O.J. Simpson made one of the most remarkable plays in the history of the Hula Bowl, back when the Hula Bowl was a big deal.

It was the premier college football all-star game in the 1960s. They didn’t have the scouting combine until 1982, and potential NFL draftees — even can’t-miss prospects like Simpson — did not opt out of games.

Simpson, who died Wednesday of prostate cancer at age 76, was the main attraction of the 1969 Hula Bowl. The USC star’s combination of speed, power and elusiveness was unmatched at the time, and only by a handful of other running backs throughout football history.

It was rainy and muddy on Jan. 4 at Honolulu Stadium, making the conditions less than ideal for Simpson to showcase his talent.

It didn’t matter for the Heisman Trophy winner; he rushed for 92 yards from scrimmage, and is most noted that day for splashing his way to the end zone with an 88-yard kickoff return. I wasn’t there but will take Don Robbs’ word for it when he says the only guy near Simpson for the last 50 yards was referee Earl Galdeira.

Then, as an NFL superstar en route to the Hall of Fame, Simpson again did not disappoint.

That would come later.

On June 17, 1994, my brother and some other friends came to my apartment to watch Game 5 of the NBA Finals. None of us had much rooting interest in the teams, but this was a great series — Michael Jordan was trying to play baseball that year, so the evenly matched New York Knicks and Houston Rockets battled it out.

The series was tied, and the game was close. But the TV cut away from Madison Square Garden to one of the freeways near Los Angeles. That was the day we learned a new, incongruous phrase: low speed chase.

From what we could gather, the police were in pursuit of Simpson, whose ex-wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, had been brutally killed. Simpson was in a white Bronco, driven — at around the speed limit — by his friend Al Cowlings.

Cowlings was in contact by phone with police, and eventually convinced Simpson to surrender to law enforcement at his home.

As shocking and bizarre as this was, my friends and I were not happy about missing the end of the game. (In case you forget, or are curious, the Knicks won to take a 3-2 series lead, but the Rockets won the last two games at home to capture the first of back-to-back NBA championships).

Simpson? By then, he had long finished his 11-year NFL career. But he’d remained in the public eye, and to not know O.J. was to love him, or at least like him. The two-dimensional Simpson in the “Naked Gun” movies, running through airports in Hertz commercials, and analyzing football games for ABC seemed like a fun person to hang out with.

That nice-guy image crumbled quickly in 1994, as very unflattering traits of the man were revealed via a circus of legal proceedings in the coming days, weeks and years after the deaths. Simpson, represented by a high-priced dream team of lawyers, was acquitted of double murder in criminal court. But irrefutable evidence revealed a record of him abusing his wife, and in an ensuing civil court case he was judged responsible for the deaths.

The “real killers” Simpson vowed to find never surfaced, and he served nine of his last 16 years in prison on unrelated armed robbery and kidnapping convictions.

I like to think I already knew in 1994 what should always be a simple truth. O.J. Simpson’s tragic saga is a reminder that natural talent, charisma, wealth and fame have nothing to do with character.