Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Walter Payton refused to comment publicly on his father’s passing. Inside, however, he was livid. Brain aneurysm or no brain aneurysm, Peter Payton had died in jail. Though Columbia was the town where Walter was born and raised, any sentimental attachment was dead. From that point forward, he responded to inquiries about his place of origin by saying, “Jackson.” Following his breakout 1976 season, Walter had visited the Columbia Country Club to play a round of golf. This was the spot where Eddie had caddied as a boy, and where, long ago, Alyne made her famed pancakes and hamburgers for the all-white membership. Having brought Columbia substantial fame, and having represented the town with dignity, Walter never imagined he wouldn’t be allowed admittance.

  He wasn’t allowed admittance.

  Now, two years later, there was this. One of Walter’s close friends at the time was Ron Atlas, the owner of the Pool Hall and Cat House, a Chicago swimming pool store. Atlas was a licensed attorney, and Payton asked him to fly to Mississippi and help Holmes uncover the truth. “I couldn’t go for some reason, but I remember the rage in Walter,” Atlas said. “The first time I ever saw Walter cry was when his dad died, but then he became furious. He didn’t have a whole lot of good to say about his hometown. He believed it was a racial thing, because he knew how Mississippi worked when it came to blacks.

  “I really think the death of his father changed Walter,” Atlas said. “Not racially, because he was as open-minded as they came. But he was a lot less trusting of people and their motives.

  “A lot less trusting.”8

  The darkness of the worst year of Walter Payton’s life begins here, eleven months before his father’s death.

  In Chicago. At the Bears’ headquarters. On the afternoon of January 19, 1978.

  Jack Pardee, the only professional coach Walter has ever known, and a man inclined to allow his back thirty carries per game, has resigned to take the same position with the Washington Redskins. The Bears, naturally, are taken aback. Pardee spoke of loyalty and trust and family, then left when a more ideal (and higher-paying) position came along. So what that Pardee had spent the final two years of his playing career in the nation’s capital? So what that coaching the Redskins was a dream job? The Bears were of one mind on the matter: good riddance. “No one cares that he’s leaving, believe me,” one player told the Tribune.

  Added another: “I think we’ve gone about as far as this coaching staff can take us.”

  In the company of teammates, Payton nodded in agreement. If a coach didn’t want to be in Chicago, the team would surely be better off without him. And yet, Payton was distraught. “I hate to see the guy leave,” he told the Tribune while practicing at the Pro Bowl in Tampa. “He brought back a winning attitude to the team.” Pardee had transformed him from a timid plebe to the recently named NFL Most Valuable Player. By benching him as a rookie, Pardee made Payton question his toughness. By running him repeatedly, Pardee taught Payton how to endure NFL punishment. By handing Payton the keys to the Bears offense, Pardee turned Payton into a star.

  Pardee had been rugged and unsympathetic, but he also led an ordinary football team—one lacking a capable quarterback—to the play-offs for the first time in fourteen seasons. Maybe, just maybe, Chicago’s players failed to recognize a great thing when they had one.

  Over the twenty-eight days that followed, Jim Finks and his staff conducted an uncommonly secretive coaching search. Five candidates were brought to Chicago for interviews:

  • John Ralston, former Denver Broncos head coach

  • Ollie Spencer, Oakland Raiders offensive line coach

  • Bill Walsh, Stanford University head coach9

  • Don Coryell, former St. Louis Cardinals head coach

  • Neill Armstrong, Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator

  Walsh would go down as, arguably, the greatest coach in NFL history. Coryell would go down as, arguably, the most influential offensive mind in NFL history.

  The Bears hired the fifty-one-year-old Armstrong.

