O.J. SIMPSON CASE DET. MARK FUHRMAN DEAD AT 74

Former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman, who discovered the bloody glove in the O.J. Simpson murder case and later torpedoed the prosecution with his use of the n-word, is dead ... TMZ has learned.

Sources tell TMZ ... Mark died from an aggressive form of throat cancer, which he was diagnosed with last year. Mark had been hospitalized for about a week before he died. He had done some cancer treatment ... but made the final decision to stop. There won't be a funeral.

Mark had been living in Idaho and the Kootenai County Coroner Office tells us Mark died May 12.

He retired from LAPD way back in August 1995 and started writing true crime books. He became a TV and radio personality and even worked as an expert for Fox News.

A year after retiring, Mark pleaded no contest in 1996 to a felony count of perjury for lying about using a racial slur when he testified during O.J.'s trial.

O.J.'s defense team infamously played a tape in court, in which Mark used the n-word. The audio contradicted his earlier testimony, specifically him denying using the slur.

With Mark as the cop who found the bloody glove, O.J.'s legal team called out Mark's credibility by resurfacing old tapes of the detective using racist language ... ultimately suggesting he might have planted the evidence.

O.J.'s defense strategy worked and he was acquitted ... and Mark's eventual felony perjury conviction made him the only person ever convicted of any crime in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

Mark was barred from returning to police work in California in May 2024 ... and the reason was because of his felony conviction as part of the O.J. case.

He was 74.

RIP

- TMZ

OBSTACLES FACED BY BLACK COACHES IN ENGLISH SOCCER HIGHLIGHTED IN NEW REPORT

Vincent Company. AP Photo

 MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Non-Black former soccer players in England were 50% more likely than their Black counterparts to progress into management, said a report published on Tuesday.

In a latest study into coaching diversity, U.K.-based advocacy group Black Footballers Partnership (BFP) highlighted the ongoing disparity in the sport and concluded Black managers or assistants were also 41% more likely to be fired.

“Football should be a game for everyone on and off the pitch. If you are good enough on the pitch your dreams and hopes can and should be realized,” wrote a group of Black former players including Sol Campbell and Les Ferdinand in the report's foreword. “The significant drop off in off-field opportunities lets down Black players and an industry that relies on their talent.”

The group, which also includes Chris Ramsey, Paul Davis and Ricky Hill, described the lack of opportunities for Black coaches as a “systemic issue.”

Burnley's Vincent Kompany began the season as the Premier League's only Black manager. Then Nuno Espirito Santo, who was born on the African island of São Tomé, was hired by Nottingham Forest in December.

In its 2022 report, the BFP found 43% of Premier League players were Black, but only 4.4% of managerial positions for former players were taken up by Black applicants.

In the latest report, academics Sam Hoey from the University of Liverpool, Thomas Peeters from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and Stefan Szymanski from the University of Michigan studied a sample of about 3,500 players from England's top two divisions from 1990 to 2010 and who stopped playing in 2013 or earlier.

The report said Black managerial staff were also less likely to be promoted.

“In sum, Black former players get fewer chances at management, get promoted more slowly (if at all), their progress stalls sooner, and they get fired quicker than their non-Black counterparts — and none of that is related to their performance,” the BFP said.

“A career in football management often looks like a game of snakes and ladders; but for Black former players it’s pretty much all snakes and no ladders, and we have the data to prove it,” BFL executive director Delroy Corinaldi said.

- JAMES ROBSON

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