Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Fearing the Jackson State running game, Tate shifted his best player, Larry “Sleepy” Harris, from cornerback to safety, hoping he could charge the line and bottle up some of the inevitable holes. For the initial few minutes it worked—the Tigers failed to score on their first possession.

  The tide quickly turned. With 7:16 remaining in the first quarter, Payton, lined up in the I-formation behind Young, took the handoff from quarterback Jimmy Lewis and charged straight ahead, six yards into the end zone. A handful of maroon-and-blue-clad Dragon players were sprawled across the field. “Rickey Young blocked one of our guys so hard, he knocked his front teeth out,” said Franklin. “Man, those guys were bad dudes.”

  The Tigers scored on their next possession, with Lewis hitting receiver Allen Richardson for a forty-one-yard touchdown strike. Payton ran in the extra point, then reached the end zone again moments later on an eight-yard scamper that included no fewer than three forearms smashing into the heads of would-be tacklers. As the teams jogged into their respective locker rooms for the halftime break, the scoreboard reading 35–0, Jackson State’s players barked wildly at the Dragons. “They should have stopped the game,” said Harris. “Every time I looked up I saw number thirty-four running toward me. He was a beast. You could not arm tackle him. It was impossible.”

  For Lane, the second half was even worse. Tate stubbornly refused to switch from a 4-3 defense to a six-man defensive line, so Hill continued to run the ball. Payton scored four more times, including a weaving twenty-seven yarder late in the fourth quarter to cap the 72–0 romp. Lane’s defenders were so physically decimated by Payton’s stiff-arms and elbow blasts that, in the final minutes, Tate replaced them with offensive players. “I touched Walter one time all game,” said Raybon, “and it was when he was in the end zone. We were disgraced.”

  Payton’s totals for the day proved the best in Jackson State history: 279 yards rushing, a SWAC-record seven touchdowns. “To tell you the truth, I blew that one,” said Hill. “I had once scored seven touchdowns when I played at Jackson State, and I never wanted anyone to touch that record. So I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  As Payton walked off the field after the final gun, Lane’s players approached him one by one, hands extended, pride battered. Though they had received a hellacious beating, most knew they had witnessed something special.

  “I didn’t leave the field until they cut off the scoreboard,” said Bobby McKiver, a Lane linebacker. “I just sat there, shocked that we let one man kill us like that. Finally, our team doctor came out to get me. He said, ‘Bobby, the sun will rise again.’ ”

  “Doc,” McKiver replied, “it seems pretty damn dark to me.”

  As word of Walter’s accomplishment spread slowly across the country, the general reaction was ho-hum. Wasn’t there always some Division II halfback or Division III quarterback putting up astronomical numbers against a high school–caliber defense nobody had ever heard of?

  Within a week, however, more than ten NFL scouts arrived on the Jackson State campus to attend Tigers practices. Hill held some vague form of the same conversation on multiple occasions:

  Scout: So is this Payton kid for real?

  Hill: He’s the best pure runner I’ve ever seen.

  Scout: What’s he like off the field?

  Hill: He’s quiet and polite and never causes any trouble. Before practices he gathers all the other running backs and leads them in prayer. That’s Walter.

  Scout: Do you think he’ll do well in the pros?

  Hill: One day, he’ll own the pros.

  The Hill-Payton relationship was a quirky one. With on-field excellence, the player felt increasingly comfortable messing with the coach. Mimicking him behind his back. Mimicking him to his face. Jokingly telling teammates to ignore the old man. Even taking his car when the keys were left dangling from the ignition. Hill was superstitious, and Walter delighted in finding stray black cats and placing them in his office. (In one bizarre moment, a Jackson State player tied a noose around a black cat’s neck and hung it from the rearview mirror of Hill’s car. Hill never drove the vehicle again.)

  In case anyone thought Hill might have mellowed after his first season, they were quickly reminded otherwise. When a center named Willis Sweeney botched a snap during special teams drills, Hill stopped practice. “Take your shit off right now!” he screamed. Sweeney paused. His coach wasn’t serious . . . was he? “Take your shit off now! I’m not fucking around!” Surrounded by teammates, Sweeney removed his helmet, his jersey, his shoulder pads, and his shoes. “Now be the fuck out of the dorm by tomorrow! You’ll never play for this team again!”

