"I think I've been a positive influence on a lot of people's lives"

The sentence asserts a self-portrait of beneficence from a figure whose public life spans adulation and infamy. It leans on the idea that influence is cumulative: early excellence, visibility, and cultural breakthroughs can coexist with later controversies, all contributing to how a legacy is felt.

As a football star and broadcaster, O.J. Simpson embodied possibility for many. His athletic brilliance, ease in front of the camera, and prominence in advertising helped expand the presence of Black athletes in mainstream media and corporate America. For young people who saw success and charisma rewarded on the largest stages, that visibility could be genuinely motivating. Charitable appearances and mentorships, however intermittent, also create tangible moments of uplift that supporters remember.

Yet the claim lands differently when weighed against the enormity of his later life. The murder case that transfixed the country, resulting in a criminal acquittal and a subsequent civil judgment of liability, reshaped national conversations about race, policing, domestic violence, celebrity, and the media. Years later, his Nevada conviction for armed robbery and kidnapping added another chapter of notoriety. Influence here becomes double-edged: some social awareness and institutional change can emerge from crisis and spectacle, but such outcomes are not uncomplicated victories and are inseparable from pain and harm.

The phrasing “I think” signals a personal reckoning, a bid to control the narrative. Public figures often curate legacies to preserve dignity, emphasizing the lives they inspired while bracketing the suffering associated with their name. Whether that self-assessment holds depends less on intent than on impact, and on who is asked. For some, the memory is of athletic wonder and a widened horizon; for others, it is an emblem of impunity and trauma.

Ultimately, the statement attempts to anchor a contested legacy in the language of benefit. It invites a harder accounting: influence is real, but so are consequences, and the balance between them is not the speaker’s alone to declare.