O. J. Simpson

About the O. J. Simpson

Orenthal James Simpsonfor 11 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills. Simpson is regarded as one of the greatest running backs of all time, but his success was overshadowed by his criminal trial and controversial acquittal for the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.

Simpson played college football for the USC Trojans, where he won the Heisman Trophy as a senior, and was selected first overall by the Bills in the 1969 NFL/AFL draft. During his nine seasons with the Bills, he received five consecutive Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro selections from 1972 to 1976. He also led the league in rushing yards four times, in rushing touchdowns twice, and in points scored in 1975. Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season, earning him NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP), and is the only NFL player to do so in a 14-game regular season. He holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average at 143.1. He acquired the nickname “Juice” as a play on “OJ”, a common abbreviation for orange juice. After retiring with the San Francisco 49ers in 1979, he acted in film and television, became a sportscaster, and was a spokesman for a wide variety of products and companies, notably Hertz. He was inducted to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.

In June 1994, Simpson was charged with murdering Brown and Goldman after they were stabbed to death in Los Angeles. His eight-month murder trial received international publicity and exacerbated racial divisions in the U.S., culminating with his acquittal in October 1995. Three years later, he was found liable for the murders in a civil suit from the victims’ families but paid little of the $33.5 million judgment. In 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, and charged with armed robbery and kidnapping. He was convicted the following year and sentenced to 33 years’ imprisonment with a minimum of nine years without parole. Simpson served his sentence at the Lovelock Correctional Center in rural Nevada until being paroled and released in 2017. For the remainder of his life, he resided in Florida and Nevada.