Sweetness (12 page)

Over the following months Falks followed up with repeated phone calls, as did Gibson. “A talent like his could have taken us to a new level,” said Falks of a team that went 6-5 in 1970. “Walter alone was probably good for three or four more wins a season.”

Yet at the same time Kansas State was giving Payton the hard sell, so was Jackson State and its new head coach, Bob Hill. A former star running back at the school, Hill spent eight years as a line coach and offensive coordinator before being hired in December 1970 to take over his beleaguered alma mater. Having scouted Walter Payton in Columbia High’s season opener against Prentiss, Hill knew of the youngster’s unparalleled talents. “Oh man, he was something,” said Hill. “You saw him play one time and it was clear he was the real goods.”

Unlike Gibson, Hill possessed an ace up his sleeve. During Walter’s senior season in high school, one of Jackson State’s standouts was a junior running back by the name of Payton—
Eddie Payton
. In a forgettable 1970 campaign that saw the Tigers go 3-7, Eddie Payton ran for 339 yards and four touchdowns. Hill, a renowned hard-ass who lavished praise upon few, lavished praise upon Eddie, and assured him even better times should he woo his little brother to the Mississippi state capital. “So Eddie promised me Walter would be coming,” said Hill. “I said, ‘Eddie, do I have your word on it?’ and he said I did. I said, ‘You’re telling me for your father?’ and Eddie said, ‘Yes, I am.’ I took that to mean Walter would be playing for us.”

Eddie, though, wasn’t Walter’s father. He wasn’t Walter’s mother, either. He was his older brother, and an antagonizing one at that. Although Walter loved and admired his sibling and attended as many Jackson State games as possible, he also found him to be occasionally deceptive, misleading, and condescending. “I didn’t let them fight,” Alyne once said, “but I do think Walter sort of resented the older boy. Eddie would say, ‘Let me show you how to do this,’ and Walter would say, ‘No, I don’t want to know.’ ” Ever since Walter took up football as a sophomore at Jefferson, he had sought Eddie’s approval. It was hard to come by. Eddie was outgoing and gregarious; the life of any party and a beloved piece of the Jackson State campus. But he was (and, some forty years later, remains) insecure to a fault. From afar, he heard of Walter’s phenomenal output at Jefferson and Columbia, and a part of Eddie—according to those who know him well—felt forgotten. It’s one thing for a standout to be replaced by another standout. Happens all the time. But to be eclipsed by a sibling? Later on, when both men were playing in the NFL, Eddie was asked what it’s like to have a brother as a star. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Why don’t you ask Walter.”

“There’s a lot of jealousy there, and there has been for a long time,” said one of Eddie’s close friends. “Eddie loved Walter very much. But, like any older brother would, he had a hard time handling Walter’s success. It gnawed at him.”

Eddie’s antagonism made Walter apprehensive about attending Jackson State. When, in December 1970, the older brother pressed the younger brother to accept a scholarship to the college, Walter agreed. Yet it was far from sealed. Charles Boston, Payton’s head coach at Jefferson High and the assistant at Columbia, let it be known that, for the right opportunity from the right school, the running back was still on the market. Apparently word got around. That spring a portly defensive assistant from Florida State University was traveling through Mississippi when Boston got ahold of him. “He said to me, ‘Coach, we got a guy here who didn’t get signed by any of the college teams but I think he’s a really good player. Do you have any scholarships left?’ ” recalled the Seminole coach—a man named Bill Parcells. “I said ‘Yeah, we got one but I don’t think we’ll use it. We’ll probably keep it.’ ” Boston was determined that Parcells see Payton, so he had Walter take part in a spring practice with the upcoming varsity team. Parcells attended. “The kid’s about five foot nine, one-seventy, and he’s a running back,” Parcells recalled. “And he runs pretty good, but I look at [Boston] and say, ‘Coach, we’ve got six backs better than him at Florida State, plus he’s a little too small.’ ”

Walter’s future came down to two schools.
Wildcats? Tigers?
When Jackson State signed Moses to a scholarship, it wasn’t because the college collected five-foot-seven scatbacks. “Truthfully, we gave that to the little guy because we craved Walter,” said Hill. “That’s how you recruit.” Kansas State took an equally direct approach, promising all sorts of greatness and glory. “We wanted him terribly,” said R. C. Slocum, at the time a Wildcat assistant. “You don’t get those type of players every day.” Despite his differences with Eddie, Walter was intrigued by the idea of playing in the same backfield as his brother. But he thought Kansas State—with games against national powers like Nebraska and Oklahoma—offered an amazing opportunity. There was, however, the winters of Manhattan, Kansas. There was, however, the tyrannical rule of Hill, who, according to Eddie, ran a football team like a military platoon. “Bob Hill was the black Bear Bryant,” said Moses. “Walter didn’t like what he heard about Bob Hill’s style. He was brutal and raw.”

