Sweetness (11 page)

Thanks in large part to Payton, Columbia High won its first seven games, and talk of an undefeated season and South Little Dixie Conference title heated up. On October 24, the Wildcats traveled fifty miles north to Magee, Mississippi, to take on the archrival Magee High Trojans in what many presumed would be an easy win.

One year earlier, Columbia sans Payton shocked Magee, at the time the conference’s top team, 14–3. Now, even though the Wildcats were bigger, stronger, and faster, they found themselves facing a daunting opponent: the officials. Payton carried the ball twenty-three times that evening, and according to Danny Davis, a Columbia High senior who was covering the game for the student newspaper, the
Hi-Lites
, nearly all of his long runs were called back. “It was some of the worst officiating I’ve ever seen,” said Davis. “Payton couldn’t touch the ball without a whistle being blown.” Throughout the season, Tommy Davis and Boston had wondered when (not
if
) the referees would penalize their team for having multiple stars with dark skin. It was a common phenomenon in the first year of integrated ball—all-white crews singling out black players in key moments.

Here, on Magee’s field, injustice reigned. On the first play of the game, Johnson faked a handoff to Payton, dropped back, and threw a majestic forty-yard spiral to Moses, who caught the ball and cruised toward the end zone. On Columbia’s sideline players were leaping up and down when—flag. “They called Sugar Man offside,” said Woodson. “A terrible, terrible call.” McGee jumped out to a 10–0 lead, and despite a miraculous ten-yard Payton touchdown run late in the fourth quarter (“I swear to God, he carried the entire Magee team into the end zone,” said Danny Davis), the Wildcats failed to come back. They lost, 17–8, and for the entirety of the one-hour bus ride home after the game, Payton sat alone, head in hands, sobbing.

The Wildcats went on to finish 8-2, an extraordinary run for the first integrated team in school history. Payton scored at least one touchdown in every game, and was named all-conference and all-state. “The whole season showed people that blacks and whites belonged together, side by side,” said Dantin. “It was an enormous success by all standards.”

He paused.

“But,” Dantin adds, “it would have been sweeter had we won every game.”

With the pressure of football now behind him, Payton reveled in his remaining days at Columbia High. He attended biweekly meetings of the Future Homemakers of America, which were overflowing with coeds learning how to boil eggs and iron shirts. Merely an average student throughout high school, usually bringing home report cards with Bs and a few Cs, at Columbia High Walter developed a genuine interest in assisting the mentally impaired.

A young teacher named Mike Callahan started a Columbia High branch of the Youth Association for Retarded Children. He roamed the halls looking for volunteers, and among the dozen or so students he roped in was an engaging football star with a free sixth period. “We’d meet once per week during school and figure out ways to help,” said Becky Sinclair, a freshman Walter’s senior year. “We were small, but the people involved were sincerely interested in doing good. It was a lot of tutoring and assisting those who needed help.”

Walter wasn’t merely a jock looking to snag credit or up his Q-rating. On Saturday mornings Payton joined Callahan, Sinclair, and Co. on trips to the Ellisville State School, one of Mississippi’s six state-funded residential mental retardation facilities. Once there Walter would chat with the kids, or play drums, or tell stories of his football adventures. “He was such a caring person,” said Sinclair. “He’d sit with a child on the ground and talk with him forever. Just the two of them.”

In the late spring of 1971, Columbia High’s branch of the Youth Association for Retarded Children took a bus to the state conference, 260 miles to the north in Tupelo. Upon arriving, Walter, Sinclair, Edward Moses, and three or four other white students walked to a nearby hamburger restaurant for lunch. They were denied service. “It never dawned on us,” said Sinclair. “But even when you were going somewhere to do good, you couldn’t always escape the racism of the time.”

Walter spent the spring competing in both baseball and track—sprinting from one practice field to another as the demands of his coaches dictated. “I was never that fond of the game,” he once wrote of baseball. “But we had a good time.”

Track and field was another story. If Payton’s achievements on the gridiron were extraordinary, then his long jump accomplishments are, to quote Boston, “absolutely unbelievable.” Because Columbia High’s facilities did not include a track, Boston, the head coach (here was one job a black man was deemed capable of holding), dragged Payton out to the football field, where he’d run and leap, run and leap, run and leap. “I’ll never forget Walter trying the long jump for the first time in practice,” said Tom Watts, a teammate. “He ran down the runway, took off over the pit, and landed in the bushes behind the pit. It was like watching a superhero fly through the air. Except Walter didn’t have a cape.”

Making his track and field debut at the Hazelhurst Relays in April 1971, Payton set a meet record with a jump of 20’7”—then proceeded to win nine consecutive dual meets. He broke the Columbia High mark with a 22’11¼” leap, and later took the state championship by soaring 22’3”. “He would jump out of the pit,” said Billy Mason, a teammate. “That’s not an exaggeration—Walter literally left the pit. And you wanna know the funniest thing about that?

