Who would be a jury of his peers?
I would say women. Women are more forgiving. Women are more understanding. When you go to these shows and you see OJ or see him walking through the airport, he is surrounded by women. Women want his autograph. Women are infatuated by this guy, more so than guys. If this jury was made up more of women, he’d have a much better chance of being acquitted.

Why is that? What still attracts people to him?
He’s still a football icon. But now, he’s someone who’s dangerous. There’s a sense of danger about OJ, so if you get something that has OJ Simpson’s name on it, years from now they’ll be saying ‘here’s the guy who got away with murder.' And the guy who did this, it becomes a double sense of something that’s valuable. From football player to dangerous man; it all adds to the credibility of owning something that was signed by OJ.

Same for the golf course? That he still has buddies who want to play with him?
He was the best man at somebody’s wedding! This guy could have found a bunch of people other than OJ, but for him, for life, when somebody mentions OJs name he’s going to say ‘Yeah, he was best man at my wedding.’ So this guy has something that he can talk about ‘til the day he dies.

How do you determine who are the genuine people in your life?
That’s impossible to do. As with everything in life, a friend is a friend only when you need them. That’s when true friendship shows itself. Only when you need somebody and they’re there, do they become classified as a friend. Until then, they’re acquaintances. If you’re an athlete you gotta assume that everybody wants a piece of you for some particular reason, either financially or socially. That’s just the way it is.

Do you think OJ has true friends?
I think he has a whole bunch of hanger-oners who want to say ‘I know OJ. I played golf with OJ. I had a drink with OJ. I’ve been to OJ’s house. OJ bumped into me at the airport. OJ stepped on my foot coming out of a building’. Everybody wants a piece of OJ.

If there was some mandatory training for dealing with life outside of that arena, what would it look like?
It’s impossible, because we’re public figures. People see us and they feel they own us. There is no sense of privacy. If I’m sitting somewhere in a restaurant, people will come up and grab me by the arm and say 'I don’t mean to disturb you,'  -- holding my arm the whole time while I'm trying to eat a sandwich -- 'but just sign this.'  And if you don’t sign it, they walk away cursing at you. If you say to them, ‘but sir, I was just about to eat this sandwich. Can you give me five minutes?’ If you say that to them: Come back in five minutes? You have annoyed them, you have pissed them off and they walk away talking about you like a dog. It’s just something we have to deal with everyday.

If people pay money to see you, and they’ve seen you in a public venue, they feel like they have a relationship with you. Even though you don’t know who they are, you have no relationship with them, they feel like they have this relationship with you, so they don’t mind invading your privacy. It’s how you deal with it that affects who you are and affects the way in which they respect you.                                                                                                                                   

Got a question for The Hammer? Go long. He will gladly set you straight.