  With Payton, however, Hill was different. He liked how on Sunday mornings, come rain or shine, Walter would wake up at eight to attend services at the nearby church. He liked how, before every game, he pulled aside all the other Tiger running backs and embraced them in tight hugs. Walter tried his first beer as a sophomore at a dorm party, drank the whole thing, and vomited profusely. “I’m never doing that again,” he told a defensive back named Curtis Jones. (Recalled Milton Webb, a middle linebacker: “When the season ended Walter would come down to the clubs with us. We’d all gather at the Tiger Lounge and drink beer. Walter would come, sit, engage for a few minutes—but never drink. Never.”)

  Mainly, Hill liked how, suddenly, Jackson State was a hot ticket. A sellout crowd arrived at Memorial Stadium the following Saturday to watch the Tigers come back from a fourteen-point deficit to beat Kentucky State 28–14. Though far from one of Payton’s most memorable games, players remembered it for Hill’s halftime histrionics. The coach stormed into the locker room, screamed, “Where’s that black motherfucker?” spotted Payton and once again slammed him over the head with a clipboard. Then, for a reason nobody ever understood, Hill ordered all his players to shave. In a shocking moment of defiance, John Tate, a six-foot-two, 230-pound linebacker, refused. Hill grabbed him around the neck and ordered Willie Barnes, the trainer, to bring a razor. “Either you shave, motherfucker!” Hill said, “or I’ll do it for you!” Tate shaved, and Hill celebrated by kicking a wide receiver named Earnest Richardson in the testicles. “A couple of days later we decided we were going to boycott Coach,” said Charles Brady, a defensive tackle. “That shit lasted fifteen minutes. We knew we were too good to ruin a season.”

  The Tigers improved to 4-0 with a 35–10 road dismantling of Bishop College, then beat Southern for a fifth-straight victory. Jackson State was now ranked fifth in the latest NCAA Division II poll—the highest spot for a SWAC school. Payton was the team’s brightest star. “Walter was like a Frank Sinatra,” said Roscoe Word, the Jackson State receiver. “God blessed him to sing, he blessed Walter to play football. His ability was a gift from God, but you couldn’t hurt him, he always gave one hundred percent and he was never an asshole. He didn’t ask for preferential treatment or act like a star. He ate in the dining room just like everybody else.”

  Hill’s greatest fear—that the offense was becoming too reliant on one player—came to fruition midway through the Bishop game, when Payton absorbed a helmet to the left knee and hobbled off the field with a ligament strain. He would miss three ensuing contests—two of which, with Rickey Young doing most of the ball carrying, Jackson State lost. “We weren’t as good as I thought we’d be,” said Hill. “We lacked something, especially when Walter wasn’t in there. We just weren’t a complete team.”

  Despite the shortcomings, the Tigers benefited from a down year for the SWAC. On November 23, they beat Alcorn State 28–14 to clinch a tie with Grambling for the conference championship. Because he was limited to eight games, Payton’s numbers seem merely good, not great—he ran for 781 yards and, with sixteen touchdowns and twenty-one extra points, led the SWAC in scoring. But thanks to the performance against Lane, plus the mounting buzz from scouts, the legend of Walter Payton was growing.

  “Beginning that season,” said Hill, “when people talked Jackson State football, they talked about Walter.
And when they talked about Walter, they talked about the next great superstar.”

  CHAPTER 8

  CONNIE

  WALTER PAYTON HAD A LONG MEMORY.

  If you did something wonderful for him, he rarely forgot. If you did something terrible to him, he rarely forgot, either. Like many athletes of his ilk, Payton used such mental dexterity to his advantage. When an opposing player took a cheap shot, Walter would store the image in his head. A month could pass, a year could pass, five years could pass. Inevitably, payback would come with a forearm to the chin or a stiff-arm to the sternum. Words rarely followed. Walter Payton wasn’t one to gloat. Just deliver.

  In the summer leading up to his junior year at Jackson State, Walter—as was required by Bob Hill—remained on campus for practice. He worked out at the field house and held down a show-up-and-do-little maintenance job at a nearby park that was arranged for him by Doug Shanks, Jackson’s city commissioner. In the course of those weeks, lingering on a mostly empty campus, the stifling Mississippi heat beating down upon him, Walter found himself trying to win back the affections of Lorna Jones, his on-again, off-again girlfriend.

