The Sports Truth

Good news: O.J. Simpson’s new book has been killed.

Bad news: O.J. Simpson himself has not been.

Fox has announced that it will no longer publish the “hypothetical” tell-all book from O.J. Simpson, If I Did It, or broadcast the accompanying two-part interview, after multiple affiliates and the network’s own talk show personalities condemned the idea and urged a boycott.

In the book and in the interviews promoting it, O.J. was ready to talk about how he “would have” stabbed his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, to death in 1994.

If “the real killers” didn’t take care of it for him, that is.

“I and senior management agree that this was an ill-considered project,” said Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox’s parent company, NewsCorp. “We are sorry for any pain this has caused the Goldman and Brown families.”

This is, of course, the right decision. But rather than laud Fox’s sudden growth of brain cells, the Sports Truth merely wonders who the hell hashed this idea to begin with? Isn’t a company’s senior management in charge of killing ill-conceived projects before they gain national attention?

Apparently, it took Geraldo Rivera and Bill O’Reilly, two of Fox’s popular political pundits, to call the network out before it dawned on them that a few hundred million Americans might find the Simpson book pointless and in the poorest of taste. Wait, you mean this isn’t a great idea?

The Sports Truth has its eye on sports… and enjoys nothing more than to spout its truthiness at every turn. So with a nod to the the incomparable Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, we pay tribute to recent developments in the sports world with our very own version of the “On Notice” board. We have no intention of letting stat corrections, K-Fed and marathon-running cyclists off the hook:

Certainly an eclectic assortment of items, individuals, and inanimate objects in the crosshairs this time around. Time for an in-depth look at what the Sports Truth is putting on notice:

1. With Brandon Webb being named the National League’s most outstanding pitcher for 2006, the legendary hurler for whom the award is named must be rolling in his grave. Or scratching his head trying to figure out who the hell Brandon Webb is.
2. O.J. Simpson may be the worst person on the planet, but Regan Books, the company publishing his newest literary work, If I Did It, is selling out and giving this waste of oxygen a forum. You’re on notice, Regan Books. And most likely going to hell. Dress accordingly.
3. 51.1. The amount, in millions, the Boston Red Sox will pay on top of any contract offered Daisuke Matsuzaka. We understand the craftiness in bidding $51.1M instead of $50M, but when the next-highest bid is rumored to be around $40M? Come on, people!
4. He struck gold when he somehow convinced Britney Spears to marry him, but Kevin Federline couldn’t keep it together. His antics and deadbeat nature forced Brit to divorce him, costing him access to millions of dollars, private jets, a hot wife and two of his four kids. Nice work, K-Fed!
5. No one decides to run the N.Y. City Marathon on a whim, finishes in under three hours, then says they thought it’d be easier. Whatever designer steroids Lance Armstrong is on, we condemn thee.
6. Hey, NFL: Next time you go change the scoring of a critical play days after it happened remember that some of our fantasy football seasons are on the line.
7. College basketball season hath begun. That means more Dook than a sane person can stomach.
8. Package stores make the list for two reasons. One, New Englanders’ moronic insistence that they be called package stores. It’s a liquor store, not a UPS or FedEx depot! Second, for their recent scare campaign in Massachusetts. The Sports Truth could not care less if grocery stores in the Bay State sell booze, but the liquor store lobby’s assertions that mass hysteria and anarchy would ensure if they did signaled a new low in political advertising. And cost us $20.

It’s one thing to commit a pair of brutal, premeditated killings, mercilessly ending the lives of your ex-wife and her friend.

It’s another thing to deny it, buy your way out of it with a high-priced team of defense lawyers, and show absolutely no remorse.

And it’s another thing altogether to decide, 12 years later, that getting away with murder isn’t enough, and that you should really rub it in the faces of the victims and America as a whole while making money off it to boot.

We reported this before, back when it was first announced that O.J. Simpson is coming out with a book entitled If I Did It, in which he gives adoring fans a “hypothetical” account of how he “would have” slain Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Now he’s promoting it with TV interviews!

In order to hype this remarkable literary work, Fox Broadcasting, class acts that they are, announced yesterday that they have scheduled not one but two hourlong programs later this month in which O.J. will appear and talk about the book and all the speculative murder in it.

Mike Darnell, Executive V.P. of Alternative Programming for Fox, said in a statement that the network’s “O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened” interview is one that no one thought would ever happen.

That’s undoubtedly true for many reasons. Namely the fact that this is probably the most tasteless, degrading and unnecessary “news story” in history.

What’s O.J. Simpson going to say? That he hypothetically slit the throat of his children’s mother and left her drowning in a pool of blood? That, come to think of it, he should have poisoned her, to make it less messy? That Goldman was asking for it when he showed up unannounced and caught him in the act?

No idea, but one thing’s for sure: O.J. is headed straight to hell, and the people helping him make money (while profiting along with him) by agreeing to publish and air this garbage can’t be far behind.

O.J. Simpson is finally confessing. Hypothetically, that is.

The former NFL great, who was acquitted in criminal court 11 years ago of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ron Goldman, reportedly has been paid a stunning $3.5 million to write about the shocking 1994 double murder, MSNBC reports.

But Simpson is not actually confessing, mind you. He’s writing a “hypothetical” book — one tentatively being called If I Did It.

Apparently, getting away with cold-blooded murder isn’t enough for this guy, who feels the need to rub it in everyone’s face 12 years after the fact.

The Juice, easily one of the worst human beings alive not named Kim Jong Il, talks about how he fell in love with Nicole and how their marriage collapsed. He goes on to describe, in gruesome detail, the killing of his ex-wife and Goldman — stipulating that the murder scenes in the text are “hypothetical.”

The descriptions are reportedly so detailed and so realistic, however, that readers are left with little doubt as to what really happened. Not that we were on the fence as it was. Still, the fact that he has the audacity to exploit the murder of his children’s mother, which he committed, for fiscal gain is unimaginable.

The founding member of the NFL’s single-season 2,000-yard rushing club, and its only member who went on to kill two individuals later in life, can’t be retried for the murders because of double jeopardy laws. Months after the not guilty verdict, he was ordered to pay over $30 million after being convicted in a wrongful death civil suit.

The victims’ families can’t have his six-figure annual NFL pension plan, of course — and Crazy Orenthal plans to spend the earnings from this new book quickly, MSNBC reports, so those greedy bastards can’t touch that either!

Wow. To think we call someone like Terrell Owens a bad person. This puts it all in perspective. Hope you buy some nice new summer clothes with the royalties, Juice — they say Hell is pretty damn warm.

[Sports Truth note: Barry Bonds' tell-all memoir, If I Took Steroids and My Head Grew Seven Sizes, is reportedly due out in Winter 2007. Mark McGwire is authoring the foreword.]