LAS VEGAS >> Former football legend O.J. Simpson became a free man Sunday after serving nine years for a botched hotel room heist that brought prison time he avoided after his 1995 acquittal in the killings of his ex-wife and her friend.Simpson was released at 12:08 a.m. PDT from Lovelock Correctional Center in northern Nevada, state prisons spokeswoman Brooke Keast told The Associated Press.