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This month marks the six year anniversary of O.J. Simpson's most famous run. Not his run to capture 2,000 yards on a snow blown field in Buffalo, New York nor any of his magnificent trots at USC on the way to the 1968 Heisman Trophy. This run came off the field and lasted a few hours. Instead of just beer swilling football fans, his audience was most of America. Six years ago this month, America followed O.J. Simpson and Al Cowlings in a low speed chase down a Los Angeles freeway in O.J's White Ford Bronco. Just as O.J.'s on-the-field runs left a mark on the landscape of American sport, so too did his run from the police in June, 1994. O.J.'s run from the LAPD altered the way Americans view professional athletes, providing what could have been the final blow to the mythological sports hero America cultivated for so many years. Suspicion and inquiry into the lives of professional athletes has reached a fevered pitch. Watch any sports news program and you are guaranteed a story on some professional athlete's latest off-the-field brush with the law. Whether it be a fight in a bar (Charles Barkley, Jumbo Eliot, etc.), alleged sexual assault (Michael Irvin, Marc Chumura, etc.), allegations of drug use (Darryl Strawberry, Scott Stevens, etc.), burglary (Cecil Collins), domestic violence (Lawrence Phillips, etc., etc.), rape (Jim Drukenmiller) or even murder (Ray Lewis, Ray Curuth), our fascination for an athlete's legal woes has surpassed our once unquenchable thirst for their on-the-field exploits. No longer is a hero born just from an amazing catch, a 500-foot home run, or a windmill dunk; he must first satisfy our criminal background test. This is the legacy of suspicion that followed with O.J. Simpson's Bronco six years ago. This suspicion and fascination with athletes' criminal misconduct did not exist in the "golden age" of sports. Americans were much more willing to accept an athlete as a hero solely based on his on-the-field merit. Few cared that Babe Ruth was an alcoholic and a womanizer or that Jim Brown repeatedly beat his wife. The stories were of Ruth calling his shot at Wrigley or Brown dragging a Giants' linebacker into the end zone, not their human error. This is not to say that athletes' troubles went unnoticed by the media, they made the papers and the sports shows, but no one seemed to care. They were sports heros first and men a very distant second. O.J. of course, is not alone in producing this suspicion and fascination, he joins a host of infamous names like Tonya Harding, Mercury Morris, Mike Tyson and John Rocker, who recently made a sojourn in Richmond as punishment for his latest stupid utterance. But O.J.'s status as sports legend, the nature of his alleged crimes and the two year media circus that surrounded the whole affair magnified the impact of his case on American perception of athletes. Whether America can ever again embrace our sports stars as heros without first inquiring into their off-the-field lives is unclear. The recent inquires into Mark McGwire's and Lance Armstrong's use of steroids in achieving their respective milestones indicates that the damage might be irreparable. If America is unable to regain its confidence in professional athletes and forever questions the character of athletes before embracing them, then O.J.'s final run might in fact be his most legendary as well. Happy
anniversary O.J.
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