Now and then, the name O.J. Simpson, pops up.

When they see that name, most Americans who were adults in the middle 1990s probably have a couple of thoughts flit through their heads.

“Football star … killed two people and got away with it …”

Often, the next-most-pertinent thought — “currently in prison” — doesn’t come to the surface. It probably is later on the checklist. Maybe after “Heisman Trophy winner” or “celebrity” or “movie star”.

Mostly, because Simpson’s conviction in Las Vegas on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping (among other things), in 2008, got nowhere near the attention of the Trial of the Century, in 1995.

What made me think of O.J.?

I was looking at the cast of The Towering Inferno, the movie, a few days ago, and there among the “all-star cast” — between Jennifer Jones and Robert Vaughn on the movie poster — was O.J., who in 1973 had his record-setting 2,003-yard season with the Buffalo Bills. It was his second movie, apparently, and he played a fairly prominent role in a major hit.

And then my mind went down the O.J. checklist: “football star, Trial of the Century … and still in jail in Nevada“.

He was not convicted, in 1995, on charges of murdering his wife and a restaurant employee. But by 2007 he was behind bars, for the fracas in a Las Vegas hotel room, and by 2008 he was in prison, serving a term set at 33 years, with a minimum of nine years without parole.

At this writing, he is 67 and will be 70 in October 2017, when he is first eligible for parole.

Those who thought he was guilty, in 1994, believe he got away with murder.

But, eventually, O.J. disappeared into the penal system. And when he went, it was almost as an afterthought for a man who had become marginalized in the modern world.

Sometimes, we forget he is incarcerated inside Lovelock Correctional Center, in the nearly empty lands of north Nevada.

Perhaps he wasn’t locked up when he should have been, but he is at the moment, and if the notion of his nearly being forgotten satisfies some minds, well, you have that, too.