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The following biography
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Orenthal James Simpson (born July 9, 1947, San
Francisco, California), publicly known by his initials as O. J., and nicknamed
The Juice, is a former college and professional football player and film actor.
Although considered one of the greatest running backs of all time, Simpson is
most recognizable for being charged with the murder of ex-wife Nicole Brown
Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994. He was acquitted in criminal
court in 1995 after a lengthy, highly publicized trial (often called the "Trial
of the Century"). Later, in 1997, Simpson was found liable for their deaths in
civil court.
****
Date of birth July 9, 1947
Place of birth San Francisco, California
Date of death {{{DateOfDeath}}}
Position(s) RB
College USC
CFL Draft {{{CFLDraftedYear}}} / Round {{{CFLDraftedRound}}}
NFL Draft 1969 / Round 1/ Pick 1
AFL Draft [[{{{AFLDraftedYear}}} American Football
League Draft#Round {{{AFLDraftedRound}}}|{{{AFLDraftedYear}}}]] / Round {{{AFLDraftedRound}}}
CFL All-Star {{{CFLAllStar}}}
Pro Bowls 1969, 1972, 1973, 1974,
1975, 1976
Awards 1968 Heisman Trophy
1968 Maxwell Award
1972 UPI AFL-AFC POY
1972 Pro Bowl MVP
1973 UPI AFL-AFC POY
1973 AP Offensive POY
1973 AP NFL MVP
1973 Bert Bell Award
1975 UPI AFL-AFC POY
Honors NFL 75th Anniversary
All-Time Team
NFL 1970s All-Decade Team
Buffalo Bills WOF
College Football HOF
Retired #s
Records
Statistics Pro Football Reference
Statistics NFL.com
Statistics CBS.com
Statistics DatabaseFootball
Statistics ESPN
Statistics Sports Illustrated
Statistics CFL.ca
Team(s)
1969–1977
1978–1979 Buffalo Bills
San Francisco 49ers
Canadian Football Hall of Fame [1]
College Football Hall of Fame [2]
Pro Football Hall of Fame, 1985
****
Football career
High school
At Galileo High School in San Francisco, Simpson
played for the school's football team, the Galileo Lions. While attending high
school, he met Michael Jackson.
College
After first playing in Junior College at the City
College of San Francisco, his talent landed him at the University of Southern
California (USC), where he won the Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award, induction into
the College Football Hall of Fame, and the distinction of being the first player
selected in the 1969 professional football draft..
NFL
Simpson was drafted by the American Football
League's Buffalo Bills, who got first pick in the 1969 draft after finishing
1-12-1 in 1968. Early in his NFL career, Simpson struggled on poor Buffalo
teams, averaging only 622 yards per season. He first rushed for 1,000 yards in
1972. In 1973, Simpson erupted with a then-record 2,003 yards, becoming the
first player ever to pass the 2,000-yard mark, and was voted the league's Most
Valuable Player. Although his 2,003-yard season has subsequently been eclipsed
by four running backs, only Barry Sanders managed to match Simpson by rushing
for 2,000 or more yards in 14 games (weeks 3-16 of the 1997 season; including
weeks 1 and 2, Sanders rushed for 2,053 yards. Eric Dickerson holds the 16-game
season and overall records with 2,105 yards rushing in 1984).
Simpson's per-game yardage was ten yards higher
than that of his closest competitor. "The Juice" powered one of the league's top
rushing offenses, and ran behind the famed "Electric Company" offensive line.
His 1973 performance earned him the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of
the year. Over his career, Simpson ran for an NFL-record six 200-yard games,
including three in 1973. In 1973 and also in 1976 he had back-to-back 200-yard
games.
Simpson went on to earn All-Pro honors five times.
He finished his 11-year career in 1979 with 11,236 rushing yards, 203 receptions
for 2,142 receiving yards, and 75 touchdowns (61 rushing and 14 receiving).
After being traded to the San Francisco 49ers in 1978, Simpson retired the
following year, and on January 23, 1985 became the first Heisman Trophy winner
elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is a member of the Bills' Wall of
Fame.
In 1999, he was ranked number 26 on The Sporting
News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. Although he did not arrive in
Buffalo until 1969, the last year of play for the American Football League,
TSN's ranking makes him the highest-ranked player to have played in the AFL.
