Oh, O.J. When will you learn?

Orenthal James Simpson, the man made famous by winning the Heisman Trophy at USC in 1968, then even more famous for his Hall of Fame NFL career, then notoriously infamous for "not" murdering two people in 1994, should have realized more than a decade ago that the public spotlight has not shown so well on him in the later years of his life.

He could have disappeared and lived a lonely, yet un-incarcerated, life. He could have -- as Mike Tyson would say -- faded into Bolivian. Instead, the Juice pressed his luck one time too many.

In September, Simpson and four other men broke into a Las Vegas hotel room to confront a man O.J. thought had taken some of his valuable sports memorabilia. The problem was that Simpson and friends brought guns to this little chit-chat and proceeded to threaten the victims' lives.

These actions, for those among us that haven't passed the bar exam, are only legal in zero states.

So O.J. had his day in court. Again. This time, a jury found him guilty of all crimes, including robbery with a deadly weapon, burglary with a firearm and assault with a deadly weapon. Friday, he was sentenced to a minimum of nine years in prison.

For a man who appeared to have been playing with house money for the last 13 years, this was the end of the road. His poor choices had finally caught up with him.

***

On Oct. 3, 1995, a jury found Simpson not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown, his ex-wife, and Ron Goldman. If that's truly the case, then O.J. had experienced the ultimate hell. His former wife and friend were dead and he spent months on trial for murders he didn't commit.

When the misery finally ended, he was a public pariah regardless of the verdict, and had to devote the rest of his life to finding the real killers. I guess he had a hunch that those real killers spent an awful lot of time on golf courses.

After all the untrue accusations that ruined his life, Simpson should have made sure that he never found himself in a courtroom again, for fear of re-living such a horrible experience. That would have been the smart thing to do.

***

Now, let's assume that O.J. did beat those murder raps. It's actually a very popular theory, believe it or not. Even if the criminal trial determined he didn't kill two people, the civil trial found Simpson to be responsible for their "wrongful deaths," which are quite different from totally justifiable deaths (figure that one out).

So the glove didn't fit. The jury, luckily for the Juice, had to acquit. Now, O.J.'s a free man thanks to the late Johnnie Cochran and his magical defense powers.

At this point, Simpson has to realize that he's used up all the luck in the universe. If nothing good ever happened to him the rest of his life, he would have had to be okay with it, simply because of that acquittal.

If I'm O.J., I've learned my lesson after that. I don't even jaywalk after Oct. 3, 1995, unless I'm planning on writing a book titled "If I Did It: Confessions of a Guy Who Doesn't Cross the Street at Intersections." I'd just wake up every morning and thank God I'm not behind bars.

Not Simpson. He decided that some memorabilia was worth risking another high-profile arrest. And with every potential juror in America fully aware of his murky past, things weren't likely to turn out well.

They didn't.

And Judge Jackie Glass, who presided over the case, had a spot-on evaluation of Simpson.

"While at this case bail hearing, I said to Mr. Simpson that I didn't know if he was arrogant or ignorant or both," Glass said. "Then during the trial and through this proceeding, I got the answer: it was both."

Too true.

Paul Nordeman is a senior majoring in journalism and is The Daily Collegian's Wednesday columnist. His e-mail address is pjn5005@psu.edu.