O.J. Simpson Runs to Glory -- December 16, 1973

I WAS THERE because somebody dumped New York Jets tickets on my dad.

"The consummate runner fulfills the promise"

It was Dec. 16, 1973, one of those punishingly cold days at Shea Stadium, when icy wind whipped in from Flushing Bay, numbing everything in its path. Green Bay's Lambeau Field may be synonymous with "frozen tundra," but a late season Jets home game could just as easily freeze you to the marrow.

On this day, the team was 4-9. By the 1 p.m. kickoff, snow was falling.

So why go?

Why trudge out to the C-shaped municipal stadium surrounded by parking lots and expressways to sit in the arctic chill, drink watery hot cocoa and watch bad Jets football (a virtually redundant description throughout the 1970s)?

Two words. Make that two initials: O.J., as in Simpson, a man on the cusp of rushing for more than 2,000 yards in a 14-game season, something never accomplished before or since.

O.J., aka The Juice, winner of the 1968 Heisman Trophy while at the University of Southern California. Selected with the first overall pick by the Buffalo Bills in the 1969 National Football League draft, he was handsome, articulate and charismatic. A first-magnitude star.

If you were born after 1994 -- after his descent into infamy -- it may be difficult to comprehend the hold he had on the American public, as an athlete, part-time actor, sportscaster and pitchman for orange juice, western boots and rental cars.

He'd come of age in an era that saw the first wide-spread acceptance of black celebrities as just plain celebrities. In 1965, Bill Cosby became the first black to play a lead role in a television drama, I Spy. Three years later, while Simpson was running to greatness at USC, Diahann Carroll took similar stride for black women in Julia. In 1970, Flip Wilson got in his own TV variety show.

Why run through airports when you can fly?

During the 1960s, Muhammad Ali transcended professional boxing to become one of the world's most widely recognized celebrities, a man willing to sacrifice his career for his principles. But where he was controversial and brash, Simpson was silky smooth and universally liked, by men and women, white and black. He transcended race in the same way Barack Obama would three decades later.

O.J.'s affable demeanor and good looks made him a natural for the tube and silver screen. Holding out for a better deal before signing with the Bills, he even threatened to bypass Buffalo for Hollywood, where he'd already had bit parts in Dragnet, Ironside, Medical Center and It Takes a Thief.

While he eventually signed, he didn't hit the ground running. O.J. rushed for just 1,927 yards over his first three seasons combined, barely surpassing Jim Brown's single-season record of 1,863. But things changed in 1972, when the Buffalo hired a new coach, Lou Saban, who plugged in The Juice and let him run.

Simpson's 1,251 yards led the league. His 94 yard-run from scrimmage in an October game against the Pittsburgh Steelers was the longest in the league that year. He averaged 4.3 yards per carry and 89.4 per game but scored only six touchdowns as the Bills staggered to a 4-9-1 record.

By game 10 of the 1973 season, Simpson surpassed his previous season total, running for 1,323 yards, 123 of them at the Jets' expense in week 3. Though held to under 100 yards in three games, he finished the year in a rush, piling up 480 yards just over weeks 11, 12 and 13. Arriving at Shea, he'd already carried  the ball 1,803 yards and Brown's record was only 60 yards away.

That record fell before the end of the first quarter and, with the frost-bitten Shea faithful to bear witness, he piled up precisely 200 yards on the day as the Bills bullied the Jets, 34-14.  It would be the last game for Jets coach Weeb Ewbank, architect of their Super Bowl III victory, and my first as a fan.

For the season, Simpson had juked and jetted his way to 2003 yards -- almost 1.14 miles -- pursued by 11 men swearing to stop him.

In time, and with extension of the standard NFL season to 16 games, the record would fall. So too would O.J., in a manner that would have seemed unimaginable fiction to football fans on that snowy day.

Simpson as doomed astronaut John Walker, with co-stars Sam Waterston and James Brolin
in the thriller Capricorn One. Photo from the July 1978 issue of Starlog Magazine

Between those two defining moments, Simpson played pro-football for just six more years, the final two for his hometown San Francisco 49ers. His acting credits included roles in The Towering Inferno, The Cassandra Crossing, Roots, Capricorn One and the Naked Gun movies.

In 1985 he wed Nicole Brown, with whom he had two children over seven tumultuous years during which the former football star cheated on and abused her. They divorced in 1992.

In June 1994, he was charged with murdering her and friend Ronald Goldman, but apprehended only after a 50-mile -- or 88,000 yard -- low speed chase across the Los Angeles freeway system pursued by dozens of police officers sworn to stop him.

Simpson was acquitted after an epochal 1995 trial but found legally culpable in a civil suit two years later and ordered to pay more than $33 million to the victims' families.

Ten years after that, he'd be convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping for crimes involving sports memorabilia -- our communal tokens of hero worship. Sentenced to nine to 33 years imprisonment, The Juice was set free in 2017.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive

December '81: Green and White Clad Santa Brings Big, Long Overdue Gift to New York Football Fans

TO BE POLITE, the 1970s were unkind to New York football fans. To be blunt, they sucked.

