6 Good Things O.J. Simpson Did With His Life

Before O.J. started killing people, he was actually a pretty cool guy.

O.J. Simpson isn’t all bad. OK, he probably certainly maybe most definitely killed his ex wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman and won his acquittal by pretending his big-ass hands couldn’t possibly fit in the slightly less big-ass gloves the murderer wore (at least not while wearing evidence-protecting latex gloves underneath).

And yes, after a civil jury found him liable for the wrongful deaths and ordered him to pay the victims’ families $33,500,000 in damages, he antagonized them by writing If I Did It, a book in which he explains how he would have killed Brown and Goldman if he had murdered them. And sure, Judge Jackie Glass just sentenced him to a minimum of 15 years in prison for the armed robbery and kidnapping of two sports memorabilia dealers, but aren’t we all guilty of a few missteps? Complex remembers six good things “Juice” did before he went bad…

TROJAN EXPLOSION
In 1967, Simpson led the nation in rushing with 1,451 yards and 11 touchdowns and propelled the University of Southern California Trojans to a national title (but was passed over for the Heisman Trophy). A year later, he ran for 1,709 yards and 22 touchdowns, won the Heisman in a landslide victory and made everyone swallow the “Juice.”
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2,000 YARDS AND RUNNIN’
In 1973, with the Buffalo Bills, Simpson became the first running back in NFL history to rush for more than 2,000 yards and was named the league’s MVP. His season total was 2,003 after he beasted for 219 and 200 yards in his final two games. And this was when the NFL played only 14 games, not 16. To be fair, maybe Reggie Bush has been hampered by sand in his vagina?
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ROOTS MANEUVER
Simpson played Kadi Touray in the acclaimed 1977 miniseries version of Alex Haley’s Roots. Admittedly, some critics argued that he was unbelievable as a West African native, but then once upon a time we wouldn’t have believed him as a robber/kidnapper/suspected murderer either.
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BOYS IN BLUE HUMOR
Simpson played Detective Nordberg, a bumbling undercover cop who takes repeated pratfalls in Leslie Nielsen’s The Naked Gun police spoofs. And you thought LAPD officers tampered with evidence to incriminate him just because they hate black people.
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PEARLY WHITES
Some people say Simpson got paid and abandoned the black community but in his defense he was knocking off attractive white women, at least setting a good example for upwardly mobile black men. Well, until he started knocking off white women.
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TRIAL AND ERROR
Realizing that justice had not been done in his murder trial, Simpson politely obliged the world by getting himself put behind bars for armed robbery and kidnapping. Not quite the same, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.