Sweetness

by Jeff Pearlman

  Although Payton’s off-the-field behavior sometimes failed to match his gilded image, his football performance was as breathtaking as ever. Ditka followed up his disappointing rookie campaign with a marginally less dispiriting 8-8 record in 1983, but any scorn for the underwhelming coach was obscured by a developing news story that took hold of Chicago: the Chase.

  As early as 1981, Walter Payton had been asked about the possibility of breaking Jim Brown’s all-time NFL rushing mark. His 12,312 yards was, without question, the most revered number in the sport. In his nine-year career with the Cleveland Browns, Brown ran with a rage that left opponents awed. He is regarded by many to be the finest athletic specimen to ever wear an NFL uniform, and for years the idea of anyone touching his record seemed ludicrous. Payton agreed. “It’s so far away, I can’t even ponder it,” he once said. “Jim Brown is in another league, as far as I’m concerned.”

  That was that, until Payton’s ’83 revival. Behind Johnny Roland, the trusted new running backs coach, and a revamped offensive line that included a pair of massive first-round picks at tackle (Keith Van Horne and Jimbo Covert), a dirt-eating right guard named Kurt Becker, and Jay Hilgenberg, a future great at center, Payton ran for 1,421 yards and six touchdowns. He also caught a career-high fifty-three passes for 607 yards and two touchdowns, and even threw for three touchdowns on six pass attempts. “At the beginning of the season I was very blunt with Walter,” said Roland. “I told him that, despite all his God-given talents, people considered him to be a loser. ‘You’ve never won a thing here,’ I said. ‘If you trust me and trust your line, you might be able to snap that streak.’ It made sense to him and he had an incredible year.”

  Yet in a season that featured some noteworthy highs13 and devastating lows,14 many were secretly—and not so secretly—taken aback by Payton’s newfound obsession with surpassing Brown.

  When the television camera lights were on and the reporter notepads were out, Payton did his best to only talk team-team-team. All he wanted was for the Bears to win. If he ran for zero yards but the other fellas did well, he was happy. Whether he surpassed Brown or not was insignificant. Blah, blah, blah. It was utter nonsense. Having struggled to relate to his star throughout the miserable ’82 season, Ditka committed himself to learning to read Payton. He studied the running back. Watched how he interacted with teammates and coaches. Gauged his wide-ranging moods. His conclusion: “If Walter got the ball, he was happy,” said Ditka. “If he didn’t get the ball, he wasn’t so satisfied.”

  Ditka never questioned Payton’s earnestness, but the coach—for his many strengths—wasn’t one to deeply psychoanalyze. Had he asked the right people, he would have been told Payton’s commitment to the record superseded his commitment to winning. Which wasn’t the worst thing, considering Payton’s rushing success and the team’s success usually went hand in hand.

  But it could get awkward.

  In the fifth game of the ’83 season, the Bears were leading Denver by seventeen points with less than two minutes remaining—yet there was Payton, struggling with a nagging knee injury (he would have arthroscopic surgery on both knees after the season), still slamming into the line. When a reader wrote the Tribune a letter that called Payton’s usage “idiotic,” Don Pierson, the Bears beat writer, responded with a piece titled “Jim Brown the Reason Payton Ran.” “He is in pursuit of Jim Brown’s all-time rushing record,” Pierson explained—as if that were enough.

  “Walter wasn’t a selfish guy,” said Roland. “He was the consummate team player. But records meant something to him, and he went after them hard.”

  When the Bears were laughingstocks, Payton’s stubborn refusal to run out of bounds earned him rave reviews. He was tough. He was rugged. He delivered hits before the hits were delivered to him. But while fans and journalists praised the approach, some teammates questioned the logic. Payton didn’t merely refuse to run out of bounds at certain moments—he refused to run out of bounds, period. If Chicago needed to stop the clock, a handoff to Payton was an iffy proposition. He wanted yards. He needed yards. As Brown’s mark loomed closer, the yards were all he thought of. “I loved Walter,” said one teammate. “But he could be selfish in some very ugly ways.”