  He was a good man. A friendly man. A qualified man who starred as an all-American end at Oklahoma A&M (later known as Oklahoma State) before spending five years with the Philadelphia Eagles and another three with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL. Upon retiring as a player, Armstrong returned to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to serve as an assistant coach at his alma mater from 1955–61, then worked for the Houston Oilers in 1962 and ’63. “I really came to love consulting with players and helping make them better,” said Armstrong. “I thought to myself, ‘Sooner or later, I’d sure like to be a head coach.’ ” In 1964 he was tabbed to guide the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos, and over six unremarkable seasons the team went 37-56-3. When the Vikings came searching for a defensive coordinator in 1969, he jumped at the opportunity.

  Around the league, news of the Bears’ hire was greeted with a pronounced yawn. Whereas Walsh was dynamic and Coryell inventive, Armstrong was a room-temperature bowl of vanilla pudding. “Neill was quiet, his gait was slow, he looked you in the eyes, and spoke with a calming voice,” said Vince Evans, a Bears quarterback from 1977 to 1983. “He was just such a nice man. Maybe too nice.”

  “Neill Armstrong was anything but a hard-ass,” said Mike Raines, a free agent in camp with the Bears in 1978. “He was the anti-hard-ass.”

  Like Finks, Armstrong was secretive and tight-lipped. When asked at his introductory press conference about Chicago’s unimaginative play calling, the new coach shrugged. “I don’t know what people consider dull about the Bears’ offense,” he said. “If it takes handing the ball to Payton thirty times a game to win, that’s what we’ll do.”

  With those words, an audible moan overtook the Windy City. More than thirty years later, Armstrong admits he was merely trying to be nice. “We needed a quarterback in the worst way, and we didn’t have good enough wide receivers,” he said. “But”—Armstrong laughed—“we did have one big piece.”

  He met Walter Payton for the first time a couple of days after the press conference, and the man who had once torched his Vikings defense for 275 yards didn’t disappoint. Much to Finks’ chagrin, Payton had spent the early days of his off-season competing in Superstars, the ABC program that pitted athletes from various sports against one another in random athletic events. On the final day of taping, Payton was running alongside water-skier Wayne Grimditch in the obstacle course when he approached a metal blocking sled. “I was going so fast that when I hit [it] it flew up in the air,” Payton said. “And when it came down it rocked back and caught me as I was going around it.” The end result was a deep gash under his right knee that required eighteen stitches, left part of his leg feeling numb, and had the Bears up in arms.

  Anxious to make a positive impression, Armstrong didn’t broach the injury as he and Payton shook hands for the first time. The two were standing inside a room within Soldier Field’s bowels. Payton, wearing jeans and a brown pair of cowboy boots, walked with a slight limp. Coach and player chatted aimlessly when Payton bent his knees, jumped straight up, and grabbed hold of a wood beam four feet above his head. As he dangled, Armstrong had a single thought: “Good God.”

  “A coach couldn’t ask for a better present than Walter Payton,” Armstrong said. “He loved to practice, he always went hard, he gave it everything he had, he was playful, he was gifted. There are people and there are special people. He was special.”

  Like most everyone who has ever met Armstrong, Payton took to his new coach. He would incessantly pester him about expanding his role, halfserious, half-joking.

  “Coach, I wanna play defense.”

  “No, Walter.”

  “Coach, let me return kickoffs like I used to.”

  “No, Walter.”

  “Coach, if you ever need a punter . . .”

  “No, Walter.”

  “On and on and on,” said Armstrong. “If every member of that team were as eager as Walter, we’d have won the Super Bowl.”

  The Chicago Bears organization, though, left Payton p
uzzled. About to enter his fourth season, he looked around at the team’s shoddy facilities and cringed. He saw how tight the organization was with money and sighed. 10 He watched from afar as Finks made one questionable move after another and genuinely wondered whether he was the only person scratching his head. A couple of weeks after Armstrong was hired, the Bears announced that their new offensive coordinator was Ken Meyer, the former San Francisco 49ers head coach not exactly known for innovative play calling. Were that not bad enough, entering the May 2, 1978, Draft the Bears lacked bullets, having sent their first-round selection to Cleveland for a past-his-prime quarterback named Mike Phipps (the Browns used the pick to take Alabama tight end Ozzie Newsome, who went on to a Hall of Fame career) and their second-round slot to San Francisco for a past-his-prime defensive lineman named Tommy Hart.

