Parole Officer at O.J. Hearing Wearing Chiefs Tie Was Appropriately Absurd

In 1994, the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, the resulting O.J. Simpson slow police chase in a white Ford Bronco once Simpson became a person of interest in the investigation, and Simpson's subsequent trial for murder changed the face of television. Wall-to-wall coverage followed everything—from the testimony and evidence presented, to the minutiae of prosecutor Marcia Clark's hair.

The last year saw a sort of O.J. revival with a hit FX series that covered the murder/trial, and then the airing of ESPN's Academy Award winning 30 for 30 documentary series, which did an in depth recap of everything O.J. and how it related to American culture. Perhaps because both programs were so well-received, virtually every single website, news program, and television channel once again provided wall-to-wall coverage of….O.J. Simpson's parole hearing in relation to a 2008 conviction for armed robbery (among other charges) in a Las Vegas hotel. Sometime around 3 PM ET Simpson was granted parole.

This whole thing was incredibly weird!

I watched this spectacle it because I work in sports and every single other sports entity either commented on it or just straight up re-broadcast the hearing. But I cannot for the life of me understand why any normal person would have wanted to watch O.J. Simpson's parole hearing. Before you saw that ESPN was covering the hearing live, did you even know O.J. was up for parole? If you did, did you care at all?

This isn't even related to the insanity of the murder trial, which was a maelstrom of racial tension, celebrity, and violence. This is a sad, old man getting popped for sticking up some guys for some memorabilia and personal items and now he is going home earlier than his original conviction required. I remember being in high school watching the 1995 verdict on TV and seeing people running up and down the halls when it was announced. No one's going to do that in 2017, but we're covering it like they will.

Perhaps the single greatest example of this weird sideshow is that one of the parole commissioners who voted in favor of O.J.'s parole (the vote was unanimous), the man who was seated all the way to OJ's left, was wearing an all-black suit and a Kansas City Chief's tie.

O.J. never played for KC (although Marcus Allen, another USC alum and friend who may have had an affair with his wife, spent five years in a Chiefs uniform), but this was pretty weird, right? Putting aside the bizarre Marcus Allen connection, a guy responsible for deciding whether the most infamous football player in the history of football gets to go home early was wearing a football tie. Could that have been by accident? Did someone not say to him, hey, maybe go with paisley for today? Why am I even thinking about this guy and his shitty tie??

I can't place a finger on what exactly is so weird about this guy in a tie, just like I can't place a finger on exactly why anyone is breathlessly covering a parole hearing.

But just like in 1995, O.J. is going home free.