O.J. Simpson died Wednesday in Las Vegas from cancer, his family announced on X, the social media platform. In 2013, Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Bianchi wrote this commentary about how Simpson helped save UCF’s struggling football program in the 1980s. We are republishing it today.
There have been many people through the years responsible for the evolution of the upwardly mobile UCF football program:
John Hitt. George O’Leary. Daunte Culpepper. Kevin Smith. O.J. Simpson.
Say what?
You heard me … O.J. SIMPSON!
In fact, when a fat, pathetic Simpson turned 66 Tuesday in Nevada State Prison, UCF fans should have called en masse to wish him a happy birthday and to thank him for helping the program survive. Without O.J., UCF football might have gone bankrupt three decades ago.
Bianchi, you moron, O.J. played college football at USC; not UCF!
I’m well aware of where O.J. played college football, but you are obviously ignorant about how O.J. is a part of Orlando sports lore. So sit down right here on grandpappy’s knee and let me tell you how it all went down.
It all goes back to 1983 when UCF, which had been playing football for only four years, decided it wanted to be big-time. At the time, the Knights were playing Division II football — and, quite frankly, they weren’t playing it very well. So they decided to hire the unemployed Lou Saban, who won two championships as a coach in the old AFL, coached the Buffalo Bills during O.J.’s record-breaking, 2,000-yard rushing season and was once the president of the New York Yankees.
Sentinel columnist Jerry Greene actually met Saban at the airport in Daytona and drove him to campus. Greene has told me the story many times and it goes like this: “The distance of the drive from Daytona to Orlando is all I needed to be absolutely convinced that UCF was going to be the next great football-playing institution in this country, and Lou Saban would be the coach for the next 30 years.”
Saban made no bones about it; he wanted to move the program to Division I-A and start competing at the highest level of the sport. But the UCF athletic department had very little money, and Saban’s grandiose vision required tons of it.
Enter O.J., who came to the rescue back in 1984 to help his old coach raise money for his new school. At the time, O.J. was perhaps the most transcendent star in American sports. He was recently retired from a Hall-of-Fame NFL career and became a movie star and celebrity endorser. He ran through airports in his iconic Hertz commercials and starred in movies like “The Towering Inferno” and “Naked Gun.”
Simpson agreed to fly from Hollywood to Orlando and serve as honorary host of something called “O.J.’s Gate-Crasher.” The event was emceed by former Sentinel columnist Larry Guest, who called the event “a unique and successful dinner/auction fund-raiser for UCF athletics.”
“Simpson,” Guest later wrote, “participated out of appreciation for UCF’s new football boss, Lou Saban, the former Buffalo coach who had revamped the Bills’ offense around O.J.’s flashing feet. As host and emcee, O.J. and I jointly presided over a gilded evening that raised more than $200,000 for UCF. A bidder bought one of his Buffalo jerseys for $11,500 after he had charmed the crowd with uproarious football tales and expressions of love for his old coach.”
Without Simpson’s fundraiser, UCF’s football program might have been repossessed by the bank. Saban used O.J.’s good name and the $200,000 as collateral. He not only spent the money O.J. helped raise, he spent 10 times more. Renowned as a coaching vagabond, Saban didn’t even last two seasons at UCF and left the program $1.25 million in debt.
“Lou’s philosophy was let’s just spend the money and worry about it later,” Don Jonas, UCF’s head coach before Saban, told me once.
Even so, Saban left behind more than just a mountain of unpaid bills; he left behind a gigantic dream that still lives today; a dream that UCF will one day run with the big dogs of college football. As I wrote when he passed away: Saban was a quarter-century ahead of his time. He ran up enormous debt in an effort to make UCF big-time, which just so happens to be the exact same strategy the school is using in 2013.
And, so, that’s the story of how O.J. Simpson helped UCF football become the program it is today.
Happy 66th birthday, O.J.
Hope you celebrate 66 more.
In jail.
mbianchi@tribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @BianchiWrites. Listen to his radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on 740 AM.
