O.J. Simpson would wake up in his Nevada prison cell wondering where he was — a possible sign of brain damage, a retired guard recalled.
“He’d wake up in the morning wondering what [his] tee time was for golf, and he’s in a prison,” Jeffrey Felix, who worked at Lovelock Correctional Facility during Simpson’s nine-year stint there, told The Post.
He theorized the former running back great suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a concussion-related brain disease that plagues many retired NFL players.
Simpson was “very forgetful,” Felix said, adding that Juice often spaced on taking his medication and dinner time in the clink, and regularly suffered from headaches.
“I think he had that CTE thing from…the tackles and the helmet collisions.”
During his nine seasons with the Buffalo Bills, Simpson claimed his team’s linebackers, who were “jealous” of the star, pummeled him during drills.
“In practice, they’d light him up,” Felix recalled.
“He took a lot of hits . . . he took more hits in practice than on the football field.”
Simpson’s confusion extended to his confessions about the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her pal Ron Goldman.
While in his cell, the Juice shared with Felix “Only two people know who killed Nicole Brown Simpson: [me] and Al Cowlings.”
Cowlings was the longtime friend who infamously drove the white Ford Bronco with Simpson in a low-speed police chase across Los Angeles before he was charged with the killings.
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But later, Simpson insisted to Felix that when free, he planned on looking for the “actual murderer.”
“OJ was delusional,” he said.
Norman Pardo, Simpson’s ex-manager, echoed concerns about the Juice’s bizarre behavior possibly linked to neurological damage, recounting his client’s unhinged rants while traveling together around the country.
“OJ wasn’t right in the head,” Pardo said.
“He would talk to himself in the car and then he’d argue with himself in the car . . . sometimes he’d talk like he was talking in the third person.”
The football legend, who died from prostate cancer on Wednesday, told The Buffalo News in 2018 he was “concerned” he might have developed CTE from his time on the field, citing a pair of concussions.
“I do recognize that it probably affects you in short-term memory more than long-term,” he said.
“I know with me, I have days I can’t find words. . . . That gets a little scary.”
The degenerative brain disease manifests with symptoms including memory loss, mood swings, depression and aggression, according to Boston University’s CTE Center.
A 2023 report by the Center found that out of 376 former NFL players’ brains, 345, or nearly 92%, showed signs of the disease.