  What frustrated Payton most, and what made him question his own future in Chicago, was Finks’ approach toward renegotiating his expiring contract.

  Entering the ’78 season, Payton had one year remaining on a deal that would pay him approximately sixty-six thousand dollars in base salary, with thirty thousand dollars more potentially available via performance bonuses. According to a scathing March 13 Tribune article titled “How Bear Salaries Rate,” Payton—the reigning NFL MVP, who rarely took a play off and who served as the centerpiece of an otherwise inept offense—not only earned less than stars like Buffalo’s O. J. Simpson and Washington’s John Riggins, but also Redskin halfback Mike Thomas (the Redskins’ fifth-round pick in 1975, the same year Payton was drafted fourth overall). Wrote Don Pierson: “Compared with all players regardless of experience, twelve of twenty Bear starters received below-average pay.”

  Knowing the Bears’ thriftiness was starting to wear thin on a city aching for football glory, Bud Holmes, Payton’s agent, went on the offensive. To any reporter who asked, Holmes insisted that Payton would demand more than the $733,000 being made annually by Simpson, who had recently been traded by Buffalo to the 49ers. “I wish Walter were a free agent right now,” Holmes told the Tribune. “That’s the only way you know what he’s worth. I want to end up with a contract that no one will ever raise a doubt in Walter’s mind the fact he’s appreciated.”

  As far as agents go, few were better than Holmes. He was loyal, available, attentive, demanding. This time, however, he went too far. Holmes assumed Chicago’s fans would side with Payton, but at a time when America’s economy was sagging and the national unemployment rate hovered at 7 percent, even the running back’s greatest admirers cringed as the agent uttered nonsense like, “Walter’s fans keep comparing him to O. J. They say, ‘You’re better than O. J. You broke O. J.’s record. Don’t accept less than O. J. makes.’ ”

  On July 19, Finks offered Payton a three-year contract paying $375,000 annually. The deal would make him football’s second highest-paid player, far behind Simpson but ahead of such luminaries as quarterback Fran Tarkenton and running backs Riggins and Chuck Foreman.

  Holmes said no.

  Payton reported to Lake Forest for training camp, and while Armstrong was impressed with his work ethic, Payton’s mind wasn’t 100 percent on the game. On August 8 he told the assembled media that while he was no longer requesting Simpson money, he would play for no less than $513,000—70 percent of O. J.’s deal. He referred to Finks as a dictator, and questioned the team’s commitment. For Chicago’s largely blue-collar fan base, this sort of bluster was hard to take.

  In the case of one legendary Bear, the words served as a final straw. While making an appearance at the Illinois State Fair, Gale Sayers, the Hall of Fame Bears running back who retired because of injury in 1971, was asked about the contract dispute. “There’s a lot of things involved in contract negotiations, but I really feel Walter is making a mistake because it can happen anytime—a knee can go, he might have a bad year,” Sayers said. “Anytime someone will give you $375,000 or $400,000 for being in the league three years, I think he’s very foolish for not taking it.”

  In the way a young Mickey Mantle had once been shunned by a retired Joe DiMaggio, Sayers rarely had time—or kind words—for his heir apparent. “Walter and Gale had nothing in common,” said Fred Caito, the team’s trainer from 1972 to 1997. “They were opposite people and opposite running backs. I always said Gale Sayers could have played in a tuxedo, he was so smooth. Walter would have the tuxedo ripped and bloodied in two minutes.” When he first arrived in Chicago, Payton craved Sayers’ approval and guidance. Just as a groom longs for the blessing of his soon-to-be father-in-law, Payton wanted Sayers’ nod. Instead, he received brief greetings and awkward silences; sly jabs and off-the-record criticisms. (In 1997, years after both men had retired, Sayers went out of his way to call Eric Dickerson the best running back of all time—even though Payton held nearly every important record.) To say the slights irked Payton is to delve into great understatement. They stung.

