![Why All-Pro Football 2K8 is the only video game where you can play as OJ Simpson STAR CARD ✰✰✰ LTC SPECIAL ABILITIES 32 HB #32 * GOLD STAR O.J. SIMPSON HT WT YRS PRO 6'1" 212 11 COLLEGE USC PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL CAREER BUF '69-'77, SF'78,'79 Break Away Burst Quick Feet Player has an extra gear when running away from defenders. Player has top notch agility for his position. Speed Burner Player has top notch speed for his position. Press to retum from Star Card. All-Pro Football 2K8 is the only football game that 2K has produced since Madden got the exclusive NFL license in 2004. Now, this isn't a dealbreaker! You can still make a football game without the NFL involved. Getting the license for a major sports league is important because you want to be able to use their branding and intellectual property, which includes things like team logos, or possibly the stadiums, depending on how that's managed. But you know what the league license DOESN'T include? The rights to the players. Most major professional sports leagues in the US have player unions, usually called "players associations." These groups are responsible for collective bargaining for player contracts, so when there's a lockout in a professional sport, it's because the player association has gone on strike. These groups also control the rights to the players, and they can be negotiated and licensed separately from the league trademarks. There's a lot you can do with just player rights. You can include the players' names and likenesses. You can even identify what real-world teams they play for! You just can't include any of the team or league trademarks. It's not perfect, but a few sports games have licensed the players directly without the league. For instance, Out of the Park Baseball is a series of really nerdy, stats-driven baseball sims that have been produced in Germany since 1999. For the first 15 years of their history, instead of getting the MLB license, they got the MLBPA license. So you could play as the Washington Nationals in the NL East with all the right players, they would just have no logo and play in a generic stadium. (I wanted to get a screenshot of this because I own an older edition of OOTP, but unfortunately their online authentication servers are no longer working! Luckily it is legal for consumers to break copy protection for a legally acquired offline game to get it to run again! See Para. (17)(i). I just didn't want to go through that effort for this post.) Unfortunately, Madden also got the exclusive rights to the NFLPA, so you couldn't get just the player names. With the rights for both teams and players tied up, some companies threw in the towel and made completely fictional football games instead. Midway, for instance, made Blitz: The League, an NFL Blitz spinoff without any real teams or players, which let it go in a more extreme direction. But remember that players are licensed separately from leagues. And you know who also has a separate licensing association? RETIRED PLAYERS. That's right. Players who are no longer active in the league have their own independent players association, the Pro Football Retired Players Association (PFRPA). They operate a licensing group called the Football Greats Alliance, which handles the rights for their members. If you want to license the New England Patriots, you go through the NFL. But you want to use Tom Brady? You're going through PFRPA. That's how Arcade1up was able to get NFL Blitz re-released with at least some of the original players included. 2K saw the opportunity here and went in a different direction than their competitors: a game with fictional teams but real, retired players. That's what All-Pro Football 2K8 was! It was an attempt to make a best-selling football game by licensing the names/stats of real players who no longer had any legal obligations to the NFL, like John Elway and Jerry Rice (of Dog Football fame). The PFRPA didn't exist until 2016, so 2K probably had to go through multiple different talent agencies, or maybe even license individual players. Either way, the upside is that getting a handful of old pros like this must have been way, way cheaper than what a league license would have cost. But we're not done yet! Now we know about the specific legal issues that resulted in 2K making a game where you play as retired football players. But that still doesn't answer the question: Why can you play as OJ Simpson? This all comes down to timing. I don't want to suggest there was ever a time since 1994 when OJ Simpson-who almost certainly murdered Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman-was not controversial, but starting around 2006, OJ Simpson attempted to rehabilitate his media image by leaning into his notoriety. First off and most obviously, there's his book If I Did It, where he ghoulishly explained how he would have murdered his victims, if, you know, hypothetically, he did it, just saying. He also starred in the hidden camera prank special Juiced, which, I cannot emphasize enough, was a real hour-long PPV special where OJ Simpson played pranks on people. I skimmed through it for the sake of this post, and it's pretty awful. A lot of it is the usual "There's too much f------ s--- on me" level of prank comedy, but there's also a sketch where OJ attempts to sell his white Ford Bronco