  Nobody grasped Payton better than the Tribune’s Pierson, one of the sport’s great beat writers/B.S. detectors. In the aftermath of the Bears’ 21–14 loss to the Los Angeles Rams on November 6, Payton—who cleared eleven thousand career yards that day—told the scribe that, “I’d rather turn back the eleven thousand for a win today.” Pierson ran the quote, but only with the addendum, “Payton remarked typically but not convincingly” (emphasis added).

  “Despite what Walter said, it was clearly obvious that surpassing Brown meant everything to him,” said Pierson. “He liked to make no big deal of it, but it was enormous.

  “He wanted that record.”

  For the men and women who composed the National Football League’s media relations and corporate communications divisions, 1984 was going to be the year that sold itself.

  With Jim Brown’s record all but guaranteed to be broken, the action and intrigue needed no extra hype. Better yet, there were not one, but two, running backs fighting for the honor. Along with Payton, Pittsburgh halfback Franco Harris, a twelve-year veteran with four Super Bowl rings to his credit, was nearing the threshold. In fact, at the conclusion of 1983, Harris actually led Payton by 325 yards, 11,950 to 11,625.

  Battle lines were drawn: Payton was flashy, Harris was pedestrian. Payton abused his body, Harris ran for the sidelines rather than absorb unnecessary abuse. Payton played for a perennial dog, Harris played for a perennial contender. “They were total opposites—both great, but very different,” said Jerry Muckensturm, the longtime Chicago linebacker. “The biggest difference was approach. Franco avoided you, Walter looked to kill you.”

  The Payton-Harris showdown had all the makings of a classic sports battle; quite possibly the greatest one-on-one chase since Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle raced to surpass Babe Ruth’s sixty home runs some twenty-three years earlier.

  With one small problem: Walter Payton was a free agent.

  Not that this had ever mattered before. NFL free agents could peddle their wares, call around, beg for a change of scenery. But, come day’s end, owners and general managers knew it violated eight thousand different codes to make a bid on an opposing team’s “property.” Even as he was in his prime and running wild, Payton’s independence in 1978 and ’81 had generated zero interest.

  Times, however, were changing. Beginning with its 1983 debut season, the United States Football League (USFL) had made clear its intent to directly confront Goliath, no holds barred. The most deafening salvo was fired on February 23, 1983, when Herschel Walker, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Georgia, signed a three-year, $4.2 million deal to play with the New Jersey Generals. With that bombshell, NFL franchises found themselves scratching and clawing to retain their own. It was a fight not merely for quality players, but for legitimacy. The more stars to defect, the stronger the spring-based USFL became.

  There was, of course, no bigger NFL star than Payton. Which was why, on January 10, 1984, the USFL’s Chicago Blitz stunned the sporting world by presenting him with a three-year, six-million-dollar offer to become the highest-paid player in football history. “It’s considerably more than [just six million dollars],” said Dr. James Hoffman, the Blitz owner. “The two million dollars is base salary. I guarantee that personally myself.”

  Payton, who made six hundred thousand dollars with the Bears in 1983, was flabbergasted. He never aspired to switch leagues. Truth be told, he never even considered the idea of switching leagues. But two million dollars a year to play football was set-for-life money. And having grown up poor in Columbia, Mississippi, set-for-life money was hard to ignore.

  Michael McCaskey, the Bears’ new president (and Halas’ oldest grandchild), did his best to pretend the Blitz didn’t exist. He pooh-poohed their bid,
dismissing it to The New York Times as “making no business sense.”

  “We have a very good proposal to offer,” he said. “It disturbs me that we are forced to make a business decision based on somebody else’s poor business decision. The USFL is going to be like a soap bubble. It will grow and there will be nothing there, no fans or TV money.”

