Orenthal James Simpson (July 9, 1947 – April 10, 2024) was an American football player, actor, and broadcaster. He played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills, and is regarded as one of the greatest running backs of all time. Once a popular figure with the American public, Simpson’s professional success was later overshadowed by his trial and controversial acquittal for the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.
 Simpson in 1990
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| Position: | Running back | ||||||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||||||
| Born: | July 9, 1947 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
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| Died: | April 10, 2024 (aged 76) Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. |
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| Height: | 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) | ||||||||||||
| Weight: | 212 lb (96 kg) | ||||||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||||||
| High school: | Galileo (San Francisco, California) |
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| College: | CCSF (1965–1966) USC (1967–1968) |
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| NFL draft: | 1969 / Round: 1 / Pick: 1 | ||||||||||||
| Career history | |||||||||||||
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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, Simpson 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. In 1973, he 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. Simpson holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average at 143.1. After retiring with the San Francisco 49ers in 1979, Simpson pursued an acting and broadcasting career. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
In June 1994, Simpson was arrested and charged with the murders of Brown and Goldman. He was acquitted in a lengthy and internationally publicized trial, but found liable for the deaths three years later in a civil suit from the victims’ families. Prior to his death, Simpson had paid little of the $33.5 million judgment (equivalent to $64 million in 2023).
In 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, and charged with armed robbery and kidnapping. In 2008, he was convicted and sentenced to 33 years’ imprisonment, with a minimum of nine years without parole. He served his sentence at the Lovelock Correctional Center in rural Nevada. He was granted parole in July 2017, released from prison in October, and granted early release from his parole in December 2021 by the Nevada Division of Parole and Probation. He died from prostate cancer in April 2024, at the age of 76
Born in 1947 and raised in San Francisco, California, Simpson was a son of Eunice (née Durden), a hospital administrator, and Jimmy Lee Simpson. His father reportedly worked as an employee of the Federal Reserve Bank and as a onetime bank custodian. His father was a well-known drag queen in the San Francisco Bay Area. Later in life, Jimmy Simpson announced that he was gay. He died of AIDS in 1986.
Simpson’s maternal grandparents were from Louisiana. His aunt gave him the name Orenthal, which she said was the name of a French actor she liked. He was called “O.J.” from birth and did not know that Orenthal was his given name until a teacher read it in third grade. Simpson had one brother, Melvin Leon “Truman” Simpson, one living sister, Shirley Simpson-Baker, and one deceased sister, Carmelita Simpson-Durio. As a child, Simpson developed rickets and wore braces on his legs until the age of five, giving him his bowlegged stance.
After his parents separated in 1952, Simpson and his sister were raised by their mother.
Simpson grew up in San Francisco and lived with his family in the housing projects of the Potrero Hill neighborhood. In his early teenage years, he joined a street gang called the Persian Warriors and was briefly incarcerated at the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center. Future wife Marguerite, his childhood sweetheart, described Simpson as “really an awful person then”. After his third arrest, Simpson happened to meet with baseball star Willie Mays, who encouraged the youth to avoid trouble. Simpson said it helped persuade him to reform. At Galileo High School (now Galileo Academy of Science and Technology) in San Francisco, Simpson played for the school football team, the Galileo Lions. He graduated in 1965
Buffalo Bills
The first selection 1969 AFL–NFL Common Draft was held by the AFL’s Buffalo Bills, after finishing 1–12–1 in 1968. They took Simpson, but he demanded the largest contract in professional sports history: $650,000 over five years. This led to a standoff with Bills’ owner Ralph Wilson, as Simpson threatened to become an actor and skip professional football. Eventually, Wilson agreed to pay Simpson.
Simpson entered professional football with high expectations, but struggled in his first three years, averaging only 622 yards per season. Bills coach John Rauch, not wanting to build an offense around one running back, assigned Simpson to do blocking and receiving duties at the expense of running the ball. In 1971, Rauch resigned as head coach, and the Bills brought in Harvey Johnson. Despite Johnson devising a new offense for Simpson, Simpson was still ineffective that year. After the 1971 season, the Bills fired Johnson and brought in Lou Saban as head coach. Unlike Rauch, Saban made Simpson the centerpiece of the Bills offense.
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In 1972, Simpson rushed for over 1,000 yards for the first time in his career, gaining a league-leading total of 1,251 yards. In 1973, Simpson became the first player to break the highly coveted 2,000 yard rushing mark, with 2,003 total rushing yards and 12 touchdowns. Simpson broke the mark during the last game of the season against the New York Jets with a seven-yard rush. That same game also saw Simpson break Jim Brown’s single-season rushing record of 1,863 yards. For his performance, Simpson won that year’s NFL MVP Award and Bert Bell Award. While other players have broken the 2,000-yard mark since Simpson, his record was established when the NFL had only 14 games per season, as opposed to the 16-game seasons that began in 1978. As of 2013, Simpson still holds the rushing record for 14 games
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