at a used car lot and brags about its "escapability." The runtime is also padded out with softcore p----------, which, okay. If you really want to watch it, someone ripped the DVD and uploaded it to the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/oj-simpson-juiced-dvdrip-media-hoarderz.com "Has "JUICED" taken reality TV too far? The jury is still out, but one thing is for certain - it will never be the same again!! GET PREPARED TO GET JUICED!!! YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!!!" Juiced was distributed by XEG (Xtreme Entertainment Group), a direct-to-DVD trash company that also sold videos like World's Wildest Bachelor Parties, Felony Fights, and Crazy White Boys. This is the level of publicity OJ was reduced to, yet he still went for it. Which brings us to All-Pro Football 2K8. It makes sense that at this late stage of his career, when OJ was otherwise reduced to doing prank comedy for the makers of Bum Hunts, he would want in on this. This was an opportunity to burnish his image by appearing in a cast of all-time NFL players and dog football entrepreneurs. In the game, he plays for the Miami Cyclones, a fictional team in Florida, the state where he retired in the hopes of escaping ever having to pay the $33.5 million civil judgment he owed for the rest of his life over the murder of Brown and Goldman. In an extremely bad confluence of events, one of the fictional teams in APF 2K8 is the New Jersey Assassins, which has a dagger in their logo, and the players do a throat-slitting gesture when they get a touchdown. Do you want to guess what team everyone immediately traded OJ Simpson to? NJ 6CAR 3 CAR 2 3rd 1:44 35 APF2KB DELAMIE 2K, for their part, was quick to clarify this was a user-created scenario: "The decision of Take-Two's 2K Sports label to include Simpson in the game, despite his past, could possibly be defended, considering his place in football history. But's it's unclear why the company would use a mascot that had the potential to play on Simpson's notoriety as the accused in the 1994 murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman. [---] 2K Sports' decision leaves the company open to accusations of bad taste, but, at its worst, it suggests a comfort level with Simpson's past to profit and promote a video game that many parents would likely buy as a normal sports-game purchase. [...] Take-Two declined to answer specific questions relating to whether Simpson approved the use of the mascot in the game. But a company spokesperson forwarded a statement saying that the knifelike motion from the mascot is "not specifically associated with O.J. Simpson, and the game does not promote any such connection."" As for why 2K thought it was a good idea to license OJ Simpson in the first place? They've never commented on it, but when the game was in development, slightly over a decade had passed since his murder trial. OJ had decided, however coldly and calculatedly, that it was time to start laughing at himself. It might have seemed like his public image was about to thaw. Prior to 2005, nobody would have made a football game starring retired players, and good taste would have prevented them from even considering including OJ Simpson. Given the unique set of circumstances that led to the production of All-Pro Football 2K8, apparently 2K decided that OJ, as a former all-star, was worth including. Two months after the release of APF 2K8, OJ Simpson was arrested for armed robbery. This was the only time it was possible to publish a video game starring OJ Simpson. It was- and will remain, for good reason-his only video game appearance. read less #oj simpson #all-pro football 2K8 #2K Sports #rest in piss bozo #sports games #games #sports... law? i guess? 8 comments Q>](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/list/002/795/454/4a4.png "\"Why All-Pro Football 2K8 is the only video game where you can play as OJ Simpson\" by Phil Salvador")
O.J. Simpson
This submission is currently being researched & evaluated!
You can help confirm this entry by contributing facts, media, and other evidence of notability and mutation.
About
O.J. Simpson, real name Orenthal James Simpson, is a former American football player who later in life became the prime suspect in the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson in a high-profile murder trial dubbed the "trial of the century." Simpson was acquitted of all charges, yet the trial still has been a source of fascination in popular culture. In 2007, he was charged with multiple felonies including armed robbery and kidnapping, and was sentenced to 33 years in prison. He was granted parole, and released from prison on October 1st, 2017. On April 10th, 2024, O.J. Simpson died after a battle with prostate cancer.
History
Orenthal James Simpson was born July 9th, 1947 in San Francisco, California.[1] He attended USC where he entered the national spotlight as a star running back, winning the Heisman Trophy one year.[2] The Buffalo Bills selected him with the first overall pick in the 1969 NFL Draft, where after several decent seasons, became an NFL Star in the 1973 season, when he set the single-season rushing yards record.[3][4] He spent nine seasons with the Bills and two with the San Francisco 49ers before retiring after the 1979 season. He was inducted into the pro-football Hall of Fame in 1985.
