O.J. Simpson died.
One of the most storied men in the history of sports has left behind more than the infamous murder of his wife.
Cover image credit: Fox News KTVU
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Text / Jenny Ma
In the early hours of this morning, CNN, TMZ and other foreign media reported the death of former American football player O.J. Simpson at the age of 76.
Born in 1947, Simpson is probably the most storied man in sports history: one of the most recognizable black sports icons in the United States, who became known to the world for his successful escape from the murder of his wife, and was finally sentenced to prison for suspected robbery and extortion...... Eight years after he was released from prison on bail, he died of prostate cancer.
Is the life of this controversial sports athlete evil retribution or sighing?
Before becoming a suspect in the murder of his wife: the strongest running back in the NFL
In the '70s, Simpson was widely recognized as the NFL's top running back. Even though he was later controversial for his wife's murder, he is still one of the greatest running backs in the history of the American No. 1 league.
As a student at the University of Southern California, Simpson was awarded the Heisman Memorial Award (Player of the Year), the highest honor for American college football players. USC head coach John McKay has said, "Simpson is not only the greatest player I've ever had, but the greatest player anyone else has had," according to ESPN. 」
In 1969, at the age of 22, Simpson was drafted by the NFL Buffalo Bills and became one of the brightest stars in the NFL at that time with his outstanding performance.
Image credit: AP
He played eleven seasons in the NFL, winning six Pro Bowls (i.e., All-Star), five All-NBA All-NBA, one Most Valuable Player and one Offensive Player of the Year. In the 1973 season, Simpson set a record of 2,003 yards in a rushing game, becoming the first player in NFL history to rush more than 2,000 yards in a single season. In a season with only 14 regular-season games at the time, this is definitely a record worth mentioning.
In particular, in the five seasons from 1972 to 1976, Simpson rushed more than 1,000 yards and was elected an All-Star starter for five consecutive seasons. It was a miracle that only NFL all-time legend Jim Brown could match at the time, which shows how good Simpson was on the court.
When Simpson was 32 years old, he decisively chose to retire after achieving fame. After retiring as a player, Simpson was also successful, and he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame while continuing to be involved in the sport as a commentator.
In 1975, the American "People" magazine once commented that Simpson was the first black athlete to be a superstar in the media industry, and outside of the game, he also participated in many Hollywood movies, met celebrities from all walks of life, and was in the limelight. You know, African-American athletes at the time had very few business opportunities, and there weren't many black athletes like Simpson.
Simpson played the lead role in his most famous work, The Naked Gun. Image source: Paramount
It can be said that Simpson was a representative of black American sports stars before the 1994 murder case. Not only did he have excellent athletic performances, but he also mixed well in Vanity Fair. Although he had joined a street gang and had been arrested for fighting, these became part of his legendary life at the time.
If the murder of his wife is a watershed in his life, then the first half of Simpson's life is undoubtedly enviable. But with the murder of his wife, it all seems to have become a great irony.
Simpson, did you kill your wife?
On June 12, 1994, Simpson's second wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman were murdered with a sharp knife in their residence, and the most suspected person was Simpson. He has a record of domestic violence allegations in both marriages and did not break up peacefully with Brown. As soon as this explosive news came out, the whole United States was in an uproar.
The ensuing highway chase has attracted even more attention to the case. At that time, major news stations in the United States sent helicopters to broadcast the Los Angeles police manhunt for Simpson, who was driving a white Ford Mustang SUV with friends on the road and slowly maneuvering with the police. His former teammate Al Collins was driving, and Simpson sat in the back seat and pointed a gun to his head, threatening the police not to stop him.
Image Credit: Los Angeles Times
According to the BBC, the manhunt was watched by about 95 million people and was broadcast live on a 24-hour news channel that is still in its relative infancy. During the hunt, the 1993-1994 Houston Rockets' NBA Finals against the New York Knicks was taking place, and this event also greatly affected Finals ratings.
The manhunt ended in a police victory, but a year later, in the trial of the century, the Simpsons' side won the final victory.
Simpson insisted that he was 100% innocent and spent tens of millions of dollars to form a team of ace lawyers. The main members of the team include Robert Kardashian, the father of the Kardashian family, who is currently the top reality show, and Johnny Cochran, who once took over the paedophile accusations of Michael Jackson. Li Changyu, a Chinese-American criminal forensic expert known as the "detective", is also one of them.