Finally, in the late spring of 1971, Walter made up his mind, signing a national letter of intent to attend Kansas State.
³
A few weeks later, in early June, Payton returned to Manhattan for a summer recruiting party at the breathtaking Turtle Creek Reservoir. With twenty-five of his fellow incoming freshmen on hand, Payton partook in waterskiing and swimming and gorged on hotdogs and hamburgers grilled by the coaching staff. “He was a really handsome, clean-cut, articulate kid,” said Slocum. “When he came to the cookout, we knew he would play for us. It was exciting.”

With that, Kansas State’s coaches made a program-defining error: They relaxed. When Payton returned to Columbia, he took up an offer from Eddie to move into a Jackson State dorm room for the remainder of the summer. Moses came along as well, and Hill encouraged both players to enroll in summer school classes. He also set Payton up with a go-only-if-you’re-verybored job working in a nearby gymnasium. “Coach Hill wanted his hands on Walter,” said Moses. “But Walter was turned off by it all.”

Payton took two classes that summer, and made regular trips from Jackson to Columbia. With each passing day his feelings of dislike toward Hill grew. He failed to understand the coach’s demeanor. Not an hour went by without Hill checking in on Payton, gauging his happiness, urging him to embrace Jackson State’s campus for all its splendor. Finally, enough was enough. The pressure was too much. On one of their trips home together, Payton and Moses took a drive to Pearl River Junior College in Poplarville, Mississippi. The school had gained fame for producing Willie Heidelburg, a running back who had recently become the first black to sign with the University of Southern Mississippi. “We all knew about Willie, and what he’d done,” said Moses. “So we got in Walter’s mother’s car, unbeknownst to his mom, his dad, Eddie, and Coach Hill. And we looked into getting a tryout.”

Payton and Moses tracked down John Russell, Pearl River’s head coach, and requested an on-the-spot audition. According to Moses, Russell asked whether they brought along equipment. “We didn’t,” said Moses. “And he wouldn’t loan us any to try out in.” Flabbergasted, they shuffled off, never to return.

The two teammates begrudgingly headed back to Jackson for the remainder of the summer, and on one of the final days Hill agreed to chauffeur Payton home to Columbia. He was still hoping Walter would become a Tiger. “Walter wanted to drive my car, so I let him,” Hill recalled of his brand new red-and-white Cadillac. “Man, if I hadn’t been recruiting him . . . I mean, he was just a crazy driver. Speeding like an insane person. But I didn’t say anything, I just found myself praying all the way that he didn’t hit a tree or a car or some person crossing the street.

“When we finally got there his mom fixed dinner for us. He wanted to go around and see some girl. So, fine, he left, and he stayed out a long time. And I was just content because his mom had cooked these peas, and oh, man, I loved peas. And chocolate cake. And oh, man, her biscuits. So I’m content—I ain’t worried about what time he’d get back. But his father was upset—
how can he keep this man’s car like that?
He was mad. It was rude, but he could have kept the car. Anyway, I wasn’t worried about it. I’m saying to myself, ‘I know I’ve got him, because his old man isn’t gonna stand for no mess.’ Even though Kansas State was still trying to get him. So when he got back, Walter said, ‘Coach Hill, you go on back to Jackson, and I promise you I’ll be there in the morning.’ I’m all smiling. I’ve got me a piece of cake, I’ve got myself a running back. Because I didn’t have to worry no more about Kansas State or anyone else.”

