How did KC’s OJ Simpson — no, not that OJ — land a role in ‘American Underdog’ movie?
How does a special education teacher and football coach from the Midwest with a famous name end up in a Hollywood movie portraying former NFL running back Marshall Faulk?
“I was nice” on the football field, Kansas City’s O.J. Keith Simpson told me during a recent chat about his role in “American Underdog: The Kurt Warner Story.”
“But I worked hard,” he continued.
Simpson plays the on-screen character of Faulk, a Hall of Fame running back best known for his days as part of the famed St. Louis Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf teams from 1999-2001. The film stars Zachary Levi as Kurt Warner, Anna Paquin as his feisty wife, Brenda, and Dennis Quaid as former Rams head coach Dick Vermeil, who later coached the Kansas City Chiefs. The movie was released Christmas day and tells the rags to riches story of Warner, a one-time stocker at a Hy-Vee grocery store in Iowa who led the 1999 Rams to a Super Bowl title.
Full disclosure: I was a die-hard Rams fan from the team’s move to St. Louis in 1995 until its return to La La Land in 2016. I have been in football purgatory since, a man without a team to call home. Sorry, Chiefs fans.
One more tidbit: I crossed paths with Simpson as a semi-pro football player for the St. Louis Bulldogs minor league team in the early 2000s. Simpson was a damn good wide receiver for the rival Kansas City Shockers team, by the way.
Simpson played professional football for years but never made the NFL. He had a stint with the Kansas City Command of the Arena Football League and played several years in indoor leagues throughout the region. He is employed as a special education teacher’s assistant in the Park Hill School District and he is the wide receivers coach for Park Hill South High School.
Simpson’s journey from an 18-year-old semi-pro football player — “Yes, we played for free,” he says — to a burgeoning actor is remarkable. He graduated Truman High School in 2001 but didn’t have many big-time offers to play college football. Subpar grades were Simpson’s undoing, so he enrolled at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, in 2004 and had a pretty decent freshman year as a wide receiver. He transferred after one semester to Missouri Western but never played a down for the Griffons.
Hardships sent Simpson back to Kansas City.
“Grades,” he said.
Fast forward to 2013 when Simpson was cast in a Campbell’s Chunky Soup commercial starring former Green Bay linebacker Clay Matthews. From there the acting bug grew, and he appeared in other commercials and films with non-speaking roles. In “American Underdog,” Simpson not only portrays on film one of the greatest players in NFL history, but he also has a speaking part in the movie. Not bad for a 38-year-old journeyman actor.
Simpson was chosen for the role by Mike Sheldon, sports coordinator for Game Changing Films, a company that contracts with movies, TV shows and commercials to cast actors as athletes. Simpson was offered the role without much of an audition.
“We have had the pleasure of working with O.J. in the past on multiple film, TV and commercial projects so it was a pleasure to bring him back to work on ‘American Underdog,’” Sheldon wrote in a text message. “O.J. is the definition of a team player and always does the right things to make our jobs easier. On top of that, he is an amazing football player and someone we know we can trust with important plays/action.”
Sharing the same name as a former NFL great and suspected murderer has never been an issue for the man born O.J. Keith Simpson. He was named after NFL Hall of Fame running back O.J. Simpson, aka “The Juice,” and the man many feel got away with the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman in 1994.
The Juice was never found guilty of those heinous crimes, of course, but would later spend years in a Nevada prison for an unrelated armed robbery conviction. Kansas City’s O.J. has been asked his thoughts many times in the decades since The Juice was acquitted of capital murder by a Los Angeles County jury in 1995.
He is often asked: Is O.J. the real killer?
“No one really knows,” Simpson said. “There are many stories out there.”
And yes, KC’s Simpson prefers O.J.
“I don’t answer to Keith,” he said.
Let’s hope after Simpson’s star turn in “American Underdog,” he answers more calls from Hollywood movie executives.
