Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  In his first week of practice with the Tigers, Montgomery exceeded all expectations. He ran hard and he ran fast. Montgomery only lacked one component vital to Jackson State. “Toughness,” said Matthew Norman, a defensive back. “He passed out on the field one day from the heat. He just couldn’t handle it.”

  “We were going through drills,” recalled Jackie Slater, the star offensive lineman, “and Wilbert was just a freshman, asking out loud, ‘Do I really want to go through this?’ ”

  Payton, on the other hand, was as determined a player as most Tigers had ever seen. Much of his free time was spent at Memorial Stadium, running the mountainous steps until he could barely breathe. He would deliberately show up around noon, when the facility was empty and the moist air could be sliced like a piece of sponge cake. If the stadium was being used, he’d either run miles through the streets of downtown Jackson (“We’d jog to the movies, to the zoo, to get something to eat,” said Robert Brazile. “Walter just loved to jog.”) or retreat to a nearby high school. “You could look out the window in the women’s dorm at certain parts of the day and you’d see Walter working out by himself in the insane heat,” said Jo Ann Durham, a Jackson State student who briefly dated Walter. “Nobody else could hang with him.”

  “His training was unparalleled,” said Vernon Perry, Jackson State’s safety. “He’d take me to the Pearl River and we’d run through the sand in our football cleats. In our football cleats! Who would even think to do that?”

  Certainly not Montgomery. Hill was familiar with the new kid’s shortcomings, but figured he could beat toughness into him. Hill was also made aware that Abilene Christian, a small NAIA school in central Texas, had desperately craved his services and wasn’t giving up easily. According to Hill, Jackson was home to a wealthy Abilene booster with a private jet who had been snooping around campus, whispering sweet nothings to Montgomery. During one weekend in late August, Hill had to depart to Memphis for a meeting. Before leaving, Hill ordered assistant coach Sylvester Collins, a former Tigers quarterback, to babysit Montgomery. “Don’t let him out of your sight,” Hill said. “Wherever you go, he goes. Wherever he goes, you go.” Collins brought Montgomery to his home, but absentmindedly left him alone for an hour. During that time, the Abilene booster knocked on the door and told Montgomery his escape to paradise awaited. They returned to Montgomery’s Jackson State dorm room, packed his stuff, and flew off to Texas. “He snuck out because he couldn’t take it,” said Ricky Taylor, the Tigers quarterback. “But the guy couldn’t carry Walter’s water. I don’t care what anyone said.”

  A mere three months later, Montgomery ran for 146 yards, caught nine passes for 74 yards and scored six touchdowns in Abilene’s win over Stephen F. Austin. He would lead the NAIA in scoring, and go on to a Pro Bowl career with the Philadelphia Eagles, rushing for 6,789 yards and scoring fifty-seven touchdowns. Had he remained at Jackson State, one can argue the Tigers would have boasted the finest running back tandem in the history of college football.

  “I would have started Walter and Wilbert together,” Hill said. “Almost certainly. Then he left. That’s how recruiting was back then. It was dog-eatdog. Abilene ate my dog.”

  By the time Jackson State kicked off its 1973 season with a September 8 visit to the University of Nebraska at Omaha, NFL scouts and executives were increasingly aware that the nation’s most talented collegiate halfback played for the Tigers. So, for that matter, was Jackson State’s rapidly expanding fan base. Just two years earlier most of the people who attended games at Memorial Stadium came to see the Sonic Boom of the South, the college’s extraordinary marching band. Now Payton was a marquee attraction. Blacks from across the state of Mississippi showed up to catch the action. The university’s sports information director, Sam Jefferson, began referring to the facility as “Payton Place,” and Tiger games rivaled those of Ole Miss and Mississippi State for fan-generated electricity. On the day of the season’s biggest games, sixty thousand spectators packed the stadium.