  Though McCaskey would be proven correct (the USFL folded after three spring seasons), it mattered not. Payton had long been irked by the Bears’ thriftiness, and now another organization was willing to pay big. Throughout the ’83 season, representatives of the USFL came to Soldier Field to watch Payton play, even sneaking down to the locker room after games and whispering sweet nothings in his ear. “I was a junior in high school, and my dad used to go to see Walter,” said Ron Potocnik, Jr., whose late father was the Blitz GM. “I would always ask, ‘Did you get him? Did you sign Walter? Did you?’ They wanted him badly.”

  The Blitz pulled out every stop. They inked a handful of former Bears, including quarterback Vince Evans, one of Payton’s close friends, and hired the well-regarded Marv Levy as head coach. They promised large crowds and tremendous hype and the opportunity to not merely carry a team, but a league. “Walter would have been the face of the USFL,” said Evans. “No question.”

  Payton hemmed and hawed. He weighed pros and cons. He told Bud Holmes, his agent, to accept the USFL deal, then changed his mind. Then he changed it again. And yet again. The Blitz were blessed with an apparently deep-pocketed owner desperate to win. The Bears were in the NFL. The Blitz planned on running a high-flying, wide-open offense. The Bears were in the NFL. The Blitz had snazzy uniforms and gorgeous cheerleaders. The Bears were in the NFL. The Blitz were infatuated with Payton. The Bears were in the NFL.

  “Walter thought about leaving, but I’m not sure he ever really believed it would happen,” said Holmes. “The USFL had money, but it was a mystery. He wanted to go with a sure thing.”

  Never would Holmes perform more brilliantly than he did in the winter of 1984. He knew he was bargaining from a position of strength, and he wielded that power like an assault rifle. For years the Bears under Halas had specialized in undervaluing and demeaning players. Men would come to training camp requesting a ten-thousand-dollar raise and slink out with a slash in salary.

  Now, thanks to the USFL, Holmes had the Bears where he wanted them. The resulting contract was unparalleled in the annals of American professional sports; one even Jerry Vainisi, the Bears’ general manager (Jim Finks quit in August, 1983), tagged “brilliant.” Payton’s three-year deal called for little money up front, but a ten-million-dollar guaranteed annuity that would pay him (or, should he die before its completion, Connie) $240,000 a year for the next forty-four years. “It was the most complicated negotiation I’ve ever been involved in,” said Vainisi. “We bought the annuity from New York Life for a couple of million dollars, so technically an insurance company was paying Walter his salary. It was Bud’s idea, and he deserves a lot of credit. A lot of athletes think short-term. Walter and Bud did not.”

  And what of the Chicago Blitz? Led by the rushing of star halfback Larry Canada, Levy’s team finished 5-13, playing before an average of seventy-five hundred fans at Soldier Field. The franchise folded at season’s end.

  “It would have been a shame for Walter to have jumped leagues,” said Kevin Long, a former Blitz running back. “He belonged in the NFL. He belonged where the action was.”

  The action was here.

  On February 6, 1984, Walter Payton drove to downtown Chicago, entered the WBBM television studio, sat in a chair, had makeup applied to his face, grabbed a bite to eat, took a sip of water, walked onto a stage, and, for the first time ever, stood alongside Jim Brown and Franco Harris.

  The occasion was an appearance on The Phil Donahue Show, at the time the reigning afternoon talk king, to discuss the record and its implications.

  Impeccably dressed and mildly tempered, Payton watched, often with a bemused expression, as Brown and Harris sparred. The exchanges were weird, awkward, and demeaning for both men. According to Brown, Harris, at thirty-four, was a washed-up has-been who ran for the sidelines before taking a hit and who was hanging on solely to surpass the record. The legendary Steeler was, Brown declared, unworthy of the title NFL Rushing King. “Right now I could beat you, Franco, in a forty,” said Brown, age forty-seven.

  “I believe there are kids sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen who can beat me,” Harris replied, “but I don’t think Jim Brown can.”

  Through their nine years in the league together, Payton had come to like and respect Harris, a mild-mannered Penn State product who played hard and rarely complained. Harris was the anti–O. J. Simpson, in that—even as the Steelers ruled the ’70s—he never courted publicity or sought out endorsement deals. “Nobody had anything bad to say about Franco,” said John Brockington, a Packers fullback. “He was a gentleman.”

