During his playing days in the NFL, OJ Simpson was one of the best running backs in the league, routinely shrugging off would-be tacklers.
But it was his testimony as a witness in a 1970 lawsuit that helped the league shrug off the dangers associated with head injury for decades to come, experts say.
Simpson was tapped by the legal defence team of Rawlings Sporting Goods, which was being sued by the family of Ernie Pelton, a Sacramento, Calif. high school football player that had been paralyzed from the neck down after a helmet-to-helmet hit in 1967.
The lawsuit, with the family seeking $3.6 million, was the first of its kind to reach a jury.
While on the stand, Simpson turned on his natural charm while defending the company’s plastic helmets, which he wore during his career.
“I believe in this helmet,” Simpson testified in Sacramento County Superior Court, according to the Sacramento Bee.
“I know every time I get on the field, there’s a chance I get hurt,” said Simpson, who won the Heisman Trophy at USC before becoming a first-round pick by the Bills and a national celebrity.
When asked to read the warning label inside a Rawlings helmet which said players should “avoid all purposeful contact,” Simpson quipped: “I try, but haven’t succeeded.”
He also testified that he used a Rawlings helmet during his high-school playing days in San Francisco like the one that Pelton was wearing when he suffered his life-altering injury.
Simpson was asked by one attorney if he was aware of the inherent risk of playing the sport of football, to which he responded: “A person would be pretty ignorant if he didn’t know.
“I know every time I get on the field, there’s a chance you can get hurt like the Pelton boy.”
According to political journalist Melody Gutierrez, the jury was blown away by Simpson’s stardom, even sending a note requesting to have their photos taken with him.
The Sacramento Union ran a photo on March 11, 1970, with the caption: “Simpson signs autographs for jurors.”
The jury would eventually rule in favour of Rawlings, a judgment that led to the NFL dismissing the dangers of head injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) for generations, industry experts said.
“If Pelton won, it would have been devastating to football,” said Robert Erb, CEO of helmet-maker Schutt Sports from 2008 to 2020. “The NFL, NCAA and high school football had to be relieved.”
“It made attorneys afraid to take on other cases,” helmet liability expert Kimberly Archie added.
While there were a few court victories against helmet manufacturers in the following decades, for the most part they were able to avoid significant penalties because of the ruling in the Pelton case.
“It reinforced the ‘assumption of the risk is on the player legal defence,’” Erb told the New York Post.
“If you want proof of how important that verdict was you can look at the number of patents filed in the years after for new helmet designs. There was little development.”
It wasn’t until years into the 21st century that the league began to take the risks associated with concussions seriously and have since outlawed dangerous hits to the head. Helmets also face far more stringent tests before being certified.
Simpson died earlier this month at 76 years old. While there were several calls to have his brain analyzed for evidence of CTE, his family refused and opted to cremate him.
“As one of the most well-known NFL Hall of Famers, O.J.’s brain being donated to science could have made an enormous impact in awareness,” Archie said. “That is part of O.J.’s legacy. He was a part of football fooling the public about safety.”
“I think the NFL is relieved. The last thing they needed was to learn that OJ had CTE. They don’t need or want that,” Erb said.