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Who was your favorite player as a kid? What if the answer starts with the letters ‘O.J.’?

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6 months ago

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Who was your favorite player as a kid? What if the answer starts with the letters ‘O.J.’?

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Just about any passionate sports fan can recall which athletes first sparked that passion in them when they were young and first falling in love with sports. It might have stemmed from a local pro or college team, or maybe a player you saw on television even if they weren’t part of your hometown team. But make no mistake, it wasn’t just the team, but a star player or two that captured your imagination.

Here in the Phoenix area, it’s probably a good bet that Devin Booker, Kevin Durant or Diana Taurasi have been influencing young basketball fans. Kyler Murray probably is doing the same with young football fans, and it won’t be long before Marvin Harrison Jr. does the same. And of course, there are the ones with national profiles who have been capturing the imagination of young fans no matter where they live — like LeBron James, Steph Curry or Caitlin Clark on the court, or Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen in football, Lionel Messi on the pitch, or Shohei Ohtani at the plate.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, you’ll never forget those childhood sports heroes.

That’s true for me, a fan who grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., and started rooting for the local teams in the early ‘70s, at a time when the newly formed NHL’s Sabres and the NBA’s Braves joined the NFL’s Bills to give the small city on Lake Erie three pro teams (there was a fairly robust local college basketball scene in the region as well at the time that produced the likes of Bob Lanier and Calvin Murphy).

Naturally, it wasn’t long before I started pulling for star players who stood out on those local teams.

By the mid-’70s, my hands-down favorite NBA player was the great Bob McAdoo, who starred for the Buffalo Braves and was among the league’s top scorers, with his smooth jump shot marked by his lower legs bent back as he soared and let it fly. (I tried emulating that shot a lot on outdoor courts, even though I had a body more suited for the great Wes Unseld’s style of play). The Braves made it to the playoffs a few times because of him, but never got too far before eventually becoming the L.A. Clippers in 1978.

On the ice, it was the great Gilbert Perreault, the smooth-skating center who anchored the great French Connection line that led the Sabres to the ’75 Stanley Cup finals (they lost in six games to the Flyers, but I was lucky enough to attend one of those games when a friend’s dad had an extra ticket).

But back then, just like today, the NFL was king and in the early to mid-1970s there was one professional player in Buffalo who stood above the rest.

This is where it gets uncomfortable. If you’ve read this far, and have a sense of NFL history, you know who that player was. If you don’t, I will force my fingers to type his name in the interest of journalistic accuracy: O.J. Simpson. To be more precise, the late O.J. Simpson. He died earlier this year, in case you forgot.

Yeah, that guy. The one better known for being acquitted in 1995 after being charged with the horrific murders the prior year of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman, a verdict that still strikes so many as the wrong one. White-Bronco-slow-speed-chase O.J. Simpson. The one later found liable of those killings in a civil case, and the one who later served prison time for kidnapping and armed robbery that took place in Las Vegas. And the one who spent his later years in Florida golfing and occasionally posting on social media about the Bills and other things.

But he also was the one I watched on TV in 1973 become the first 2,000-yard rusher in a season, in that snowy game vs. the New York Jets at Shea Stadium. And the one I saw run wild against opponents in person a few times.

In the ‘70s, he was simply “The Juice.’’ Over the past 30 years, he was, well, somebody else.

What happens when such a figure from our childhood falls so far from grace? Look, I’m not trying to compare a football hero to, say, a parent or teacher who betrays a child’s trust in some way. Such situations are far more serious and deserve a column all their own.

In this case, however, it’s more one of those awkward things that comes up now and then. Like if someone asks, “Who was your favorite NFL player you cheered for growing up?’’ When the answer is O.J. Simpson, you hem and haw. It’s as if an honest response will offend the universe along with the Brown and Goldman families, whose pain, and probably their anger, surely remain to this day.

But it is the honest response.

The truth also is, when the events of 1994-95 took place, like with many Americans, my view of O.J. never was the same. And frankly, the older I’ve got, the less I’ve clung to any idea of childhood sports ‘’heroes’’ at all. They were great athletes I cheered for a long time ago, and helped mold me as a sports fan, but that’s about it.

That said, I never bought into the idea that Simpson’s name should be removed from the Bills’ Ring of Honor, where it was placed in 1980. Or that he be removed from the NFL Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 1985. Those honors took place based on his NFL accomplishments in prior years. He was named to the NFL 75th Anniversary team, and the NFL 100 All-Time Team as well.

Those things can stay in place, but their meaning will never be the same. Now, they only serve to remind the world who O.J. Simpson was before he wasn’t anymore.

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