals. Even any income he would get from books (he did write one, cheekily and cruelly titled If I Did It) and any memorabilia shows he was hired for (and he was hired for some) would go to the Brown and Goldman families. Pretty much the only income that legally couldn't be touched was his NFL pension.

*

O.J. moved away from his beloved L.A., to Miami, where the stigma against him wasn't as strong. In Miami, pretty much the only thing that will make people hate you is support for the Castro regime in Cuba.

But O.J. did not act like an innocent man who wanted to rebuild his life after his exoneration. He continued to act like a guilty man who wanted to rub in your face the fact that he got away with it. He found income and ways to keep it that the Browns and the Goldmans couldn't do anything about. He appeared in rap videos. And, just as Donald Trump did instead of his job, he played lots and lots of golf in Florida, instead of doing what he promised he would do: "Look for the real killer."

A joke made the rounds in 2017: The future didn't turn out the way we expected. O.J. Simpson killed somebody, Pete Rose is banned from baseball, Bill Cosby is a rapist, Michael Jackson is dead and a pedophile, and Donald Trump is the President.

Now, let me ask you a question. Suppose someone you love had been murdered. And you had been arrested for it. And, after a long process, you had been acquitted. Would you ever again do anything that might get you put in prison?

Of course not. Even if you actually did it, you wouldn't want to risk putting yourself back in that position. How stupid -- or how crazy, or how mentally impaired -- would you have to be to do that?

On September 13, 2007, O.J. led a group of men into a room at the Palace Station Hotel in Las Vegas, where sports memorabilia dealer Bruce Fromong was staying. They pulled guns on Fromong, and stole O.J.-related items. O.J. later said the items had been stolen from him, and denied that he and the others broke in, and that they had weapons.

On October 3, 2008, exactly 13 years after his acquittal in Los Angeles, O.J. was convicted in Las Vegas. He was sentenced to 33 years in prison -- meaning that, if he lived and served his entire sentence, he would get out in 2041, at the age of 94.

On July 20, 2017, the Nevada Parole Board decided to grant O.J. parole. He was released on October 1, having served nearly 9 years for armed robbery. That's more than many killers serve for murder.

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I have another question: With what we now know about what contact in football does to the human brain, is it possible that O.J. has brain damage, resulting in the kind of impairment that feeds narcissism, male privilege, racial anxiety, and the sense of entitlement that comes with fame and fortune?

Or, to put it another way: Suppose that, for whatever reason, O.J. didn't kill Nicole and Ron in 1994, and that both were still alive to this day; but, instead, he eventually remarried, and, sometime after we began to learn about football-related brain damage, killed his next wife. Or, suppose that didn't happen, but something like the Vegas robbery did, and only then did we learn about all the crazy things that O.J. had also done.

Would his defense team have gotten him off for that crime by citing his impairment? Maybe. Had they tried that in the history that we know, in 1994 and '95, it would have been shamed out of court. But if the Vegas robbery had been his first offense, who knows?

What we do know is that, for better or for worse, O.J. Simpson will never leave our public consciousness. That will remain true after he dies, whenever that turns out to be.

The most recent photo of him that I could find

The film The Dark Knight featured Aaron Eckhardt as fictional District Attorney Harvey Dent, who said, "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." And he went on to prove it.

The film The Sandlot featured Art LaFleur as the ghost of Babe Ruth, saying, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."

O.J. Simpson was a hero. He is a legend. It's worth remembering that not all legends are heroic ones, or have happy endings. He remains a legend. And a villain.