It could be that O.J. Simpson's acquittal from the charge of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman actually knocked some sense into the man. Or maybe it was the harsh verdict of his civil trial, which ordered Simpson to pay over $33.5 million in damages. But in truth, Simpson probably just didn't want to have another dead woman on his hands.

So instead, last week Simpson frantically dialed 911 from his girlfriend's Florida townhouse to report a friend who had been on a two-day cocaine binge with former Los Angeles Dodgers star Pedro Guerrero.

Unfortunately, Simpson couldn't even keep his "cry-for-help" story straight. When he first dialed the emergency line, Simpson pleaded for officials to help his 26-year-old girlfriend, Christine Prody. But by the time police officers responded to the call, Prody's perilous predicament had been replaced by a friend's two-day cocaine binge with Guerrero. And Prody was even feeling well enough to confirm this second version of the story.

The 911 tapes were incorrect. Go figure. But the fact that Simpson can't get a story straight isn't the heart of the matter. What's interesting is whether O.J. would have protected Guerrero, already charged with cocaine conspiracy and accused of supplying the money for his nephew to purchase 15 kilos of coke, had he thrown a pigskin instead of swinging a bat.

For it seems that Simpson has a personal vendetta against Guerrero. According to a broadcast of Simpson's 911 call, he told the operator, "I'm trying to get a girl to go to rehab. She's been doing drugs for two days with Pedro Guerrero, who just got arrested for cocaine, and I'm trying to get her to leave her house and go into rehab right now." Simpson's preoccupation with assisting the ill woman is almost completely overshadowed by the time spent giving incriminating details about Guerero.

And he did. Simpson then informed the 911 operator, "This girl has spent the last two days doing drugs with him. Me and a friend just came over and said, 'You're going into a rehab.' She got mad, she just got her car and now she's loaded out of her mind in her Mustang driving around town. She needs to be stopped."

Instead of focusing on the poor condition of his friend, Simpson seemed intent on pushing Guerrero further into his cocaine quicksand. Besides connecting Guerrero with another cocaine incident, the purpose of Simpson's emergency telephone call is just not clear. Also puzzling is the confused identity of the woman, first said to be Simpson's girlfriend, then changed to an unidentified friend. Asked about it, Simpson said, "There was a disturbance that I thought they should know about. It had nothing to do with me, nothing to do with my girlfriend" and added, "so don't go there."

But at least the state of Miami was able to pluck a bit of triumph from what could have otherwise been just another bizarre chapter in Simpson's life after the murder trial. The two police officers that went to Prody's house after the 911 call were required to give Simpson a brochure on how to recognize and prevent domestic violence.