Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Because Hill was college football’s Richard Nixon when it came to adhering to rules, he had his entire team spend the majority of the summer at Jackson State, violating multiple NCAA regulations by practicing up to three times per day.

  Yet unbeknownst to the Tigers coach, the sly back wasn’t merely pondering pigskin. Like nearly all Jackson State students, Walter was a rabid fan of 24 Karat Black Gold, a half-hour television program that aired every Saturday morning on Jackson’s NBC affiliate, channel 3.

  The program’s concept was simple and, in the age of American Bandstand and Soul Train, unoriginal: Invite a large number of local black high school and college students to a television studio and have them dance to the latest hits. “That was it,” said Lee King, 24 Karat Black Gold’s creator and a onetime radio engineer for James Brown. “Our show was eighty percent dancing, and the other twenty percent was videos and appearances by regional and national artists. It worked so well because it was an outlet for African-Americans in Mississippi. Their ambitions were at a low level because they didn’t have a lot of recreational things to do in the area. So when our show came out, it was their Bandstand.”

  Without telling Hill (who would have certainly objected), on a Tuesday evening in early September 1972, Walter and a couple of friends drove to the WLBT studio on South Jefferson Street, where auditions were being held for the new season. The line stretched down the block and around the corner—hundreds of young blacks in search of stardom. “We had to introduce ourselves, say what college we attended, what our major was,” said Jones. “Then we formed a Soul Train line and danced. If we were good, they invited us back the following week. There was no salary, but we didn’t care. It wasn’t about that.”

  “I was from Augusta, Georgia, so I had no idea who Walter was,” said King. “But he auditioned with this freestyle dance that was crazy and different. He had a great way of carrying himself, too. He radiated something unique.”

  The tapings took place on the first Monday of every month—four episodes shot in one exhausting evening. Though he often walked onto the dance floor straight from football practice, muscles aching and knees throbbing, as soon as the TV cameras rolled and the sounds of Earth, Wind & Fire or the Jackson 5 blared across the room, Walter came to life. His wardrobe was, even for the times, outrageous—bright purple cutoff shirts, baggy velvet pants, tight jeans, some sort of fedora-esque hat. The popular dance style of the time was called “Pop ‘n’ Lock,” a precursor to break dancing that incorporated fluid and wavy isolated movements with tight robotic illusions. His go-to move was the Centipede, slinking to the floor and moving his body in wavelike motions. “Oh, he was an excellent dancer,” said Jones. “Walter used to inject a lot of the techniques they did in football . . . some of the calisthenics and exercises. He was really flexible with his body; more so than the rest of us.”

  Because the Tiger football program was still finding itself, Payton the running back had yet to establish himself as a household name in Jackson. Payton the dancer, on the other hand, was huge. “The show aired every week, so people became familiar with us,” said Jones. “Throughout the fall and spring, we turned into celebrities. Kids would yell out when we drove by and people would stop and ask about the dances. It was thrilling.”

  Like many who met Payton, King developed affection for the boy. He was goofy and quirky and always messing around with someone. At the time King owned a beautiful white Cadillac, and Walter said he’d like to repay him for the dancing opportunity by taking the vehicle to the car wash. King accepted the offer on multiple occasions, never giving much thought to the fact that his car would be gone for three hours a pop. “When I scolded him about it taking too long, Walter would give me some story about the vacuum not working,” said King. “Well, one day someone took me to where Walter was supposed to be cleaning, and I caught him with a bunch of females in the car.”

  Midway through the academic year, King announced that 24 Karat Black Gold was affiliating itself with the first-ever Soul Train National Championship Dance-Off. Throughout the country, each state would host its own competition, with the winning couples flying to Los Angeles to appear on Soul Train and vie for the title of America’s Best Dancers. At the time, Payton and Jones were teamed on Black Gold with fairly mediocre partners. “So Walter came up to me one day and said, ‘How about entering the Soul Train contest together?’ ” Jones said. “ ‘I really think we can win this thing if we team up.’ ” For the next three weeks the two met in a second-floor room of Jackson State’s student union building and danced until their toes blistered. “We had forty-fives and LPs, and we practiced for endless hours,” Jones said. “We expected to win.”

