Staff Reports
The Buffalo Bills quietly made a choice that will please some and annoy a lot of others: O.J. Simpson will not be included in the new Highmark Stadium “Family Circle” honors display. The team’s chief operating officer, Pete Guelli, said flatly that Simpson “is not a fit to display” in the family-facing plaza. This is the latest example of sports teams deciding which parts of history they want in their lobby and which parts they want behind the velvet rope.
Bills’ decision and what the Family Circle will be
The Family Circle is the big entry plaza outside the new Highmark Stadium. The Bills plan three large bison statues there and plaques honoring franchise greats. Frank Cravotta, the team’s senior vice president of design, told reporters the design team prepared for including or omitting certain names while building the display. The Bills say Simpson — who was long shown on the old stadium’s Wall of Fame — simply won’t be moved into the new family area.
Record on the field, baggage off it
Let’s be clear: O.J. Simpson was one of the greatest running backs in Buffalo history. He was the first NFL back to rush for over 2,000 yards in a season and he sits in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for those achievements. But his off-field life became a public nightmare: the criminal trial in Los Angeles, the civil judgment, the later conviction for armed robbery and the prison term. Those events are the lens the Bills say they used when deciding what belongs in a family-focused plaza.
The politics of memory — and a practical suggestion
Teams get to choose how they present their history. Still, this feels like a trend toward sanitizing sports history for headline-proof photo ops. If you want to keep stadium spaces family-friendly, fine — but don’t pretend the past disappears because it’s inconvenient. The sensible approach is simple: have a public, written policy for who gets honored in team displays. Explain the criteria. Stop playing whack-a-mole with reputations and leave historians and the Hall of Fame to sort out the record while teams explain their own rules.
Bottom line
The Bills’ choice to leave O.J. Simpson out of the Highmark Stadium Family Circle is defensible as a team decision about a family space. It’s also an opportunity for the franchise to be honest about how it balances achievement and character. If the Bills want praise, show the community why the rules matter. If they want to dodge tough conversations, fine — just don’t act surprised when somebody points out that history is harder to scrub than a stainless-steel bison statue.