Away from football but within sports, he won the
1975 American Superstars competition.
Family life
Simpson was born to Eunice Durden Simpson (October
23, 1921–November 9, 2001 by natural causes) and James "Jimmy" Lee Simpson
(January 28, 1920–June 9, 1986 by AIDS). His parents were separated in 1952, and
buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery.
Simpson has one brother: Melvin Leon "Truman"
Simpson, and two sisters: Shirley Simpson-Baker & Carmelita Simpson-Durio.
In his childhood, O. J. fought off a great deal of
adversity. From ages three to five, he had to wear homemade braces after
contracting rickets. In 1960, he joined the Persian Warriors, a San Francisco
street gang, and was even incarcerated at the San Francisco Youth Guidance
Center in 1962.
On June 24, 1967, Simpson married Marguerite L.
Whitley. Together they had three children: Arnelle L. Simpson (born December 4,
1968) Jason L. Simpson (born April 21, 1970) and Aaren Lashone Simpson (born
September 24, 1977). In 1979, Aaren drowned in the family's swimming pool a
month before her second birthday. That same year Simpson and Marguerite were
divorced.
On February 2, 1985, Simpson married Nicole Brown.
They had two children, Sydney Brooke Simpson (born October 17, 1985) and Justin
Ryan Simpson (born August 6, 1988), and were divorced in 1992. As of March 7,
2006, O. J. Simpson is the father of Jessebelle Susie Parket Jr. The mother is
still unknown.
Acting
After his retirement from football, Simpson went on
to a successful film career with parts in films such as the television
mini-series Roots, and the motion pictures The Cassandra Crossing, Capricorn
One, The Klansman, The Towering Inferno, and The Naked Gun trilogy. Simpson was
considered for the lead role in The Terminator, before it was decided audiences
might not accept him as a villain. Claims were, that O. J. was too "nice" for
the role of the cold endoskeleton cyborg known as the Terminator.
Simpson's amiable persona and natural charisma
landed him numerous endorsement deals. He was a spokesman for the Hertz rental
car company (Ford vehicles are usually found in Hertz rental fleets, hence the
nickname 'Simpsons' for the cars). He would often be shown running through
airports, as if to suggest he was back on the football field. Simpson was
spokesman for the pX Corporation, and he appeared in comic book ads for Dingo
shoes.
Besides his acting career, Simpson had stints as a
commentator for Monday Night Football and The NFL on NBC. He also hosted an
episode of Saturday Night Live, but he was the only host not invited to attend
the program's 25th anniversary celebration special in 1999.
Homicide of his ex-wife and trial
Simpson had pled no contest to a domestic violence
charge and was separated from Nicole. He was paying child support. On June 12,
1994 his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman were found dead
outside Brown's condominium. Simpson was soon charged with their murders. After
one of the most widely publicized arrests and trials in American history, on
October 3, 1995, Simpson was found not guilty of the two murders. The verdict
was seen live on TV by more than half the US population, making it one of the
most watched events in American TV history. There has been significant criticism
of the prosecution and the police, and many contend that Simpson would have been
found guilty had there not been so many mistakes and irregularities. With the
damage done to his public reputation, his acting career was ruined. Many have
called this "The Trial of the Century."[3]
Civil trial
On February 4, 1997, a civil jury in Santa Monica,
California found Simpson liable for the wrongful death of Ronald Goldman,
battery against Ronald Goldman, and battery against Nicole Brown. The attorney
for plaintiff Fred Goldman (father of Ronald Goldman) was Daniel Petrocelli.
Simpson was ordered to pay $33,500,000 in damages. However, California law
protects pensions from being used to satisfy judgments, so Simpson was able to
continue much of his lifestyle based on his NFL pension. A 2000 Rolling Stone
article reported that Simpson also still makes a significant income by signing
autographs. He subsequently moved from California to Miami, Florida. In Florida,
a person's residence cannot be seized to collect a debt under most
circumstances.
Simpson has not filed for bankruptcy.
Custody trial
While Simpson was in jail during the murder trial,
Nicole Brown's parents, Louis and Juditha Brown, had custody of Simpson's
younger children, Sydney and Justin. When Simpson was acquitted, he was given
custody of the children. In late 1998 Simpson won a custody trial filed by the
Browns. The ruling was thrown out when an appeals court determined that it was
wrong to exclude evidence from the murder trial [4]. In 2000, Simpson won
custody of his children in a second trial.