  The first round of the competition was held at the College Park Auditorium on Lynch Street. Hundreds of couples took to the floor as the judges cruised the room, tapping out those who didn’t make the cut. Along with forty-nine other couples, Walter and Mary survived the first week, then lasted again as the total was reduced to twenty-five, and then again to a mere ten. The championship round was held on a Sunday, ten couples dancing for the right to appear on one of black America’s most popular television programs. “I’d never left Mississippi in my life,” said Jones. “I’d never even been on an airplane. So the possibility was breathtaking.”

  The ten couples were pared down to five, then three. Walter gazed at Mary. Mary gazed at Walter. They locked eyes, knowing to ignore the judges and just move. Finally, the music stopped. The couple looked around, and nobody was left. “I was overcome with joy, and so was Walter,” said Jones. “To be chosen to represent the entire state of Mississippi! What an honor!”

  By the time Walter and Mary flew to Los Angeles, it was the summer of 1973. The local radio station, WOKJ, presented both students with plane tickets and five hundred dollars in spending money. (“Five hundred dollars!” laughs Jones. “I couldn’t believe it.”) They stayed at the Hyatt in Los Angeles, and were given tours of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Upon arriving at Soul Train’s studio, they met Don Cornelius, the famed deep-voiced host and producer.

  The show was taped the night after they arrived. Couples from across the nation danced away, until fifty were whittled down to thirty, and thirty were whittled down to fifteen, and fifteen were whittled down to two. The victors would be gifted two brand-new olive green Dodge Chargers—“and we really wanted those cars,” Jones said.

  Walter wore jeans with wide legs, a cutoff shirt that revealed his muscular stomach, and Gene Simmons–esque platform heels. Atop his head was an apple cap, a style staple for black men in the early 1970s. He and Mary danced as well as they ever had. So, unfortunately, did the couple from Louisiana. “Mississippi and Louisiana were the last two standing,” said Jones. “They were just a little bit better than we were.”

  Walter and Mary left empty-handed.

  “But the story of dancing with Walter,” said Mary, “has lasted me a lifetime.”

  If Walter Payton tiptoed cautiously toward his freshman year of college, he barged in, shoulder first, as a sophomore.

  Though he had enjoyed playing alongside his older brother in the Tigers backfield, Walter was his own man, in need of neither guidance nor sibling-provided protection. “At first I was glad to room with people I knew, but it was almost too much after a while,” he wrote in his autobiography of living with Eddie and Edward Moses as a freshman. “I began to wish that I’d roomed with strangers.”

  With a year of school—and football—under his belt, Walter was more relaxed and confident. His roommates were now Rodney Phillips and Rickey Young, two young Tiger stars who shared Payton’s on-campus notoriety and were thrilled to have access to his deluxe stereo system with a real remote control. “He had powerful amps,” said Matthew Norman, a teammate, “and he’d try to knock the walls down with music.” Walter strolled campus with a smile glued to his face, exchanging high fives with teammates, offering causal nods to pretty women. He liked to fish with linebacker Robert Brazile in a nearby reservoi
r and stay up late gabbing with his pals in a common area of the residence hall. In his hands he often carried a wood slingshot, and when the spirit moved him he would pick up a rock and pluck unsuspecting pigeons. “Not to be mean,” said Taylor, the Tigers quarterback. “Just Walter being a big kid.”

  Without Eddie, Walter could be himself without worrying about someone hovering over his shoulder. There was the dancing on Black Gold. There were the trips to the Penguin Restaurant, a little place just off of campus where, for a dollar fifty, Walter would buy two hot dogs, slather them in coleslaw and the Penguin’s special sauce, gobble them down, and sprint back to the dorm before Hill could catch him.

  There were the women.