But Payton had signed his letter of intent with the Wildcats which, from Gibson’s perspective, was written in blood. The university sent Payton his one-way plane ticket to the Midwest. He was scheduled to leave on a Tuesday afternoon from, of all places, Jackson, and would arrive that evening in Manhattan. His dorm room was ready. His purple-and-white practice jersey hung from a locker. His name and number—PAYTON 22—was printed in black marker atop white athletic tape. No matter what Eddie Payton or Bob Hill were saying, Walter steeled himself to fly off to Kansas. He packed his bags, cleaned out his childhood bedroom, hugged his mother and sister, shook his father’s hand, and departed Columbia for the Jackson Airport.

With one itsy bitsy stop.

Because he arrived in Jackson more than five hours before his flight was scheduled to depart, Payton paid a final visit to his brother. He showed up just in time for the start of one of the Tigers’ practices. “The campus was as beautiful as I remembered it,” Payton wrote in his autobiography. “When Coach Hill saw me, he called me over to talk.”

The two sat down and watched the players run through their drills.

“Have you decided where you’re going?” Hill—ever persistent—asked.

“I think so,” Payton replied.

“Well,” said Hill, “I just hope it’s a place that puts as much emphasis on education as it does football, like we do here. You know, Jackson State has a lot to offer, and I’m talking about a lot more than football. You have to get your education, because nobody plays football all his life.”

Hill paused before continuing. “I can show you on paper,” he said, “that ninety-eight percent of the guys that play football here get their college degrees.”

Payton was no dummy. He knew Hill was pulling out all the stops. After a summer in Jackson, Payton was close with many of the Tiger players. He knew his way around the campus, felt comfortable in the environs, had his brother to lean on.

Though Hill’s speech hadn’t fully swayed him, it did cause Payton to skip his flight to Manhattan. The Kansas State coaches had arranged for Walter to take a bus from Manhattan Regional Airport to campus. They waited for two hours—no word. “I finally called someone from Mississippi to ask where Walter was,” said Gibson. “They told me he was going to Jackson State. I said, ‘Jackson State? He signed with us.’ ”

Payton had yet to actually make the official decision, but he was close. He went back to Columbia the next day, accompanied by his brother and Hill. With the two looming over him, pressuring him to dump Kansas State and sign with the Tigers, Walter fled the house and took a long drive. Upon returning, he sat down with his mother. “Mama,” he said, “I have no idea what to do.”

Alyne Payton—strong-willed, tough, focused—had never liked the idea of her youngest son going all the way to Kansas. “If you can’t make up your mind where you want to go to school, I’ll make it up for you,” she said. “You’re going to Jackson State.”

That was that.
Almost.
The administrators at Kansas State were furious. In their minds, Walter Payton had been kidnapped. Everything Hill had done—allowing Walter to attend summer school, lining up a job, driving him home—was part of an elaborate scheme. When it came to the ethics of college football, Hill was no Mother Teresa. He bought recruits meals and clothing, hid them from opposing programs, and made promises he couldn’t keep. According to numerous players, he reveled in paying for various achievements (a punt return for a touchdown netted ten dollars) and in setting bounties upon opposing stars. (“He once offered us fifty dollars to knock [Grambling quarterback] Doug Williams out of a game,” said Vernon Perry, a Tigers safety. “I actually did it, and Bob paid up.”) John Peoples, Jackson State’s president, recalled Hill telling him, “I can get Walter Payton, but you have to let me do what I have to do.”

“I said, ‘That’s fine—just don’t do anything illegal,” said Peoples. “Don’t do anything wrong.”

After Payton
finally
signed a letter to attend Jackson State, Peoples received a call from James McCain, Kansas State’s president. A rugged former lieutenant commander in the navy, McCain was infuriated. “Dr. Peoples, I’m planning on reporting you to the NCAA.”

“Reporting me?” Peoples asked. “For what?”

“For kidnapping,” McCain replied. “You kidnapped Walter Payton.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Peoples said. “But I do know that Walter Payton has not enrolled with you. So how can someone be kidnapped if he’s not enrolled?”

McCain seethed. Peoples was right—though Payton had signed the letter, he’d never enrolled in Kansas State. At the time, that was enough for an athlete to go wherever he preferred. “I’m going to call the NCAA about this,” McCain said. “You’ll hear back from me soon.”

It was the last time the two ever spoke.

Walter Payton was coming to Jackson State.

PART TWO

JACKSON

W.C. Gorden, Assistant Football Coach, Jackson State