“To Walter, it was no big deal. Just another day in the life.”

CHAPTER 5

RECRUITMENT

THE ARTICLE DOMINATED THE DECEMBER 17, 1970, FRONT PAGE OF THE
Columbian-Progress
. Atop the fold, fifty-point bold headline, two columns wide:

WILDCATS SIGNED BY STATE SCHOOLS

Five Columbia High School Wildcats have signed football scholarships with Mississippi schools.

Coach Tommy Davis, head coach at Columbia High School, and Coach Charles Boston, commended them for an outstanding year with the Wildcats and wished them successful seasons with their schools in the coming college years.

Not only were the boys commended for being good athletes but for fine academic records and team and school spirit which builds schools of character, the coaches noted.

The five Wildcats signed with three schools, one with the University of Southern Mississippi, two with Jackson State College and two with Mississippi Valley State College.

Signing with the University of Southern Mississippi was Steve Stewart, son of Mr. and Mrs. Ben Stewart. While visiting in Columbia last week, Coach Barney Poole of USM said he was extremely proud that Steve had decided “to cast his lot with us.” Stewart, a 6’2” end weighing 190 pounds, played mostly defensive end but also played some offense, doing a good job at both.

Edward “Sugar Man” Moses, five foot seven and 150 pounds, played halfback. He is the son of Mrs. Laura Moses and the late Willie Moses. He signed with Jackson State College.

Another Jackson State signee was Walter “Spider Man” Payton, son of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Payton. He stands six feet tall, weighs 193 and played fullback.

Alvin L Benson, director of public relations at Jackson State, said he was extremely glad to see the two Wildcats come to Jackson State, as both were outstanding Wildcats. Then, in his call to the
Columbian-Progress
, he voiced what must be the sentiments of many Mississippi coaches when he said, “They’ll be playing with us instead of coming back to plague us with an out-of-state team.”

Because the year was 1970 and the ten schools of the Southeastern Conference were still dragging their feet when it came to recruiting black athletes (the legendary Bear Bryant signed Alabama’s first black player in 1971, and Ole Miss waited until 1972), Southern stalwarts like Walter Payton—an all-state running back whose size-speed combination made him an undeniable Division I talent—went largely ignored in their home regions. The few SEC–or Mississippi-based schools that might have considered Payton were turned off by his antics from the Prentiss game, when he held the ball aloft and jogged backward into the end zone. “When I was talking to Southern Miss, the recruiter asked me if I would like to have Walter as a college teammate,” said Stewart. “I told him, ‘Heck yeah!’ But the man refused to get over him holding that ball in the air. They had one of the best running backs in the country completely available, and they ignored him. Holding that ball up became Walter’s signature.”

With Columbia High, a small school in an oft-overlooked portion of the state, very few colleges actually knew of Payton. The members of the historically black Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) sent scouts, but only one NCAA Division I program went after Walter Payton.

“We had him,” said Vince Gibson, the head coach of Kansas State University. “Walter Payton was going to be a KSU Wildcat. It was a done deal.”

Indeed, before the
Columbian-Progress
announced his intention to attend Jackson State, Payton was being strongly pursued by a rising power from the Big Eight. In the fall of 1970, a Kansas State assistant coach named Frank Falks received a list of Southern prospects from some of the more obscure high schools. “I had never heard of Walter Payton,” said Falks, a former all-American linebacker at Parsons College. “Didn’t know the name, didn’t know the statistics. But we needed a running back, so I went down to Columbia to watch him.”

Every so often, a college recruiter stumbles upon a gem who—for one reason or another—falls through the clutches of rival schools. It doesn’t take much to recognize when it’s happening. The town has one gas station, a dive bar, and a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Traffic lights are scarce, as, for that matter, is traffic. You’re the only person with a notepad at a game, and when the kid runs or throws, nary a camera flash bursts.

That was Falks’ experience at Columbia High. As the Wildcats’ No. 22 dashed up and down the field, no other recruiters could be found. Falks was all alone. “Once you saw him, there was no question he’d be great,” said Falks. “No question whatsoever.”

Falks approached Payton after the game, then returned to his house on Hendricks Street to meet with Alyne and Peter. He sat down at the kitchen table, sipped a cool glass of iced tea, and made his pitch. It was a strong one:
Come to Kansas State, you’ll receive a great education and you’ll play against the absolute best. Come to Kansas State, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll have a shot at going professional.
In November 1970, Walter flew to Manhattan, Kansas—a place he had never before heard of—to make an official recruiting visit. Boasting 13,847 students, the sprawling campus of trees and paths and brick buildings was twice as large as Payton’s hometown. He was given a tour of the athletic dormitories, of the student center, of the new KSU Stadium, with its thirty thousand seats. He watched with wide-eyed wonderment as sexy coeds passed, and found himself imagining life in this wondrous—if glacial—new place nearly nine hundred miles from home.