OJ Simpson no longer welcome at alma mater
LOS ANGELES Being widely considered a double murderer didn’t prevent O J Simpson from attending a 2002 practice by the American football team at the University of Southern California, the school for which he won the 1968 Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding player in US college football. But now that Simpson is to be a free man again, with his release on parole from a Nevada prison set for October, he won’t be welcomed back by the Trojans.
That’s according to USC coach Clay Helton, who told ESPN: ‘‘Right now with USC, what the administration and the athletic department have said is, no, O J will not be a part of our functions.’’
Helton had been asked if Simpson might be invited back to watch the Trojans work out, as happened 15 years ago, which was seven years after he was acquitted of killing his estranged wife and a friend of hers in a trial that gripped the nation. In that instance, then-coach Pete Carroll was happy to have the former USC star around.
‘‘It was good to have him out here,’’ Carroll said in Davie, Florida, where Simpson, then a Miami resident, watched the Trojans prepare to take on Iowa in the Orange Bowl.
‘‘At ’SC, our guys hold a Heisman Trophy winner in the highest regard. For them to get a chance to see him and visit with him was very special for them.’’
‘‘I don’t think I could ever feel disconnected from ’SC,’’ Simpson said at the time, while shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for photos with onlookers.
Simpson had reportedly not attended a Trojans practice since the 1980s.
What Simpson did as a football player indirectly proved to be his undoing. He and two accomplices were convicted in 2008 of attempting to rob two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room, and he was sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison. Washington Post