  “Gale was jealous, and he never gave Walter credit,” said Mike North, a longtime Chicago media personality who worked with both men. “It was a problem. As soon as Walter hit the scene, Gale became an afterthought. But if you ask Gale Sayers who was the greatest Bears running back of all time, alone, he’ll tell you, ‘Gale Sayers.’ He was jealous of Walter. And Walter would say, ‘I tried to befriend the guy. I don’t know if he’s bitter or what, but he had no interest in me.’ ”

  Burdened by Sayers’ criticism, as well as that of offensive guard Noah Jackson (“Walter’s not running as well as he had,” he said during training camp. “I know how Walter Payton can run. It’s in his own mind.”), Payton was residing in a hell of his own making. A part of him wished he had accepted the initial offer—just grabbed the loot and moved on with life. Now, however, it was too late, and the negative reviews were pouring in. “Somewhere along the way he became convinced that he should be the highest-paid player in football history,” wrote David Israel in a Tribune column. “Walter is convinced that when he gets his freedom, and goes shopping someone is going to offer him that kind of money. He’s crazy.”

  Finally, one day before the Bears’ 1978 season opener against the Cardinals at Soldier Field, an agreement was reached. “Walter actually came into the room and said, ‘They’re offering me more than four hundred thousand dollars—what should I do?’ ” recalled Mike Raines, a free agent defensive end out of Alabama who roomed with Payton at Lake Forest. “I’d just played a season in the Canadian Football League making minimum wage. I told him he had to take it.”

  Payton signed three one-year contracts that would pay him $400,000 in 1978, $425,000 in 1979, and $450,000 in 1980. With incentive clauses that could add as much as $97,000 annually, Payton was now a $1.3 million man. As soon as the news was announced, Payton sat down with reporters, beaming from ear to ear. Even if it was not quite O. J. money, he was happy to be rich. He was even happier for the whole ordeal to be over.

  The call came to the Chicago Bears headquarters on the morning of Sunday, September 3, only seventy minutes before the opening-game kickoff against St. Louis. A receptionist picked up the telephone, held it to her ear, and heard this: “If Walter Payton plays today, I will shoot him.”

  The man identified himself as a member of the American White People’s Party, an organization with the stated goal of “returning control of this continent to the Aryan peoples who originally conquered, populated, and created its culture and political institutions.” He said that four party members armed with rifles and bombs were stationed inside Soldier Field, and that Payton, as well as any blacks sitting in the stands, would be gunned down.

  The Bears front office faced a major decision. Finks learned of the threat and debated whether to say something. On the one hand, a person has the right to know about someone itching to assassinate him. On the other hand, the Chicago offense with a distracted Payton was barely an offense at all.

  The information was kept quiet.

  The Bears won 17–10, and Payton played brilliantly, running for 101 yards on twenty-six carries,
catching three balls for twenty-two yards, and scoring a touchdown. Afterward, safety Doug Plank was euphoric. “No one can run an end like he can or add excitement and enthusiasm,” he said. “Even when he lost six yards that time when he cut back and danced around, everyone was cheering. He transfers electricity to the team.”

  As Payton undressed by his locker, Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits blaring from a small tape recorder, he was approached by Israel, the Tribune columnist. Midway through the game the media was told of the death threat. Israel asked Payton for a reaction.

  “To what?” he said.

  Israel explained, and Payton giggled. “When I go out on the field, I believe it’s with Jesus Christ’s help,” he said. “If he said it’s my time, it’s my time. I can’t do anything about it.”

  Upon further reflection, however, Payton was taken aback. Even though Finks made the decision to keep Payton out of the loop, the running back blamed Armstrong. Shouldn’t someone have at least filled him in beforehand? Even if these guys were cranks, wasn’t he owed a heads-up? Though never especially close with Pardee, Payton did trust him. The relationship with Armstrong, on the other hand, was off to a rocky start.