Bob Costas recalls O.J. Simpson car chase following his death: ‘It was surreal, to put it mildly’

Bob Costas, the longtime broadcaster who worked with O.J. Simpson for years at NBC Sports, is speaking out about the death of the former NFL star famously acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

“It’s a complicated legacy, to put it mildly,” he said April 12 on TODAY. “I can’t think of anyone historical or someone that we may have known where the first chapter and the second chapter of their lives are such a stark contrast,” he said noting that Simpson went from a “revered” figure to a “reviled” one.

“Yes, I knew him well. All of us at NBC Sports, and throughout NBC who interacted with him, liked him very much,” he added.

Costas then went on to say he “obviously committed” the murders, while he was also “the sort of guy who would remember the name of the kid who brought you the newspapers and coffee when you first got to the set in the morning on Sunday to cover football.”

Costas said he was friendly with all the fans who approached him and enjoyed being famous.

“He was very good company. He was a hale fellow very well met. And then all of that, in our perception and public perception, changed one night in June of 1994,” he said, alluding to his infamous car chase.

Costas was working the NBA Finals for NBC during Simpson’s car chase, as the Houston Rockets battled the New York Knicks. The network went with a split screen, showing the chase on the left and the game on the right.

“NBC was in a unique position. Every other network, every cable entity went live and carried it for hours upon hours. But we had not just a basketball game, an NBA Finals game, involving the No. 1 market in the country, not incidentally, the New York Nicks against the Houston Rockets” he said.

“Throughout that evening, Marv Albert was calling the game. Sometimes, he’d throw it to me. I would then transition to Tom Brokaw, who was at 30 Rock. He would summarize the situation, which he called a Shakespearean tragedy, and it certainly fit that description.

“And then I’d send it back to Marv Albert. And other times, we’d split the screen, so (Patrick) Ewing and (Hakeem) Olajuwon would be going at it at Madison Square Garden and the Bronco would be making its way slowly down the 405 the other side of the screen. It was surreal, to put it mildly.”

It later came out that Simpson tried to call Costas during the chase, although they never did connect. He later visited Simpson in prison in November 1994 before his trial got underway, meeting with him and former Buffalo Bills teammate Al Cowlings, who drove the Bronco during the chase, and lawyer Robert Kardashian.

“I asked O.J., ‘What would make you think in that moment that you’d want to speak with me?’ And he said, ‘I was being defamed by the media, not so much about the allegations, which were then fresh about the allegations of the crime, but that his overall character and the life he had led was being defamed,” Costas recalled.

“And somehow he thought that someone who was his friend, as well as his colleague, could perhaps, in effect, act as a character witness. And what I didn’t bother to tell him, since it was a moot point, was that if he had gotten through to me and if he had agreed to go on the air, then I would’ve had to ask him some very pointed questions.”

Costas also said Simpson made a joke when they met, recalling how they put their hands against each other on a glass partition. Costas had cut his hand and put a bandage on it, which prompted Simpson to try and be funny.

“When I put (my hand) up there, and he saw the bandage and a little drop of blood, he said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. You did it,’” he recalled, alluding to Costas being the murderer.

Costas, who said Simpson disputed the story, said it was a strange comment.

“I just thought in that moment, it was an attempt at an awkward situation to lighten the mood, if that was possible. I didn’t read anything more into it than that, but it was a little weird.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com