The Buffalo Bills will move into Highmark Stadium for the 2026 NFL season, and the organization announced that Pro Football Hall of Fame running back O.J. Simpson will not be part of their Wall of Fame at the brand-new stadium.
“We have made an organizational decision that he is not a fit to display inside our new stadium and family circle,” Bills chief operating officer Pete Guelli announced in a statement on Saturday, according to WIVB (Buffalo CBS affiliate).
Simpson was the first member of the Bills’ Wall of Fame, which the Bills created in 1980. His name has remained displayed in Ralph Wilson Stadium.
In 1995, a criminal court found Simpson not guilty of murder in the 1994 stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. However, a civil trial jury found him liable for wrongful death two years later, and he was ordered to pay $33.5 million to the family members of Brown and Goldman.
Additionally, in 2008, Simpson was sentenced to up to 33 years in prison after he and five men took sports memorabilia at gunpoint in a hotel room at a Las Vegas casino in September 2007. He was convicted of armed robbery and additional felonies before being released from prison in October 2017 after serving nine years, and he was released from parole in December 2021.
Simpson died in 2024 at the age of 76 after battling prostate cancer.
On the football field, Simpson won the Heisman Trophy in 1968 with the USC Trojans, and he was named the NFL Most Valuable Player in 1973 after a season in which he ran for 2,003 yards and 12 touchdowns for Buffalo. He ran for 10,183 yards and totaled 70 touchdowns over his nine-year career with the Bills. He was selected to six Pro Bowls with the Bills and was named a first-team All-Pro five times. Buffalo selected him with the first overall pick of the 1969 NFL Draft.
Simpson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985, and his enshrinement and bust have remained in Canton, OH.
The Bills will play their first regular-season game at Highmark Stadium — located in Orchard Park, NY — in a Week 2 Thursday Night Football matchup against the Detroit Lions on Sept. 17.
About Matt Clapp
Matt is an editor/writer at The Comeback and Awful Announcing.
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