This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage. Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.
The most obvious choices for No. 70:
= Marv Marinovich, USC football
= Joe Madden, Los Angeles Angels
= Rashawn Slater, Los Angeles Chargers
= Harry Smith, USC football
The most interesting story for No. 70:
Al Cowlings, Los Angeles Rams defensive end (1975 and 1977) via USC (1968 to 1969)
Southern California map pinpoints:
USC campus, Los Angeles Coliseum, L.A. Superior Court, Hollywood, Brentwood via the 405 Freeway
Esteemed universities vested in the time-honored tradition of slapping names onto fancy buildings based on the whims of a wealthy donor will, at some point, have to justify a problematic choice.
Embedded in the thematic USC Village, the Hogwarts-eque collection of brick buildings that appear to be left over from the Harry Potter movie set, the Cowlings Residential College provides more than 700 rooms to sophomores, junior and seniors who, according to their parents, often cross the street to take classes on the campus that was established more than 100 years ago with for-real old buildings just south of this domestic tranquility.
That’s Cowlings, as in Al “A.C.” Cowlings.
His contributions to the school: Two years in the late ‘60s as an All-American football player. Hung out with a group of guys known as “The Wild Bunch.”
And before there was such a thing as ride-sharing services, Cowlings was the OG uber-Uber driver with his snappy white Ford Bronco, just a scream away from his best friend, O.J. Simpson. To wit, Cowlings once screamed through a cell phone to police in 1994 commandeering said vehicle in the most bizarre slow-speed car chase through Southern California: “My name is A.C.! You know who I am, goddammit!”
In the back seat was an emotionally unstable Simpson, which Cowlings said had a gun to his head.
Long, strung out documentaries, historical recreations for TV and volumes of published tell-all books have dissected the timeline where this incident fell on June 24, after Simpson was supposed to surrender himself to police as the primary suspect, based on evidence collected, in a double-stabbing murder of his former wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman.
A lot of it got rehashed and retrashed when when Simpson died in 2024. It now leaves Cowlings as the one to obfuscate whenever a spotlight returns to this sorrid saga.
But how this all happened — how A.C. and O.J. became BFFS — has its foundation in the ways teammates form a bond on an athletic field to achieve a common goal.
Jump in the car and we’ll explain as we’re driving.
The context
Where ever O.J. Simpson went, A.C. Cowlings was close by.
As a wing man, a body guard, an errand runner, a de facto big brother — born in June of 1947, less than a month before Simpson.
Mostly, Cowlings idolized Simpson.
Continue reading “No. 70: Al Cowlings”
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