Here's a short article in Salon (which means you may have to watch an ad in order to read it and it may not be worth your time) that theorizes on O.J. Simpson's psychological reasons for the forthcoming "if I did it" shows and book. As I mentioned here with regard to analyzing Presidents of these United States, I have a very limited belief in the building of psychiatric profiles on total strangers based on a few of their public utterances or deeds. It's interesting to read of the possible motives someone might have to be doing what Simpson is doing but they're still just hunches by some doctor-types who never met the guy and are guessing, largely so some reporter can build a story. O.J. himself may not even know why he's doing it.
Since I'm as unqualified to judge this as anyone else, I will. I think you have a guy here who based his entire post-football life on celebrity. His line of work was being O.J. and you don't even have to make the distinction as to whether he needed the fame to feed his ego or because it paid well. He needed compensation in both areas. The trial cost him his riches and the subsequent shunning cost him his fans and, therefore, the only way he knows to replenish his personal fortune. As one project after another fell apart or bombed, it proved that there's just no market out there for O.J. Simpson. So he figures he's got nothing to lose…might as well try this.
In his line of work, after all, you kind of need to be making money to make money. No one went for his book and movie proposals because it didn't seem that there were any significant sums of currency to be made by being in business with O.J. Simpson…certainly not enough to compensate a financier for the condemnation they'd endure for it. Whether or not Simpson personally makes a lot of cash from this new semi-confession, someone might do quite well and that might prompt others to be more willing to help him get the O.J. business going again. At the very least, he oughta make something off it.
I am reminded of something I was once told by Vince McMahon, the wrestling entrepreneur. I was producing a show on which he had an Exec Producer title and we got to talking about his empire and the performers who worked for him. At the time, Mr. T was still something of a TV superstar but was occasionally popping up in the ring, teaming up with Hulk Hogan to thrash bad guys who were still bad guys. If only to make conversation, I asked McMahon how he was able to persuade Mr. T, who then seemed to have a real acting career of sorts, to get into the wrestling biz. Vince looked at me like I'd just asked him the stupidest question in the history of Mankind (an accomplishment of which I am more than capable) and said the following very calmly, the way you'd talk to a child with a severe learning disability. He said, "In the history of Professional Wrestling, no one has ever done anything for any reason except money."
In other words, forget about deep emotional justifications and personal guilts and desires to please dead relatives and all that. People sometimes do something just because they think there's a buck in it. Maybe that's all that's happening with Simpson.