  Ever since he first stole Payton from Kansas State, Hill had dreams of molding himself the perfect running back. Now, that vision was coming to fruition. At the start of the season, Hill implored Payton to refuse to run out of bounds. “Never die easy,” he told him. “If you’re going to die anyway, die hard.” Specifically, Hill meant that, 99 percent of the time, a defensive player was going to slam into a running back whether he was angling toward the sideline or charging straight ahead. “You’re red meat,” he told Payton, “and they’re hungry.” Hill had always been impressed with Payton’s stiff-arm, which he brought to Jackson State via Columbia High School. But he wanted his star to use it more often, and with even greater viciousness. Hill aspired for defensive backs to see Payton coming and wince. “When I was playing at Jackson State there was a game against Kentucky State, and on fourth and five I broke a tackle and stepped out of bounds, because I thought I had the first,” said Hill. “Well, I didn’t. I decided from then on that I’d never go out of bounds by choice. So I’d tell Walter, ‘Don’t be a coward. Initiate the contact. If they’re dumb enough to try and tackle you up high, break out the bone and throw it.’ ”

  The Tigers traveled to Omaha for the opener, where Coach Al Caniglia and the Maverick players had little idea what they were in store for. “Our scouting report mentioned Walter Payton,” said Ted Sledge, an Omaha defensive tackle. “But we didn’t know very much.” The weather was in Nebraska-Omaha’s favor. Following three straight days of torrential rain, Rosenblatt Stadium’s surface was a platter of mud soufflé. Yet despite the sludge, and despite Omaha stuffing the line with six players, Payton broke loose, carrying the ball seventeen times for 120 yards and a touchdown, kicking a twenty-five-yard field goal and an extra point, and catching four passes for 72 yards. Jackson State won handily, 17–0.

  Afterward, in an appalling act of poor sportsmanship, a gaggle of Jackson State’s players (not including Payton) surrounded the Mavericks’ bus and began shaking it, chanting, “Bring on the Big Red! Bring on the Big Red!”—a reference to the University of Nebraska’s powerful Cornhuskers. “They were good,” said Jim Sledge, Ted’s brother and a Mavericks defensive tackle who had transferred from the University of Nebraska, “but they would have been killed by the Huskers.”

  In the immediate aftermath of the Omaha victory, Mississippi Governor Bill Waller held a press conference to praise Payton and Jackson State. “This team,” he said, “is deserving of the full attention and support of all state officials and the people of Mississippi.”

  A couple of days later William Winter, Mississippi’s lieutenant governor, visited a Tigers practice and told the assembled media (well, one reporter) that, “the potential for good public relations for Mississippi from the Jackson State team had never been fully realized. We’ve had such a good thing out here for years, and the only people who have really noticed have been the pros.”

  Such was the draw of Walter Payton. He was a lock for a hundred yards per game, no matter the defense, no matter the game plan. When a team like Mississippi Valley State dedicated itself to stuffing the interior, Payton swept outside, using his speed and quickness to run for 151 yards in a 26–22 victory. When a team like Bishop College, the Tigers’ week five opponent, assigned a linebacker to shadow Payton wherever he went, Rickey Young, Jackson State’s six-foot-two, 180-pound fullback, made a mockery of the strategy, bulldozing said player into the turf.

  In fact, it was Payton’s otherworldly performance against Bishop that had Jefferson and the school’s small public relations staff believing they could, come senior year, mount a credible Heisman Trophy campaign.

  Like Lane one season earlier, Bishop was a nondescript NAIA Division II black college with a handful of scholarships and little business standing toe to toe with Jackson State. They entered the game 1-3, with lopsided losses to three schools—Langston University (49–13), Ouachita Baptist (40–19), and Northwestern State (28–7)—the Tigers would have crushed. “Bishop was pretty much
always terrible,” said Curtis Jones, a Tigers defensive back. “There was a tradition—we’d beat up on them and eventually they’d quit.” Located in a residential neighborhood on Dallas’ south side, Bishop stood as an afterthought on the college football landscape. “We had a wonderful choir and a wonderful band,” said Robert Roberts, a Bishop receiver. “Most people came to Bishop to train to become Baptist preachers, not football players.”

  The Bishop-Jackson State matchup was the first part of a Memorial Stadium doubleheader, featuring Kentucky and Mississippi State in the nightcap. Many whites were accidentally exposed to Payton and Co. as they entered the stadium early to hunker down for the featured game. This would prove to be a most serendipitous find.