Defense Attorney Corps with Simpson. Image credit: AP
In 1995, the "Trial of the Century", which is still controversial to this day, was officially opened. The prosecution prosecutor listed a series of certificates with Simpson's DNA, saying that Simpson was the murderer in the case. The defense lawyer representing Simpson used the police's procedural errors in evidence collection and the frequent racial issues at the time to successfully clear the black player's name.
Jury composition Source: Station B up main @X investigation
During the trial, the most famous scene was the scene where Simpson tried on one of the physical evidences in court at that time. The prosecution argued that the gloves would prove that Simpson was the murderer, but his demonstration of putting on the gloves that didn't fit his hands made the defense say the classic closing argument of "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit you."
Image credit: AP
According to Time magazine, more than 150 million viewers (57 percent of the U.S. population at the time) tuned in to watch the verdict in the Simpson case on the morning of the trial, which shows how much attention was paid to the case at the time. After Simpson's acquittal verdict was announced, it also caused an uproar around the world. To this day, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding this case.
With Simpson gone, the truest answer was taken away, and everything was judged by the world. However, in the second half of Simpson's life, the impact of the "wife murder" did not disappear.
The last 30 years of Simpson were not good
After Simpson was acquitted, the families of the victims, Brown and Goldman, did not give up, and they filed a civil lawsuit against Simpson in 1997. In the end, the jury found Simpson guilty and needed to pay $33.5 million in damages to the families of the two victims.
Judging from the news in the past two days, Simpson obviously can't come up with so much money in the second half of his life. According to the New York Post, he paid only a portion of the restitution in the decades following the verdict. David Cook, a lawyer for Goldman's family, said that the amount of compensation owed by Simpson has soared to more than 100 million US dollars (about 720 million yuan).
In USA Today's report citing celebrities' net worth, Simpson's current net worth is estimated to be only $3 million. It may be difficult for the victim's family to get this $100 million in compensation. And this also reflects Simpson's material scarcity from the side.
Looking back on the past 30 years, O.J. Simpson was rejected by various American celebrities after the murder of his wife, and he moved from California to Florida. His career has fallen from appearing in Hollywood movies to appearing on TV shows that are not in the limelight, and his job as a sports commentator has naturally been lost, and his income has plummeted.
The halo of a generation of "black sports icons" disappeared, and the title of "wife murder suspect" was crowned on his head for the rest of his life.
What do you do next? Simpson came up with the idea of writing a book. In 2006, he wrote a book called "If I Had Done," in which he recounted the murder of his wife in a hypothetical way. The book was considered by many to be a story of his true crime, but because of the resistance of the victim's family, it was not sold by the publisher he worked with.
Image source: Amazon.com
Meanwhile, because Simpson failed to repay the full amount of damages, the bankruptcy court ruled in 2007 that the book could be published by the Goldman family in order to receive compensation from it. The Goldman family added material accusing Simpson of guilt to the book, which was subsequently published.
O.J. Simpson eventually used his athletic talents for robbery, which cost him ten years in prison. In September 2007, Simpson stormed Las Vegas with a group of people and held at gunpoint the memorabilia of sports memorabilia dealer Bruce Fromon and others, and was eventually arrested by the police.
At one point when he was arrested, Simpson argued that the souvenirs were used when he played in the NFL and were stolen from him. But this time, he didn't get away with it — in 2008, Simpson was sentenced to 33 years in prison without bail for the first nine years.
Image Credit: AP Image Credit: AP
It wasn't until 2017 that Simpson was released on parole. At that time, many people who knew him very well and the media that had been following him for a long time believed that Simpson had not changed his ways, as he said, and needed to be closely monitored. After all, he can get away with the murder of his wife.
In the nearly 30 years since the case caused a sensation, there has been an endless stream of films and television productions about Simpson. "The Simpson: Made in America" recreates the cause and effect in the form of a documentary, and hit series like "American Crime Story" once again shines a spotlight on this sensational case around the world.
The overwhelming coverage of the American media at that time, as well as the continuous excavation of the details in the case in the future, also kept the OJ Simpson case in the public eye, capturing people's interest in the plot of "idol subversion". After all, no one doesn't like the stories of top athletes who are true to themselves and fall off the altar.
But what many people may not have expected is that Simpson will eventually leave in such a way. One of the most storied and controversial athletes in the history of the sport was not knocked down by the prosecution's evidence, did not collapse from nine years in prison, and ultimately lost to cancer.
Do you say all this to make people or does God have eyes?