Bill Cosby

12:31 PM“If a 10-hour movie could be made about O.J. Simpson, a 20-hour movie could be done for Bill Cosby.”

That’s what my boss said Tuesday, referring to news that William Henry Cosby Jr. has been ordered to stand trial in an indecent assault case brought against him in his home state of Pennsylvania. Although dozens of women over the years have come forward with similar allegations, it’s Andrea Constand — who worked at Cosby’s alma mater Temple University, where he once served on the board of trustees — that will get her day in court.

When we think about the magnitude of this trial, it is impossible to predict. Compared with the Simpson murder trial, there are certainly similarities. But for the most part, they’re better defined as parallels taken to the 10th power. Football star Simpson’s popularity, although tremendous, was not even in the same stratosphere as Cosby’s. Yet the comedian and television icon is only 10 years older than the former football star. It seems like longer, mainly because Cosby played a fatherly figure for so long as The Cosby Show‘s Cliff Huxtable, and because he’s been in the public eye for everyone, not just sports fans, since the mid-1960s.

The Simpson case took over the country in 1994. Nearly every single person involved either was, or became, famous as a result. The coverage redefined the concept of not only the 24-hour news cycle, but laid the groundwork for what we understand the draw of reality television to be. It was the renaissance of “famous for being famous,” originally coined by Zsa Zsa Gabor, with a macabre twist.

In an April 2016 story titled “5 Reasons Why We’ll Never See Anything Like the O.J. Simpson Verdict Again,” Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson analyzed how we all watched that incredible decision come down from a Los Angeles County courthouse. Yet, although the trial transfixed the country from a news standpoint, that was one moment.

“Adults abandoned their work and students left their classrooms as 150 million viewers — 57% of the country — gathered around TV screens,” Robinson wrote. “By comparison, only 37.8 million tuned in for Barack Obama’s historic inauguration in 2009 (also midday on a Tuesday) and 114.4 million watched the highest-rated sporting event in U.S. history: the 2015 Super Bowl. But if the verdict were to be announced today, most American workers and students wouldn’t gather together around a TV or a huge screen in Times Square. Most would be hunched over personal devices checking Twitter or Facebook or watching some kind of streaming video for the latest update.”

Now, imagine that for every single day of the Cosby trial.

With Simpson, there was an actual win/lose result we wanted to know. It was important for America to understand whether reasonable doubt even applied to rich black people. Cosby is richer than anything Simpson ever got close to. Simpson worked for NBC for a long time. When accusations against Cosby first resurfaced, conspiracy theorists said it was because he was looking to buy NBC. It’s a different world, if you will.

There are closer parallels when it comes to the sympathy arguments for both, the often “sounds like the LAPD is racist,” updated for the 21st century. Both were centered on the notion of not believing women and trusting a justice system that is systemically harmfully patriarchal by design.

“Even after more than 50 women have told remarkably similar stories of rape and assault, even after Cosby’s lawful arrest, plenty of people are still clamoring for the rest of us to ‘leave Bill Cosby alone,’” Christina Cauterucci wrote for Slate in December.

“They’ve said his career and reputation are already ruined and, at age 78, he’s too old to do any more damage; that vocal Cosby detractors are getting some kind of ‘sick pleasure’ from harping on his misdeeds. That the liberal media has an undue vendetta against a conservative apologist who preached about black immorality.”

Simpson was a man who many believe displayed the oft-ignored pattern of a domestic abuser. At that time, we weren’t ready to look at how domestic violence played a part in this case beyond race. We just didn’t have the bandwidth culturally for all those things to matter the same way.

In 2016, maybe we still don’t. But we’re certainly closer. While Cosby’s crime may not rise to murder, the sheer scope and breadth of his actions and admissions makes this trial, unfortunately, about far more than just Constand. It’s about the fundamental concept of consent.

Perhaps even more bizarre to think about is how this may play out going forward. Simpson is up for parole next year, for a Las Vegas robbery in 2007. If he’s successful, it’s entirely possible that he may be getting out of prison just as Cosby is headed in.