  On Jackson State’s first offensive play of the afternoon, from its own forty-five-yard line, quarterback Jimmy Lewis tossed the ball to Payton for a sweep around the left end. Bishop’s best player was a defensive back named Bobby Brooks, who would go on to play three seasons with the New York Giants. In the previous few days, Brooks had grown tired of hearing Bishop’s coaches rave about Payton. “Every week the coaches told us the story of some receiver . . . some quarterback . . . some running back who’s supposed to be so great and amazing,” Brooks said. “Then I’d go on the field and think, ‘Man, this guy is nothing.’ ”

  Brooks assumed Payton couldn’t possibly be as dominant as word had it. “Well, Walter’s running this sweep right toward my way, and I go to hit him,” Brooks said. “I wrap up both legs and I fall to the ground making the tackle, and I look up to see how he fell. Well, I notice he’s not down. He’s doing a show pony leg kick all the way down the field. That’s the first tackle I ever missed in a game. Ever. I was so pissed, so angry, that I got up, and just as he’s about to step into the end zone, I caught him and gave him one of those clothesline hooks that I stole from Deacon Jones. He scored, and we got into a fight because it wasn’t an especially nice thing to do.”

  Against all odds and logic, Bishop stormed back to take a 9–7 lead into the second quarter, and the Blue Tigers began to consider the possibilities of a shocking upset.

  Instead, they were destroyed.

  “Those guys from Mississippi were wood-hauling, deep-sea-fishing-withtheir-bare-hands monsters,” said Roberts. “They were Roman gladiators.”

  Though Payton put up better numbers in his sophomore-year effort against Lane, those who watched—and played—in the Bishop game considered it the most magnificent showing of his first three college seasons. He started off the second quarter with a forty-six-yard dash through the heart of the defense, then caught a seventeen-yard touchdown pass from Lewis before running for another one-yard touchdown run. His white uniform, bright and unblemished before the game, was bright and unblemished afterward, too. “It was like he was a ghost,” said Jackie Robertson, Bishop’s standout defensive end. “We’d go back to the huddle and talk about stopping him, and we couldn’t. We were hitting him, but it was like he was going right through you. Three or four times I knew I had a perfect tackle on him, and when I made the tackle I put my head down, locked my arms at the wrists, and took the guy down. Only he wasn’t there. He vanished.”

  Decades later, Robertson remains haunted—and mystified—by one particular play, when Payton came around end on a sweep and was met head-on by the lineman. “I locked him up, felt him, had my eyes closed when we hit the ground, felt him fall below me,” he said. “I even said to him, ‘Now I’ve got you!’ The next thing I hear is the crowd screaming, and Walter Payton’s crossing the goal line.”

  By the time the clock hit 0:00, Jackson State led 60–12, and Payton’s stat line read 162 yards on only thirteen carries. “You couldn’t just hit him,” said Rhiny Williams, a Bishop defensive tackle. “If you wanted to bring Walter Payton down, you had to pulverize him. And it never happened.”

  In the aftermath of the game, Bishop’s players shuffled onto their bus for the seven-hour drive back to Dallas. Robertson’s mother, Nerciel Young, had attended the game, and she gave her son a large box of peanuts to share with his teammates. As he walked toward his seat, Robertson shouted, “Anyone here want some nuts?”

  Williams perked up. “Are they roasted,” he asked, “or boiled?”

  Edmund Peters, Bishop’s defensive coordinator, went off. “Peanuts?” he screamed. “Is this some sort of joke? Walter Payton just ran over your asses and you’re talking about peanuts? You must be fucking kidding me!”

  The players burst into laughter.

  As the wins mounted and the hundred-yard rushing games piled up, Walter Payton’s legend grew. Against Mississippi Valley State, Hill called a halfback dive—from the Devils’ five-yard line. “Walter jumped up, flew five yards through the air, and landed in the end zone,” said Brazile, the standout linebacker. “Nobody could believe it. But that’s not crazy—it’s Walter.” Against Kentucky State, Payton literally carried five defenders on his back for seven yards. “He was one man,” said Oscar Downs, Kentucky State’s kicker, “but he played like ten.” So revered was the junior halfback that, a couple of days before the biggest game of the year, a clash with Grambling State, he was presented with a key to Jackson by the city council. Around campus, women became increasingly flirtatious, inviting him to parties, lingering outside his dormitory, hoping for a shot with the gridiron star. “He would practice signing his name over and over,” said Matthew Norman, a Tigers defensive back. “Because he knew, one day, he’d be signing a lot of autographs and big checks.”