After the trials
Even after his two trials Simpson was never far
from the news. He appeared in news stories that often had nothing directly to do
with him. He was accused of illegally accessing signals from DirecTV. In 1998 at
the end of an interview conducted by Ruby Wax for BBC1, Simpson mimed stabbing
her with a banana while mimicking the theme music from Psycho.
In 1996, shortly after the trials, Simpson visited
Britain. He gave a talk at the Oxford Union, where he was met by protesting
women's rights groups. The protests concerned not the murder of Nicole Brown but
the well-documented domestic abuse she suffered at Simpson's hands.
In 2001, he was tried for burglary and battery in a
Florida road rage case that received some publicity, but he was again found not
guilty. This verdict was also covered on live national television on an October
morning.
There were plans for him to have a reality TV show
in the style of The Osbournes in 2003. Also, Simpson considered becoming a news
commentator for actor Robert Blake's murder trial. [citation needed]
During 2003, Simpson filmed a Pay-Per-View comedy
special titled Juiced. The show, a hidden camera set up show, drew criticism for
a sketch where Simpson attempts to sell the infamous White Ford Bronco at a used
car lot, telling the salesman, "It was good for me. It helped me get away." A
DVD is planned with extra and uncensored material. [citation needed]
Prior to the 2004 Orange Bowl football game
featuring Simpson's USC Trojans, the former football star showed up unannounced
at a USC practice. The Southern California coach Pete Carroll allowed Simpson to
come onto the field and mingle with the players and pose for pictures. Carroll
responded to the criticism by proclaiming, "We respect our Heisman Trophy
winners."
In June 2004, Simpson had planned a long series of
news appearances to mark the tenth anniversary of the killings, but ended up
being displaced by another story, the death and funeral of former President
Reagan.
Other related litigation
The civil and criminal trials of Simpson were not
the only important legal cases that were spawned by the deaths of Nicole Brown
Simpson and Ronald Goldman on June 12, 1994.
Gerald Chamales and his wife, Kathleen, bought a
house next to Simpson's estate in Brentwood at the corner of Ashford and
Rockingham just ten days before the murders of which Simpson was accused. The
media circus and hordes of curious tourists tormented them (and the rest of
Simpson's neighbors) for the next four years. Their subsequent legal battle with
the IRS culminated in the rule that they could not apply the drop in their
house's value as a casualty loss deduction on their income tax return, because
it was only temporary.
Simpson's houseguest on the night of the murders,
Brian "Kato" Kaelin, sued Globe Communications for $15 million after it ran a
headline in one of its tabloid newspapers insinuating that Kaelin was the real
murderer. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendant, but on
appeal, Kaelin convinced the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that he had a
valid claim for defamation. Kaelin settled his lawsuit for an undisclosed
amount.
A New Hampshire intellectual property attorney,
William B. Ritchie, challenged the validity of Simpson's trademarks under a
federal statute that bars immoral, deceptive, or scandalous subject matter.
Ritchie argued that because of the whole sequence of events from 1994 through
1997, Simpson's very name had become immoral and scandalous and thus could not
be protected as a trademark. Ritchie convinced the Court of Appeals for the
Federal Circuit that he had standing to challenge Simpson's trademarks under the
Lanham Act. Simpson has since abandoned his trademarks.
On September 5, 2006 Ron Goldman's father will take
Simpson back to court to have control over his "right to publicity" for purposes
of satistfying the judgment in the civil court case.[5]
In popular culture
O. J. was referenced, coincidentally years before
the murder case, in an episode of Seinfeld, "The Masseuse", in which Elaine
suggests her then-boyfriend, Joel Rifkin (who shared his name with an infamous
serial killer), change his name to O. J. to avoid the stigma. Subsequent to
Simpson's murder trial, the infamous "glove incident" was parodied in the trial
of Elaine's arch-enemy Sue Ellen Mischke who tries on a bra in the courtroom
only to proclaim "it doesn't fit."
In another episode of Seinfeld, "The Big Salad",
the car-chase scene is parodied when Cosmo Kramer drives a man suspected of
murdering a man at a dry cleaners down the New Jersey turnpike in a white Ford
Bronco.
Simpson's alleged search for his wife's killer was
parodied in the Doonesbury comic strip.