  Tired of her beau’s philandering, Lorna had mostly washed her hands of Walter. She reunited with an old high school flame and moved on with her life. Yet Payton remained undeterred. He knew Lorna still wore the promise ring he had once given her, which led him to believe hope remained. “He made a strong push, and we did actually get back together,” Lorna said. “But there was a big obstacle standing in the way—my mother.”

  As the wife of an unfaithful husband, M. V. Manning Jones bristled at the idea of Lorna and Walter reconnecting. She knew how he had treated her daughter, and demanded Lorna have nothing to do with him. Walter was no longer allowed to call or visit. “He came one time to my house to have it out with my mother,” she said. “Two hardheaded individuals going at it.” As Lorna waited in the den, M. V. and Walter met in the kitchen. After ten minutes of threats and accusations (“My mom told him he needed to apologize to me for the way he treated me,” Lorna said. “He refused.”), Walter stormed from the room, uttered, “I’m gone,” and left the house. “Good riddance,” M. V. told her daughter. “He’s not good enough for you.”

  For the next few months, Walter and Lorna engaged in a covert romance. The two held hands, kissed on the steps outside Sampson Hall, cruised down to Lynch Street for hamburgers and Cokes. They tiptoed around Jackson, careful not to run into Lorna’s parents or any of her parents’ friends.

  “[The mother] thought Walter wasn’t good enough for her girl,” said Bob Hill. “Here’s Walter—he’s got no trouble at all. He’s a top football player, a dedicated student, a nice, nice kid—and she refused to let her daughter near him. I thought it was shameful.”

  Until his final moments of life, Walter never forgot the slight. As far as he was concerned, he was the innocent victim of a mother gone crazy. It irked and offended him. Mostly, it drove him. Walter was jolted by the racism of his hometown and the successes of his older brother and the intensity of his head coach. But were there a singular moment that infuriated him to the point of motivation, it was a mother telling her child, “Walter Payton isn’t good enough for you.”

  “He would talk about it often,” said Ginny Quirk, Walter’s executive assistant for the final fourteen years of his life. “The way that made him feel, and how it pushed him to make something of himself.”

  Divorced from his first wife, Yvonne, in 1973 Hill was dating Betty Ballette, a New Orleans resident who flew up to Jackson on weekends. One day, while driving through campus, Hill spotted his star running back hiding behind a large oak tree, trying to track down Lorna. “I stepped on the brakes and I said, ‘Walter, let me introduce you to somebody,’ ” recalled Hill. “He was heartbroken over his girl, but he was also open to the idea.” Doing his best Yente the matchmaker, the coach gave Payton the phone number for Betty’s niece, a high school senior in New Orleans named Connie Norwood. Hill had met Connie on his trips to Betty’s house, and immediately liked her. A soft-spoken cheerleader with light cocoa skin and almondshaped eyes, Connie was a complete package—funny, studious, sharp. She was even a standout dancer, appearing regularly on a weekly New Orleans dance show, The Walt Boatner Hour. “Call her,” Hill told Walter. “She’s expecting to hear from you.”

  Because he had no telephone in his dorm room, Walter snuck into a Jackson State guidance counselor’s office and dialed Connie’s number. She had been told by her aunt that a college boy would be contacting her, but never believed it. He was in Mississippi, she was 190 miles away in the Crescent City. What was the point? “I was very surprised to hear Walter’s distinctive, high-pitched voice on the other end,” Connie once wrote. “We talked for hours [that first night].”

  Shortly thereafter, Connie flew to Jackson for a visit. Hill picked her up at the airport and brought her to his house. Hanging from a living room wall were photographs of some of the great players he’d coached at Jackson State—Jerome Barkum, Leon Gray, Rodney Phillips, Walter. As Connie looked the images up and down, Hill said, “Which one of those young men do you think is Walter?” Connie zeroed in on one particular picture. The young man was black, with unkempt eyebrows, a wide nose, a miniature Afro, and pimples dotting much of his forehead. The curled-lip expression on his face suggested he had just whiffed sour milk. “Oh, boy,” she thought to herself, “please don’t let it be that one.”

  Bingo.

  “OK,” Connie said to Hill, taking a second glance. “Maybe he’s not that bad.”