  Back during his freshman orientation, Walter had been standing in a courtyard when he took notice of a pretty coed named Lorna Jones. A local girl who graduated from Jackson’s Wingfield High, Lorna was immediately taken with Payton’s kind eyes and humble disposition. “He wasn’t all that handsome, but he was very nice and very intelligent, even though he didn’t think of himself as smart,” said Jones. “He also had a shyness to him that was quite endearing.”

  Unlike Walter, Lorna lived at home with her parents, both educators, both unflinchingly strict. Her mother, M. V. Manning Jones, refused to allow Lorna to stay out late or, heaven forbid, sleep elsewhere. Kissing boys was against the law. When Walter visited, the two could not be together in a room behind a closed door. “I had my own den, and we’d sit there, but we were never really alone,” said Lorna. “My dad would walk back and forth, back and forth.” Despite their mistrust of all members of the opposite sex, M. V. and Lawrence Jones liked their daughter’s boyfriend. He was polite and friendly, and came over frequently to help cook shrimp and stir chili. When he once needed to attend a certain award presentation, the Joneses even took Walter to JCPenney to buy a pair of shoes.

  During Christmas break toward the end of 1971, Walter brought Lorna to Columbia to meet his parents. Because her family was so forbidding, Lorna was allowed to go only as long as her best friend, Patrice Turner, came along, and under the order that they return by evening’s end. In the shadow of the Payton Christmas tree, with Patrice hovering nearby, Walter handed Lorna a small box. Inside was a promise ring with, in her words, “an itty, itty, itty, bitty diamond.”

  “That was a big thing,” said Lorna. “Back then you gave promise rings as a token of a serious relationship. We had real feelings for one another. I loved him.”

  Walter majored in history as a freshman, compiling twenty-eight credits and earning a GPA between 2.0 and 2.5. He had spent endless hours studying alongside Lorna, who was passionate about her major, special education. During many of their conversations, Walter thought back to his days mentoring disabled children at Columbia High, as well as playing alongside a deaf high school teammate named Lee Bullock. He would end up switching his major to audiology, a branch of science that studies hearing, balance, and related disorders. He was, almost certainly, the nation’s only top-flight football player to focus on such a field. “He really cared about people,” Lorna said. “Studying with him and talking with him about special ed were great moments. We shared a bond.”

  As sophomores, however, the dynamic shifted. With Eddie’s departure, Walter was thrust into the role of football (and dance) superstar, fawned upon by fellow students, handed one Division II honor after another. The anonymity of his freshman year had vanished, and with his newfound celebrity, said Lorna, came a sizeable ego. “That first year I never had to worry about other girls,” said Lorna. “But sophomore year—he turned into a dog. A lot of girls were throwing themselves at Walter, wanting to get with a star, and he didn’t put up much of a fight.” On multiple occasions, Walter left Lorna waiting at her doorstep. The two would plan a study night—he never showed. They’d schedule an evening at the movies—no Walter. She heard the rumors of one girl this night, another girl that night. “We went from being exclusive and serious to having this kind of off-again, on-again thing where he would show up, not show up, be nice, be moody,” Lorna said. “I loved him, but I didn’t love how he always treated me.”

  Unlike Walter’s freshman season, the Tigers entered 1972 with high expectations. When a team finishes 9-1-1, as Jackson State did, people crave more of the same. The Tigers were returning twenty-three lettermen, and in Payton and fullbacks Young and Phillips, Hill boasted three standout sophomore backs.

  The Tigers opened at home against Prairie View on September 16, and the six thousand or so fans who braved a cold rain witnessed one of the uglier games in school history. Jackson State won 16–13 over a vastly inferior opponent, but there was nothing pretty in the performance. “I was trying to explain to Coach Hill during the game why we were struggling with their 4-3 defense,” said Charles Brady, a Tigers defensive tackle. “Coach punched me in the belly and told me to shut up.” With Hill rampaging up and down the sideline and Payton held to under fifty total yards, the afternoon felt like a disaster. When the game ended Hill entered the locker room, grabbed his clipboard, marched toward Payton and Young, and slammed both of them over the heads.

  “Next week we have Lane!” he screamed. “You better play better! You better play fucking better!”

  Odell Tate carried a gun.

