Two Bills Drive

‘Plenty other Black athletes across the years chased TV and film roles — Sugar Ray Robinson, Bernie Casey and Woody Strode among them. It was never an easy transition. The trained actors always seemed to show up the athlete turned character, quietly proving that acting was a serious craft and intense training was beneficial. O.J. just showed up. He was ready to go. He told friends that he knew all about drama from his upbringing, poor and Black in San Francisco.’

“I was amazed at how people flocked to him in public, wanting to say hello and snap a photo. Every time he walked into a room you could feel his aura and hear the whispers — ‘Did he or didn’t he?’” Simpson spent a lot of time playing golf, flashing his famous smile and waving a cigar at onlookers. He was a regular on public courses. His attempts to attain membership at private clubs were repeatedly rejected.

‘O.J. was as affable in-person as the persona he presented on television despite being one of the most famous athletes-turned-Hollywood-stars you could imagine. On the eve of the Opening Ceremonies of the Barcelona Games that summer, he invited me, Michael Wilbon, David Aldridge and the late Brian Burwell to meet him at a Barcelona nightclub called Up & Down. We couldn’t turn down a night with the Juice, obviously, so we accepted.’

‘His two seasons with the 49ers, in retrospect, are a mere blip in a polarizing life that had far more captivating chapters: charismatic actor, successful broadcaster, rental-car pitchman, and, for the past 30 years, suspected double-murderer, though a jury acquitted him of the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman.’

‘The jury in the murder trial cleared him, but the case, which had held up a cracked mirror to Black and white America, changed the trajectory of his life. In 1997, a civil suit by the victims’ families found him liable for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman, and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages. He paid little of the debt, moved to Florida and struggled to remake his life, raise his children and stay out of trouble.’

‘What did people see when they looked at O.J. Simpson? A superstar, a killer, a hero, a liar, a victim, an abuser, an insider, a pariah — often many of these at once. In his fame and infamy, he was an example of what celebrity could make of a person and a symbol of what the media could make of a country.’

‘It was about a month ago, Joe DeLamielleure said, when he got a call about his former Buffalo Bills teammate O.J. Simpson. Simpson’s health was deteriorating. J.D. Hill, another former Buffalo teammate of both men, contacted DeLamielleure and said O.J. would appreciate him reaching out because, as Hill told his old teammate, “O.J.’s not doing well.” “So I called O.J.,” DeLamielleure, who made the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was Simpson’s most well-known blocker in their 1970s heyday, said in a phone interview Thursday. “It was, ‘How’re you doing?’ Not so much of ‘Hey, I’m sick, buddy.’ We were just checking up on each other. He said he had cancer, but also said, ‘Hey, I’m getting better.’

‘The 22-year-old running back appeared at Derby Downs on Aug. 23, 1969, during the summer of his rookie year with the Buffalo Bills. One night earlier, the Bills had lost a 20-7 preseason game to the Baltimore Colts in Buffalo.’

‘The outlet claimed that all of OJ’s loved ones signed NDAs and were not allowed to have their phones in the room while saying their goodbyes.’