The Big 10 Conference is now comprised of eighteen football teams, which extends an unbelievable 2,764 miles from the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles to Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Unfortunately, the grueling travel time of a twelve-hour cross- country round trip is one of the major downsides in being a member of this expanded football conference for 2024.
For example, when Rutgers plays USC in Los Angeles on Friday, October 25 this could take a big toll on many football players trying to maintain a high GPA. Hopefully, tutors will be allowed to travel with the team when they make their transcontinental trip the day before and after the game.
Last Saturday afternoon, I watched the much-anticipated game on WDBJ 7 (CBS) between the No. 4 Penn State Nittany Lions and the unranked University of Southern California Trojans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The game did not disappoint me because my favorite team Penn State defeated USC 33-30 in an exciting single overtime.
However, what greatly disappointed me was when the television camera briefly showed the cardinal-colored pentagonal banners of the eight USC Heisman Trophy winners displayed in the east end zone beneath the iconic peristyle. That is when I spotted the second banner from the left with the gold number 32 above the year 1968.
I knew immediately that this number and year belonged to O.J. Simpson from watching him numerous times as a boy during the 1968 football season. I found it extremely disconcerting that USC would take any pride or joy in displaying his retired number and the year he received his Heisman Trophy. In my opinion, Simpson only brought great shame and notoriety to both his alma mater and himself.
Although Simpson was found innocent for the double murders of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman on October 3, 1995, he was later found guilty of both murders in a civil lawsuit filed by the Brown and Goldman families on February 4, 1997.
Simpson was also later sentenced to thirty-three years in prison with the possibility of parole after nine years for armed robbery and kidnapping on December 5, 2008. He served almost nine years in prison, was granted parole in July 20, 2017 and was released from Lovelock Correctional Center in Lovelock, Nevada on October 1, 2017.
I truly believe that Simpson was a violent narcissistic thug, who possessed a crowd-pleasing personality and had the amazing sociopathic ability to compartmentalize his two murders while never expressing any empathy or guilt. How he faced his four children in the aftermath of their mother’s murder in 1994 is beyond my understanding. I also wonder what other crimes he may have committed in his life without ever being apprehended or charged?
I believe that Simpson’s banner is at the Coliseum only so that USC can take great undeserved pride in having the most Heisman Trophy winners in NCAA history, which is currently eight. Without his banner, USC would be tied with Ohio State, Oklahoma and Notre Dame with seven each.
Until the University of Southern California permanently removes his banner in the Coliseum’s east end zone, they will continue to prostitute their proud venerable football legacy since 1888. O.J. Simpson needs to become persona non grata as soon as possible at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Otherwise, the university is only glorifying criminal behavior among all its student athletes, and setting a bad example for other universities and colleges in the U.S. to follow.
This is especially true at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia where the university now hangs a banner honoring former quarterback Michael Vick’s number 7 at the north end of Lane Stadium.
Virginia Tech has completely ignored Vick’s criminal history when he was sentenced to twenty-three months and three years of probation in a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas on December 10, 2007 along with other state charges for engaging in an illegal “dogfighting conspiracy” before being released after eighteen months to home confinement. Like O.J. Simpson, Michael Vick needs to become persona non grata as soon as possible at Lane Stadium.
– Robert L. Maronic