The Jets, having stunned the world with their Super Bowl III triumph over the Baltimore Colts in 1969, paid a heavy karmic price for quarterback Joe Namath's victory guarantee and never posted a winning season.

All-purpose back Bruce Harper
and offensive lineman
Marvin Powell

The Giants had just one, rolling up a 9-5 record in 1970, during what should have been a victory lap for their intracity rivals. They also had no home, bounding like an unwanted relative from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, to New Haven, Connecticut's Yale Bowl, to Shea Stadium in Queens and finally to the swamps of New Jersey, where the team christened its eponymous new stadium in 1976 by winning three contests and losing 11.

Hobbled by injuries, Namath's decline was precipitous and, by 1977, he was placed on waivers and claimed by the Los Angeles Rams. A succession of successors to championship coach Weeb Ewbank, failed to stem the losing tide.

The Giants' humiliating nadir came on a November day in 1978 when running back Larry Csonka, playing out the string in Hackensack, NJ after a hall of fame career in Miami, failed to corral quarterback Joe Pisarcik's handoff with less than 30 seconds remaining.

The ensuing fumble, scooped up and run into the Giants' end zone by Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Herman Edwards, converted a sure 17-12 victory into a 19-17 defeat.

The Jets, for good measure, lost by the same score that day, to the New England Patriots. They would finish the season 8-8, a five game improvement from the prior year, while the Giants would go 6-10. Each team would, bizarrely, replicate those records in 1979. Then, in 1980, each finished 4-12.

If there was a bright center of the pro football universe, New York was the planet it was farthest from.

But bad teams get good draft picks and, picking consecutively in the 1981 National Football League draft, the Giants selected hulking linebacker Lawrence Taylor as the second overall choice, while the Jets took the dazzling-if-fragile halfback Freeman McNeil as the third.

... vs. the Packers, Dec. 20, 1981
An NY win would send the Jets
and the Giants to the post-season.

On field, the teams' performance during the first six weeks of the 1981 season suggested little had changed. The Jets dropped their first three games before sandwiching two wins around a tie. On Oct. 11, their record stood at 2-3-1. The Giants, after winning two of their first three, promptly lost a pair before producing another victory, evening their record at 3-3.

From there, the Jets took off. Buoyed by the gutsy play of quarterback Richard Todd and a ferocious defensive line -- Mark Gastineau, Abdul Salaam, Marty Lyons and Joe Klecko, a unit that collectively came to be known as the New York Sack Exchange -- Gang Green reeled off seven victories in nine games.

Among them, a stunning 16-15 victory over the division rival Miami Dolphins in which Todd, playing with a cracked rib and sprained ankle, threw a game winning touchdown to tight end Jerome Barkum with just seconds to spare.

By Dec. 20, the last Sunday of the regular season, the 9-5-1 Jets were scheduled to play the Green Bay Packers. On the line: a berth in the American Football Conference Wild Card game.

The Giants' seesaw season saw them win three in a row twice, while enduring a 1-3 stretch in between. Their regular season had ended the day before with a 13-10 victory over the Dallas Cowboys. With a 9-7 record, they needed help to make the post season. They needed the Jets to beat Green Bay.

And the Jets delivered. With Todd tossing two TDs, running backs Bruce Harper and Kevin Long adding two more and the defense sacking GB QB Lynn Dickey nine times, they dispatched the Packers, 28-3.

Christmas had come early. New York's wallflower football teams were going to the Wild Card dance. With both games set for Dec. 27, the Giants would journey to Philadelphia, while the Jets would host the Buffalo Bills at Shea.

The only NFL playoff game ever played at Shea
Dec. 27, 1981

Of course, for the Jets, disaster is never far from view.

Harper fumbled his return of the opening kickoff. Sixteen seconds in, the visitors led 7-0. By the second quarter, Buffalo increased that lead to 24-0. The New Yorkers fought back, posting 13 unanswered points before the Bills struck again.

As the game clock wound down, Buffalo had the lead, 31-27, but the Jets had the ball and Todd was driving. With 10 seconds remaining, Bills defensive back Bill Simpson intercepted a pass at the one yard line, sealing the victory for the visitors.

It would be the only NFL playoff game ever played at Shea.* In 1984, they'd join the Giants at the Meadowlands. Meanwhile, down the interstate in Philadelphia, the future landlords beat the Eagles 27-21. Their season would end on Jan. 5 with a 38-24 loss to the eventual Super Bowl XVII winner San Francisco 49ers.

But the dreadful decade, 1970-1980, was over. Todd and the Jets would lose the 1982 AFC championship to the Dolphins in a mud-mired game in Miami. The Giants, in 1986, would beat the Denver Broncos to win Super Bowl XXI.
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* To be sure, Shea hosted two American Football League Jets playoff games in 1968 and 1969.

-- Follow me on Twitter @paperboyarchive