Read Online The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeffrey Toobin
Tags: United States, General, Social Science, History, 20th Century, Law, Legal History, Criminal Law
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Larry Fox wrote, “Willie’s message was not so much in his words. It was in his achievements and what these achievements had brought him in the way of material goods.” Telling the Mays story in the book
I Want to Tell You
, which he nominally wrote later from his prison cell, Simpson said, “It was the first time I saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Getting a big house and putting out good vibes became the leitmotif of Simpson’s professional life. After high school, he spent two years playing football and running track at the City College of San Francisco, a local junior college. He averaged more than ten yards per carry at CCSF, so the recruiters from the big four-year schools came calling in droves. But Simpson only had eyes for the University of Southern California. As a boy, O.J. had admired the pageantry of USC football—the Trojan wearing a suit of armor seated atop a great white stallion. But as a prospective Trojan himself, Simpson saw that USC delivered media exposure—and thus potentially lucrative contacts—beyond that of any other college football program in the land.
Almost half a century earlier, the USC football machine had been willed into existence by one man, an obscure, Illinois-born academic named Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid. After bouncing around several different universities after the turn of the century, Dr. K, as he was known, became president of USC in 1921. There he faced a dilemma familiar to college presidents. “Supported by tuition, possessed of virtually no endowment (hardly more than $1 million by 1926) with which to finance its expansion, U.S.C. needed money,” the historian Kevin Starr has observed. “Football offered a solution.” Dr. K invested in recruiting, bands, and a magnificent new stadium, the Coliseum, which would serve as the centerpiece of the 1932 Olympic games in Los Angeles. Von KleinSmid’s gamble paid off beyond even his own imaginings. Trojan football became one of the few activities to unite the fractured metropolis of Los Angeles. When USC defeated Notre Dame on a last-second field goal in 1931, a crowd of 300,000, one third the population of the city, greeted the returning team at the train station. The passage of time did not dim the school’s (or the city’s) enthusiasm for the sport. By the 1950s, the Trojans’ greatest star was Frank Gifford, about whom a fellow student, the novelist Frederick Exley, would observe, “Frank Gifford was an All-America at USC, and I know of no way of describing this phenomenon short of equating it with being the Pope in the Vatican.”
In 1967, at the University of Southern California, O.J. Simpson became pope—and then some. He quickly established himself as the best running back in the school’s history on what was perhaps the best team in USC history. He gained 158 yards rushing in his third game and 190 in his fourth. Southern Cal had not beaten Notre Dame in South Bend since 1939, but in 1967 Simpson and his teammates routed the Irish there, 24–7. In the final week of O.J.’s first season, USC played crosstown rival UCLA in a game freighted with even more significance than usual. Both schools, with just one loss each, remained in the hunt for a national championship, and likewise both teams needed only to beat the other to win a bid to go to the Rose Bowl. Finally, the game matched the leading contenders for the Heisman trophy, awarded annually to the best player in the nation—Gary Beban, the senior UCLA quarterback, and O.J. Simpson, the USC junior. Late in the fourthquarter, the game came down to a single play. UCLA led 20–14, and the Trojans had the ball on their own thirty-six-yard line. The drive looked like it would be Southern Cal’s last chance to score. It was third down and eight yards to go.
In the huddle, Toby Page, the USC quarterback, called a play that did not involve Simpson, but he changed his mind at the line of scrimmage and called out, “Twenty-three
I Want to Tell You
, which he nominally wrote later from his prison cell, Simpson said, “It was the first time I saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
Getting a big house and putting out good vibes became the leitmotif of Simpson’s professional life. After high school, he spent two years playing football and running track at the City College of San Francisco, a local junior college. He averaged more than ten yards per carry at CCSF, so the recruiters from the big four-year schools came calling in droves. But Simpson only had eyes for the University of Southern California. As a boy, O.J. had admired the pageantry of USC football—the Trojan wearing a suit of armor seated atop a great white stallion. But as a prospective Trojan himself, Simpson saw that USC delivered media exposure—and thus potentially lucrative contacts—beyond that of any other college football program in the land.
Almost half a century earlier, the USC football machine had been willed into existence by one man, an obscure, Illinois-born academic named Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid. After bouncing around several different universities after the turn of the century, Dr. K, as he was known, became president of USC in 1921. There he faced a dilemma familiar to college presidents. “Supported by tuition, possessed of virtually no endowment (hardly more than $1 million by 1926) with which to finance its expansion, U.S.C. needed money,” the historian Kevin Starr has observed. “Football offered a solution.” Dr. K invested in recruiting, bands, and a magnificent new stadium, the Coliseum, which would serve as the centerpiece of the 1932 Olympic games in Los Angeles. Von KleinSmid’s gamble paid off beyond even his own imaginings. Trojan football became one of the few activities to unite the fractured metropolis of Los Angeles. When USC defeated Notre Dame on a last-second field goal in 1931, a crowd of 300,000, one third the population of the city, greeted the returning team at the train station. The passage of time did not dim the school’s (or the city’s) enthusiasm for the sport. By the 1950s, the Trojans’ greatest star was Frank Gifford, about whom a fellow student, the novelist Frederick Exley, would observe, “Frank Gifford was an All-America at USC, and I know of no way of describing this phenomenon short of equating it with being the Pope in the Vatican.”
In 1967, at the University of Southern California, O.J. Simpson became pope—and then some. He quickly established himself as the best running back in the school’s history on what was perhaps the best team in USC history. He gained 158 yards rushing in his third game and 190 in his fourth. Southern Cal had not beaten Notre Dame in South Bend since 1939, but in 1967 Simpson and his teammates routed the Irish there, 24–7. In the final week of O.J.’s first season, USC played crosstown rival UCLA in a game freighted with even more significance than usual. Both schools, with just one loss each, remained in the hunt for a national championship, and likewise both teams needed only to beat the other to win a bid to go to the Rose Bowl. Finally, the game matched the leading contenders for the Heisman trophy, awarded annually to the best player in the nation—Gary Beban, the senior UCLA quarterback, and O.J. Simpson, the USC junior. Late in the fourthquarter, the game came down to a single play. UCLA led 20–14, and the Trojans had the ball on their own thirty-six-yard line. The drive looked like it would be Southern Cal’s last chance to score. It was third down and eight yards to go.
In the huddle, Toby Page, the USC quarterback, called a play that did not involve Simpson, but he changed his mind at the line of scrimmage and called out, “Twenty-three
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