In the popular Grand Theft Auto (video game) series
of videogames, the character B.J. Smith is a parody of O. J. Simpson. B.J. was a
former football player, was in a police chase, and was in a controversial murder
trial within the scope of the three PlayStation 2 GTA games.
Simpson was parodied in a sketch on Saturday Night
Live in which Simpson, played by Tim Meadows, works for NBC as an NFL color
commentator. When using the telestrator to describe a play, he unknowingly
spells out "I Did It" in big letters. Also, on the first Weekend Update to air
after the trial, Norm MacDonald opened the segment with, "Well, it's official:
Murder is legal in the state of California."
In an episode of The Saturday Night Armistice,
British satirist, Armando Iannucci was filmed getting an autograph from O. J.
during a trip to the UK. After being filmed getting the autograph, (and with O.
J. safely out of sight) he unfolded the paper the autograph was on to reveal
that the top half of the paper read "I DID IT, Signed…", followed by the
autograph.
In an episode of Family Guy, it is heavily implied
that Stewie Griffin planted jealousy on O. J.'s mind while drunk on Mai Tais by
saying "I'm telling you, Juice. She's screwing behind your back. And if I were
in your Bruno Maglis, I wouldn't stand for it."
The video game Duke Nukem 3D has references
throughout the game including a chase scene on a T.V. of Simpson's white Bronco
as well as giant billboards saying "innocent?" and "Guilty!".
In an episode of The Simpsons, Homer was accused of
a murder. A newspaper headline said "The Ho.J Simpson trial begins today" as a
deliberate reference to O. J.
Rock band The Moistboyz have a song entitled O.G.
Simpson, the front cover of the single features a police mugshot of O. J.
Pins have been marketed that say "Drink Apple Juice
because O. J. will kill you."
In 1995, an insurance agency based in Southern
California whose primary market was higher risk drivers featured a commercial
showing the infamous slow highway chase scene.
Johnny Crass, a singer sometimes confused with
"Weird Al" Yankovic; made a song titled "Ball Star", a parody of "All Star" by
Smashmouth. The song refers to various aspects of the murders.
Hip-hop duo, Tha Dogg Pound, included the lyric
"with a twist of my wrist, like O. J., you all die" on their song "What Would
You Do?"
In Chappelle's Show there was a sketch where Dave
Chappelle goes in to court to testify for O. J. The lawyer says "Would it
convince you if we told you we found a bloody glove on O. J.'s property?" In
which Chappelle replied " Sir, I am unimpressed, what black man don't have no
bloody glove on his property (pulls out bloody glove) See, I got one right here,
doesn't mean I did anything!". In the WacArnolds sketch Chappelle comes home to
his wife to see some black gloves on his refrigerator which causes him to say to
his wife "Honey, who you fuckin'? O. J.?".
In another Chappelle Show sketch, Hollywood
Stories, Charlie Murphy retells his experiances with Rick James in an
imaginative drugs concept. Murphy walks into a bar and says “…the first thing I
see is O. J. Simpson and I'm thinking to myself, ‘Wow that's O. J. Simpson, he
has a big motherfuckin' head, man!’”
South Park parodied Simpson as being a member of a
club, whose members included John and Patsy Ramsey and Gary Condit, who accuse
"some Puerto Rican guy" of killing the murder victim they are asscociated with.
In another episode, Cartman attemps to run away from the police in a white Power
Wheels-like "Go Go Action Bronco."
The band Good Charlotte pokes fun at Simpson in
their song Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in which the lyrics read, Well did
you know when you're famous you could kill your wife / And theres no such thing
as 25 to life / As long as you got the cash to pay for Cochran.
Simpson was parodied in a MadTV sketch entitled "O.
J. Simpson Bloopers," where Simpson, played by Orlando Jones, had a blooper reel
of his statement of innocence.
Filmography
The Klansman (1974)
The Towering Inferno (1974)
The Cassandra Crossing (1976)
ROOTS (1977)
Capricorn One (1978)
Cocaine and Blue Eyes (1983)
Blood on Blood TV Episode (1987)
The Naked Gun - From the Files of Police Squad!
(1988)
Mind Games TV Episode (1989)
The Naked Gun 2˝: The Smell of Fear (1991)
CIA Code Name: Alexa (1993)
The Naked Gun 33⅓:The Final Insult (1994)
****
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