Pro Football Hall of Famer O.J. Simpson, who was quite a character, has been permanently ejected from the game of life by cosmic forces, and also cancer. He was 76.
Born in 1947, Orenthal James Simpson, also known as “The Juice,” is widely regarded as one of the greatest football players of all time. During his time in the NFL, he was the first player to rush more than 2,000 yards in a season, and recorded an average of 143.1 yards rushing per game, a record that still holds today. The former Buffalo Bills running back also had a storied acting career as an ad spokesman for the Hertz rental car company and a recurring role in the Naked Gun franchise, before running into some legal problems in the mid-1990s.
Simpson claimed to be a fan of The Simpsons in a 1991 issue of Simpsons Illustrated, “especially the part at the beginning where Bart has to write on the blackboard.” Despite this, he turned down a role as a celebrity panelist in the classic episode “Last Exit to Springfield,” which then went to Dr. Joyce Brothers. Thanks to a draft of the script uploaded to the Internet Archive by JamesHellBrooks, we now know how the original scene would’ve gone:
Simpson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
An earlier version of this post misattributed who uploaded the script.