Murder Trial
The O.J. Simpson Murder Trial was a highly publicized criminal trial of retired American football player Orenthal James Simpson on two counts of first-degree murder relating to the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman in June 1994. Following a lengthy and dramatic trial by a grand jury that lasted for eight months, Simpson was ultimately acquitted of all charges in October 1995. Due to the celebrity status of the defendant, coupled with an extensive period of intense media scrutiny and turbulent climate of race-relations under which the trial took place, the case was eventually dubbed "the trial of the century" by the U.S. news media.
Arrest for Armed Robbery and Kidnapping
On October 3rd, 2007, Simpson was convicted for armed robbery and kidnapping. Simpson and others had confronted a sports memorabilia dealer, Bruce Fromong, who they believed had stolen Simpson's memorabilia from him. Simpson and accomplices confronted Fromong at gunpoint and stole some of his memorabilia. Simpson was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
On July 19th, 2017, he was granted parole after serving the minimum of nine years of his 33-year sentence after being arrested in 2008 for armed robbery. His parole hearing streamed on live television and ran from about noon to 3:00 P.M. EST. All four members of the parole board agreed to release Simpson as he had "no prior convictions," "community support," and "stable release plans." Fromong, testified that he had known Simpson for years and forgiven him.
Online Presence
Twitter Account
One June 14th, 2019, Simpson launched a Twitter account, saying in the first video he posted that he has "a little getting even to do."[5] The announcement angered many on the social media site, with many saying that it was insensitive and cruel to follow who they believed was in fact a murder, despite his acquittal.[8]
Coming Soon!!! pic.twitter.com/R1tXOuuLgO
— O.J. Simpson (@TheRealOJ32) June 15, 2019
In one of Simpson's videos, he addressed and denied rumors that he had slept with Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, and that Khloe Kardashian, who has been rumored to be Simpson's illegitimate daughter, was not his.[9]
The first thing I want to set straight is this story Pardo (who was not my manger) is talking about all over the media regarding me &
KrisJenner</a> <a href="https://t.co/tZ9EJd4qxF">pic.twitter.com/tZ9EJd4qxF</a></p>— O.J. Simpson (TheRealOJ32) June 17, 2019
On June 17th, a parody Twitter account @KillerOJSimpson tweeted a video showing DMs he allegedly received from Simpson's Twitter account appearing to threaten him if he did not cease and desist the parody, including knife emoji (shown below).
Um yeah,
TheRealOJ32</a> Just sent this scary ass DM treating me to delete my parody account. Watch the video. 😐🤣🔪 RT this <a href="https://twitter.com/WORLDSTAR?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">WORLDSTARTMZ</a> Funny stuff. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/OJSimpson?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#OJSimpson</a> <a href="https://t.co/3bXha7n47U">pic.twitter.com/3bXha7n47U</a></p>— O.J. Simpson🔪 (KillerOJSimpson) June 17, 2019
The DMs could violate Simpson's parole.[6] Barstool Sports[7] conceded that the video could be fake, but if so, it is an extremely convincing photoshop.
Search Interest
External References
[1] Film Reference – OJ Simpson
[2] Sports JRank – OJ Simpson Awards
[3] Pro Football HOF – OJ Simpson Highlights
[4] NBC Sports – CHASING 2,000 IN ’73
[5] Daily Beast – O.J. Simpson Launches His First Twitter Account and Says He’s ‘Got a Little Gettin’ Even to Do’
[6] NY Post – O.J. Simpson’s Twitter account threatens man with knife emojis
[7] Barstool Sports – Is OJ Simpson Threatening Parody OJ Twitter Accounts With Knife Emojis?
[8] The Guardian – OJ Simpson’s Twitter debut sparks outrage and calls to action
[9] Daily Dot – O.J. Simpson says in Twitter video that he never slept with Kris Jenner
Sub-entries 2 total
Recent Videos
There are no videos currently available.
Top Comments
Briham
Jun 18, 2019 at 02:32PM EDT
Kommando_Kaijin
Jun 18, 2019 at 04:15PM EDT