Simpson may have been great at football, but so what? It's just a game, for crying out loud. What does being good at a game, any game, have to do with the quality of one's life? I judge a man not by any athletic prowess he may or may not have but by his character and actions off the field. By that measure Simpson is a miserable failure, a murderer who savagely killed two innocent people and unfortunately got away with it, in one of the worst miscarriages of justice in modern history. I could care less about his skill in football--he's a vicious, depraved criminal, deserving of our utter contempt.

He was a hell of a football player and a terrible human being. The murdered souls still cry out for justice.

Although this subject is dieing down, any controversial subject is going to be a hot subject.

I never did like football. I never cared about O.J. Simpson in general. He's no sacred cow, running back, or glove handler to me.

O.J Simpson has two lives-as a sportsman and as a murderer. Sportsmen aren't expected to be perfect but they should post a good image, since kids normally admire them. As a sportsman O.J is good, as a human being, he is a controversial failure. Two different aspects, just to those who choose to put him down as a sportsman because he is a murderer.

We should separate OJ the person from OJ the football player. Come on, you can't give him a negative rating for his career, he was one of the best runningbacks the game had ever seen. I've heard some comparisons between Pete Rose and OJ Simpson, that Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame because OJ is in in the Football Hall of Fame. What OJ did had nothing to do with his performance or actions as a football player. Pete Rose gambled while he was managing a baseball team; this was a major ethical oversight involving the game itself. In that case, you can't separate personal actions from career. What makes OJ a sacred cow in my view is that he tapped an undercurrent in American society, namely the issue of racial justice. He was clearly guilty of killing his ex-wife and her friend, yet OJ, a black man, was able to buy justice by getting the best defense attorneys available to defend him. Some blacks saw this as payback rather than bringing justice to a murderer. It really had little to do with his performance as a football player or even amateur actor. The defense was able to spin it into a racial argument and that won it for Simpson; it was a very divisive tactic that made people either love or hate Simpson. People forgot about the facts surrounding the case, it became about race. This is the core issue here.

I salute Irishgit and Ignatius for being able to divorce O.J. Simpson's failure as a human being from his success as a running back. I wish I could be that logical. But I just can't get past the fact that O.J. Simpson is a murdering SOB. I'm not saying that athletes should be saints. But I think it would be nice if they at least had a modicum of decency, since many people, particularly children, look up to them. I believe athletes should strive to set a good example, by at least not getting into too much mischief.

This is sort of a reverse sacred cow. Try saying that this guy was one of the greatest running backs in NFL history, and the trolls will be screeching, He's a murdering bastard, how can you say that he was a good football player, you moron. Let me try once again, using small words: O.J. Simpson is a lousy human being. O.J. Simpson was a great running back. They are two different issues.