  When he wasn’t on the field Payton was almost always in his room, laughing with teammates and taking some of the younger players under his wing. “Coach Hill had a nine P.M. curfew for freshmen, so we didn’t have much to do at night,” said Herman Burrell, a freshman linebacker from Mobile, Alabama. “Our entertainment was Walter Payton. Other upper classmen would leave. But he’d sit with us freshmen, and he’d dance in the foyer while we sat and clapped. Walter was special with the freshmen. He made us feel important.”

  An opportunity to further buttress his legend came on October 20, when Grambling arrived in Jackson for a matchup so highly anticipated that the Clarion-Ledger actually placed a preview story on the front page of the sports section. Coached by a legend-in-the-making named Eddie Robinson, Grambling was the pride of the SWAC—a nationally known program that even rednecks and racists seemed to admire for its ability to churn out professional players. Grambling had defeated Jackson State in four of the teams’ five previous meetings, and Hill was fed up. During practices that week he beat on his players with a torturous cruelty excessive for a man known for torturous cruelty.

  By the time the Grambling game began, Hill’s men were exhausted and emaciated from a week of nonstop down-ups and wind sprints in the ninetydegree heat. Jackson State was thought to be the better ball club, what with Payton leading the SWAC with 690 rushing yards and Jimmy Lewis pacing the league in most passing categories. The defenses were both strong (Grambling ranked number one in the SWAC, Jackson State was number two), the coaches both admired. The teams sported identical 5-1 general records, as well as 3-1 marks in the SWAC.

  Yet even though Waller officially proclaimed October 20 to be (to Payton’s great embarrassment) “Walter Payton and Tiger Day,” an exhausted Jackson State had no chance. A boisterous sixty thousand fan–crowd poured into Memorial Stadium for the clash, expecting Payton and Co. to run all over Robinson’s 4-3 defense. But Jackson State’s offensive line was tired, sluggish, and unable to move Grambling’s two star defensive ends, Ezil Bibbs and Gary “Big Hands” Johnson. The result was a dispiriting 19–12 setback—in the words of the Claron-Ledger’s Steve Burtt, “a sloppy, penalty-plagued game” that crushed Hill’s hopes of an outright SWAC title.

  For those football fans who lavished praise upon the Michigans and Nebraskas while dismissing Grambling and Jackson State as nonentities, Payton’s stat line called into question his ability to compete at the highest level. He ran fifteen times for a pedestrian seventy-nine yards
and was outgained by twenty-five yards by someone from Grambling named Rodney Tureaud. Yet to Robinson and his players, Payton conducted himself masterfully. The Tigers played two quarterbacks, Jimmy Lewis and Porter Taylor, neither of whom fared well. The line was beaten off the ball all night, and Young uncharacteristically missed a series of blocks. That Payton gained seventy-nine yards wasn’t a disappointment, but a miracle. “Payton is fantastic,” Robinson said afterward. “He can beat you if you give him the slightest chance.”

  “His legs kept moving, and moving, and moving—he never gave up,” said Bibbs. “I tackled him one time and it took me ten yards to bring him down. He had such strong legs. If you tried to tackle him up high you would never bring him down. I never saw one person bring him down. When you looked in his eyes, you saw that there was no fear. You could hit him, give him your best hit—heck, we had three all-Americans on that line with me. We’d hit him, drop him in the backfield, taunt him. He’d jump right back, look right at us like, ‘You didn’t hit me hard enough.’ Some of those hits were brutal. But he didn’t fear it.”

  When the season came to its end, Jackson State found itself a disappointing 9-2, again tied for the SWAC crown. Payton was heartbroken, and wondered aloud whether he could have done more to help the Tigers. Sure, he ran for 1,322 yards, scored a school record twenty-four touchdowns, kicked one field goal and thirteen extra points. Sure, he caught fifteen passes for 188 yards. Sure, he blocked like an offensive tackle. “He wanted to win like I wanted to win,” said Hill. “His drive was real.”