O.J. Simpson reportedly throws Super Bowl party in jail

Chris Strauss, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

It's hard enough throwing a Super Bowl party if you're not incarcerated.

You've got to figure out how to arrange the setup so that the hardcore football fans don't miss a minute of game action. But you have to find significant space for the casual fans/significant others to gossip about the new neighbors or talk about their kids' kindergarten teacher without disrupting the game, even though they'll want to come back in for the commercials, halftime show and fourth quarter. Then there's the concern about whether you've got enough snacks and beer. It's quite the endeavor.

Now imagine trying to plan such a fete in an 80 square foot cell. According to the New York Post, that's what former NFL running back O.J. Simpson managed to do at Lovelock Correctional Center in Nevada, where he's serving a 33-year sentence for kidnapping and armed robbery.

Via New York Post:

Simpson is one of the few inmates who has his own TV, reports The Post's Richard Johnson, so his friends crammed into his 80-square-foot cell to watch. "If you have the money, you can buy a TV at the inmate store and put it in your cell," Simpson's producer friend Norman Pardo said. There was no shortage of potential guests because he's so popular. "He's like the Godfather of the prison now," Pardo said of the one-time NFL great.

Since the HBO series Oz is really my only insight into the realities of modern prison life, I'm enjoying the idea of Simpson as the Nevada penitentiary's version of Simon Adebisi. It's mostly just the vision of O.J. sitting in his cell wearing a tiny knit hat on the back corner of his head cheering on the San Francisco 49ers (with whom he ended his NFL career) while eating chili, Doritos and other assorted contraband smuggled inside the walls by a sympathetic Buffalo-born prison guard, as he barks out orders at fellow inmates. That actually sounds way more fun than any Super Bowl party on the outside.