  Their first date came a day later, a stroll to nearby Lynch Street. Walter was awkward—far from what she had expected of a sports star. He glanced toward the ground a lot and struggled to make decent conversation. When he did talk, it was about Lorna and her intrusive mother. He jabbered on incessantly about the girl, until Connie wondered why she had bothered. “We spent that evening just kind of talking about her and that whole situation,” Connie said. “I ended the weekend thinking, ‘He’s a nice guy, he’s here, I’m going back home. That’s it, and I just hope he gets back together with his girlfriend.’ ”

  To Hill’s dismay, in the following weeks Walter did not mention Connie again. He continued to mope over Lorna, desperate to make things work. In Hill’s mind, this wasn’t the way a real man behaved. To whine over a woman’s affection? The last thing Hill wanted was a halfback more concerned with a broken heart than the pigskin. “This was my man,” said Hill. “I helped a lot of my players with their girlfriends. These were my guys.”

  In an act that violated approximately ten million NCAA regulations, in the spring of 1974, Hill dug into his personal account and paid for Payton to fly back to New Orleans and spend a weekend with Connie, her parents, and her three brothers. What if Walter refused to go? Not an option. He was going. “I called after two days to see how it was, and to check what time he’d be getting back here,” said Hill. “Betty was supposed to put Walter on the plane the next day, but he refused to go. He stayed the whole week. Betty told me he was sleeping on the stairway—he fell in love that quickly.”

  Connie recalled things differently. She has said that Walter was guarded and lacking in manners. “When it was dinnertime, he wouldn’t eat with my family at the table,” she said. “When everybody was through with dinner, he would want me to then go with him and get something to eat. It was like he was too shy to eat with everybody else. My mother just didn’t understand that.”

  Yet something about Walter Payton caught Connie’s fancy. He was sensitive, which was a rare trait among the men she knew. His bashfulness, while annoying, was also endearing. There appeared to be no phony machismo to the boy. No strut or bombast or arrogance. He only discussed football when asked, and never bragged about his own achievements. If anything, he appeared prouder of his dance moves than his off-tackle moves.

  With Hill’s blessing, Connie and Walter kept in close contact. They spoke every week on the phone, and she visited Jackson State on m
ultiple occasions. Eventually, Walter broke up with Lorna. “He did it in a very cowardly way,” Jones said. “He had his brother’s girlfriend tell me he didn’t want to date me anymore and that he had another girl. I couldn’t believe it. It broke my heart.”

  As Connie’s senior year at Alcee Fortier High School came to a close, Hill desperately wanted her to attend Jackson State to keep his prized player happy. “I couldn’t have my players worried about love,” Hill said. “I had several players fall in love and I kicked them off the team because it messed them up. But I liked Connie and Walter together. The combination worked.” After checking with Walter, Hill said he marched into the office of John Peoples, Jackson State’s president, and insisted Connie Norwood be awarded a full four-year scholarship to the school. “All she had to do was walk up and give her name,” he said. “I told [Peoples] I needed that scholarship. Walter had to be happy. He had to be.” (When asked, Peoples said he had “no recollection, one way or the other, of being involved with this.”)

  One year later, Connie was a Jackson State student.

  And Walter Payton was happy.

  Though Bob Hill could be a sentimental sort, he was first and foremost an obsessive winner. Loyalty was loyalty, but it only extended so far. As great as Payton had been over the course of his freshman and sophomore seasons, Hill would never turn down the opportunity to bring in another elite ball carrier.

  That’s why, in the late summer weeks of 1973, Walter was dismayed to find that the incoming freshman class included a halfback with superior speed; a halfback the legendary Red Smith would later call “a greyhound with muscles.” As a product of Greenville High School in Greenville, Mississippi, Wilbert Montgomery faced the same barriers Payton had two years earlier—despite eye-opening statistics and abilities to rival any player in the South, the state’s white universities refused to pursue him. Hill, however, was smitten. “Man, I loved that kid,” he said. “[While I was recruiting him] I took him to a local sporting goods store where I had a credit and I said, ‘Get anything you want—get clothes, get shoes, get anything.’ Wilbert bought about three pairs of pants and a pair of shoes, and I thought, ‘That’s all he gets? What a kid! What a terrific kid!’ ”