Holy Cr!*: This is the most shocking thing about track I've learned in a long time-OJ Simpson was on a 4x1 World Record Team

"My apologies for the Rojo type thread ..."

that's from his own brother.

enough said folks.

malmo wrote:

Is it age or a curious mind? wrote:

Looking up Simpson's sprinting speed is just the act of a curious person, not necessarily an older person.

My point was that an incurious mind will be surprised at many things as they meander through life. You are obviously not one of them

An older person doesn't have to use Google's spyware for research,. They've experienced, and stored, the knowledge contemporaneously.

Us older folks often got it out of T&F news (or the actual newspaper)...since we could not be at every meet.

June 1967

I knew this as a 10 year old. And it was also part of his story during the OJ trial. Back then we read newspapers and magazines.

People who are near 50 were probably barely aware of Simpson's football career and his fame carried over for years after he retired. I knew who he was and never watched a single football game as a kid.

The brojos really lived in a bubble and still do most of the time.

crete wrote:

Al Cowlings wrote:

Actually, I was wondering who is this OJ Simpson guy? Some sort of early cross-sport star like Herschel Walker later became?

Yeah, football and stabbing

that was brilliant

wineturtle wrote:

wineturtle wrote:

I do not remember Simpson toying with the sprinters o the mid 60s

Did he he was a 9.5 guy 6th or 7th at NCAAs at best and I do not remember him in any finals of AAU champs mid '60s.

I'd think he was 4th on the 100y/m depth chart at USC behind Miller,,Kruller& hurdler McCullouch-- who played a more than fair game of pro ball getting Rookie of the Year '68-

John Carlos was a year or two behind me in NYC HS (and I was numerous yards behind him on the track) so I followed the sprinters of the era closely.

I was a decade later. So those runners overlapped as far as we followed. OJ was the spare on the team. Lennox Miller was the Olympic silver medalist in 68 and bronze in 1972 over 100m. He was the stud. OJ was the fast football guy.

And last week I met John Carlos. One of the true great sprinters and athletes in history.

A shame his career was cut short by the white hoods in the USA sport scene.

I ran the Fresno Relays the spring of 1968. I remember John Carlos was entered in the 100 yard dash, saw him heading to the starting line with a jam box and what looked like a martini glass. Different times back then.

Igy

Probably because the track was yards, there still is hard track around.

Memory Bank wrote:

It WAS a WR. They were all legitimately on the USC track team. The weird citizenship rule that just surfaced did not exist at the time.

It still is a WR. It has not been broken. You cannot find a faster time listed anywhere. Guiness Book listed it for a long time.

Who appointed Guinness the judge of world records, besides Guinness? Not the IAAF, certainly.

Athletics was long since all metric by then, the US and Britain the lone holdouts. A 4x110y time is a "world record" in the same way a MLB team wins the "world series."

1968 wrote:

harry wales wrote:

Why was the relay Provo 1967 in yards but the 100 dash was in meters?

~1968 was when colleges were converting over from running yards to meters. The 100m conversion was easier to do on a 440y track. Ovals had not yet be redone from yards to meters.

Do you knuckleheads just make it up as you go along? Th 1967 NCAA was run in yards

1967

(Provo, June 16; wind +1.5)(A)

(26 contestants, 8 finalists; Q—9.5yA)

1. Charles Greene (Nebraska)9.21y

2. Lennox Miller' (USC)9.32

3. Bob Rovere (East Tennessee)9.42

4. Fred Kuller (USC)9.46

5. Jerry Bright (Arizona State)9.47

6. O.J. Simpson (USC)9.53

7. Jim Lee (Maryland)9.58

8. Jim Freeman (Murray State)9.68

Fact ----Until the early 1970s IAAF ratified WRs from teams with mixed nationalities.

Relay world records are awarded to countries, not individuals, so they should all be citizens of the same country.

A superior performance by athletes from mixed countries should be referred to as a World Best, but not a World Record.

It was a WR for both meters and yards. We were running a 440 yard relay at the NCAAs in 1967. Yards are further than meters. Track was made of chopped up tires. It was wet and cool. 9:00pm. BYU. Earl started, I was second, OJ was third, Lennox was anchor. Tennessee was second in 40.00 flat. No pressure!

Does it count if you are a citizen of the same world. Call it what you like! It still stands in yards.

I thought most American track and field pundits were aware of the O.J. track and field connection?

But I guess you have to be a certain age. The Juice used to do track and field commentary and was quite the affable analyst. I do remember him once saying something about black people not being good at distance running. I thought he was kinda a moron after that gibberish drooled out of his mouth. Too bad he "allegedly" killed his wife and her friend as that effectively ended his track announcing career. Glove don't fit.....

Par for the course

wejo wrote:

My apologies for the Rojo type thread but I was reading the thread about USC not getting the world record despite running faster than anyone else ever before with 4 US born runners on the team and there was this nugget of info by poster Ghost of Igloi:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8713149#8713350

"That is correct, if memory serves me well USC had the 440 Yard Relay World Record with Fred Kuller, Earl McCullough, OJ Simpson, and Lennox Miller (Jamaica), about 1968."

And a link to this article:

http://articles.latimes.com/1987-06-17/sports/sp-4512_1_years-ago-today

I'm flabbergasted. Can't believe I or no one else with LetsRun knew this.

Was the yards record way slower than the meters record or was this legit?

Maybe we did. We just don't care. I'm more into Bekele

I knew it. Another little known fact. In 1964 my girlfriend attended Lincoln High School in San Francisco. The quarterback of the team was Mike Holmgren. Of course he was all-league. There was a running back for Galileo High School who set the league on fire. OJ Simpson. OJ attended San Francisco City College for two years before transferring to USC.