USC vs. UCLA: O.J. Simpson’s legacy leaves tangled emotions 50 years after ‘Game of the Century
Decades before he sat in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, O.J. Simpson loomed in the backfield on a football field six miles away, his hands resting above grass-stained knee pads. Simpson cast an imposing presence, a towering 6-foot-2 tailback with a sprinter’s smooth stride. As a late fall afternoon in 1967 waned, he crouched in the backfield, steadying for another run.
The Trojans trailed UCLA by six points. Ten minutes remained. Needing eight yards on third down, quarterback Toby Page called an audible and triggered one of the most exhilarating finishes the city — and quite possibly the rest of the country — had ever seen from a football star. As Simpson took the handoff, he charged left for seven yards, then grabbed 57 more, zigzagging across the Coliseum turf with his unique blend of grit and grace. A crowd of more than 90,000 stood in awe and roared when he reached the end zone.
“It was a stunner,” says Steve Bisheff, the author of several books on USC football, former Orange County Register columnist and then a reporter for the now-defunct Santa Monica Evening Outlook. “I’ve seen a lot of football games, and that’s as big of a clutch run as I’ve ever seen.”
The touchdown on Nov. 18, 1967, propelled USC to a 21-20 triumph over UCLA, a chapter in this Los Angeles football rivalry billed the “Game of the Century.”
Fans rushed onto the field. Some lifted Simpson onto their shoulders. The Trojans ended as national champions.
The 64-yard winning dash left an enduring image of Simpson in cardinal and gold, the second of USC’s Heisman Trophy-winning tailbacks and among its greatest runners. Sports Illustrated in 2010 ranked the sequence as the second-greatest sports moment in Los Angeles history.
For decades, the snapshot of Simpson’s twisting path through UCLA’s defense glittered among the city’s greatest sports highlights, replayed and celebrated endlessly alongside Magic’s towering skyhook in the NBA Finals and Gibson’s arching home run in the World Series.
Saturday is the 50th anniversary of “The Run,” and USC and UCLA will again meet in late November at the Coliseum. But there will be no celebration. In the twilight of their lives, Simpson and his teammates from the fall of 1967 will not be cheered, nor receive on-field recognition during the game. There are no plans to formally commemorate the anniversary.
Twenty-seven years after Simpson raced past the Bruins and stormed into college football lore, the once-revered football star became America’s most infamous athlete, and in 1995, Simpson stood trial for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, ending in the controversial acquittal that is still being debated to this day.
“O.J.’s run was the run up until that time,” says Bob Jensen, a linebacker for the Trojans from 1967-69.
In 2017, the run conjures a wave of emotions, awash with as much unease as admiration, leaving each man to reflect and curate his own past.
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