  If there’s one thing you need to know about Lane College’s dysfunctional football program in the fall of 1972, it’s that the man in charge packed heat. When Tate was hired by the tiny, historically black Jackson, Tennessee–based college prior to the season, it was with the idea that the longtime high school coach would instill a sense of pride and discipline.

  To the members of Lane’s executive board, that meant teaching the virtues of hard work and commitment and punctuality and intensity.

  To Tate, it apparently meant violent craziness.

  “The gun was a .25 automatic,” recalled Cameron Franklin, a Lane offensive guard. “He would bring it to practice every day and keep it in his back pocket. One week we were practicing, and somebody had egged and toiletpapered his car. He thought the players did it, so he started waving the gun at us, screaming, ‘If I catch who did this to my car, I’ll pop ’em!’ ”

  Combined with a coach’s madness, the team’s lack of overall talent (the Dragons played in the mediocre SIAC (Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) spelled doom. Lane was playing at Jackson State for the second time in school history, a matchup that had nothing to do with gridiron glory and everything to do with finances. With an enrollment of merely thirteen hundred students and a budget that paled in comparison to other schools its size, Lane was always on the lookout for ways to score an extra buck. Hill’s Tigers, meanwhile, needed a sure-shot victory or two before facing Grambling, Alcorn, and the other heavyweights of the SWAC. As was common practice, Jackson State agreed to pay Lane a couple of thousand dollars to come to Memorial Stadium.

  In anticipation of the game, Tate worked his players to death. “Coach was determined we needed to be in tip-top shape when we played them,” said Wilkins Raybon, a Lane linebacker. “So that week he ran us and ran us good. He thought he was getting us in top condition, but really he was wearing us down. By the time the game started, we were exhausted.”

  Tate warned his players that the Tigers had a running back—“That number thirty-four!”—who wouldn’t succumb to mere arm tackles. What he didn’t know was Payton featured a new weapon that, through the course of his career, would serve as the ultimate equalizer. Midway through the summer, Hill had asked Walter if he was interested in accompanying him on a recruiting trip to Birmingham, Alabama (Hill enjoyed taking his players for long rides). The two settled into the coach’s Cadillac, and as he drove Hill told the story of how he broke loose in his days as a runner at Jackson State. “When I played here, we used to get rolls of athletic tape that came in these big cardboard boxes,” Hill said. “Well, one day a trainer threw out one of the boxes, so I grabbed it, cut it right down the middle, and taped it around my arm. Then I put my jersey over it so nobody
would know.” As Hill remembered it, he lined up in the backfield, took a handoff, and started down the sideline. “When a defensive back came up, I just walloped him in the head with the cardboard—POP! It worked like magic, and I didn’t feel pain. From that day on, every time someone tried to tackle me I’d cock my elbow and hit him with a forearm. That became my calling card.”

  Hill wasn’t endorsing the procedure, just regaling in yesteryear. The next time Walter came to practice, however, he was wearing a knee pad over his arm. Hill asked Willie Barnes, the team’s trainer, what was going on. “I don’t want my guys having nothing on their arms,” he said. “Did you give him that?” To which Barnes replied, “Yes, but Walter said you told him he could wear it.” Hill laughed, then pulled all the running backs aside. “I have a rule,” he said. “Nothing can be on your arms.” Hill paused. “But Walter is different.”

  From that day forward, Payton’s forearm served as a cement block. He raised it, then slammed it down upon an opponent’s head. He used it like a club and gnashed it into an oncoming tackler’s jaw. Whereas defenders once only had to worry about Walter’s speed and toughness, they now had to concern themselves with assault and battery. Thanks to the forearm, Walter would never play victim again. “After games his elbow would be the size of a grapefruit,” said Vernon Perry, the Jackson State safety. “They’d drain the blood out of it every week.”

  The Dragons had no idea what they were in for. “They walked into the cafeteria a few hours before the game talking all sorts of junk about what they were going to do to us,” said Milton Webb, Jackson State’s middle linebacker. “We just laughed and said, ‘OK, we’ll see. We’ll see.’ ”