  Though significantly less talented than Payton, Harris was a skilled runner with deceptive speed and soft hands. His defining career moment—the unforgettable “immaculate reception” in a 1972 play-off game against Oakland—was hardly emblematic of his workmanlike approach. “I have a great deal of respect for Franco,” Payton said. “I know him and his family, and on occasions we’ve spent a lot of time together.”

  Brown, on the other hand, was someone Payton wanted little to do with. While he spoke glowingly of the Hall of Famer in public, Payton failed to understand the bitterness that seemed to accompany Brown’s words. He was the one, after all, who chose to retire in the prime of his career, at age twenty-nine; the one who walked away to become a movie star. Had Brown so desired, he probably could have run for twenty thousand yards, and none of this Payton-Harris hoopla would have ever existed.

  Instead, there was a scowling Brown on the cover of the December 12, 1983, issue of Sports Illustrated, dressed in a Los Angeles Raiders jersey beneath the headline JIM BROWN: YOU SERIOUS? A COMEBACK AT 47? The threat, according to Brown, was a real one.

  “Gaining a thousand yards in a fourteen-game season is like walking backwards,” Brown told the Tribune’s Bob Greene. “Gaining a thousand yards in a sixteen-game season isn’t even worth talking about. The standards today are lower, the conditions are easier, and the expectations are less.

  “I may not come back,” he added, “but I will if people don’t admit to the fraud that’s being perpetrated.... Who’s to say a forty-seven-year-old can’t do it? I’m not talking about being Jim Brown of 1965. I’m talking about being Jim Brown of 1984. If Franco Harris is gonna creep to my record, I might as well come back and creep, too.”

  Brown had mostly kind words for Payton, referring to him as a “gladiator.” But Payton, to his credit, wasn’t swayed. He found Brown to be an arrogant, dismissive, rude old man crying for a breadcrumb of attention. Were he to eventually own the mark, Payton promised himself he would never behave as Brown had.

  Although Payton had been burned by optimism before, 1984 seemed different. From the spectacular new contract to the dream home he and Connie were building in South Barrington (featuring a lake, a fishing pond, a miniature par-3 golf course, and the soundproof gun range in the basement) to the hype over Brown’s record, Payton reported to training camp (now being held at the University of Wisconsin–Platteville—aptly described by Ted Plumb, the receivers coach, as “miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles”) feeling euphoric.

  Over the preceding few years Payton had spent his off-seasons working out in Chicago, sprinting up and down a hill that teammates describe as “dizzying” (Ted Albrecht), “vomit-inducing” (Jerry Doerger), and “so steep, you were kissing it while running up” (Dennis Gentry).

  In the lead-up to 1984, however, Payton—fresh from arthroscopic surgery on both knees—returned to Jackson, Mississippi, where he stayed with his mother and ran through the sand hills and along the banks of the Pearl River while pulling a tire with a rope tied around his waist.15 It was meant to be a time of reju
venation; of returning to his youthful ways in search of an extra spark. “You have to have a goal, a challenge to motivate you,” Payton said. “I’ve accomplished most of my goals, but you have to have something to motivate you more, to stimulate you to bigger heights.”

  If Payton needed motivation, all he had to do was look around the Chicago locker room, where the fruits of a series of wise drafts were beginning to pay off. “We wanted intelligent people,” said Bill Tobin, who headed the team’s personnel department. “We didn’t care if Mike Singletary was too short or Jim McMahon had an eye problem. We looked for smarts, drive, heart.” The pathetic offenses of Jack Pardee and Neill Armstrong were long gone, replaced by a cast of dynamic, talented characters and, in Ditka, a coach excited to utilize them. On defense, meanwhile, coordinator Buddy Ryan had built a ferocious unit about to take the NFL by storm.

  In the waning days of the 1981 season, when Halas was preparing to fire Armstrong and his entire coaching staff, Singletary, the rookie middle linebacker, urged his fellow defensive players to send a note to the owner, begging him to keep Ryan. “[Defensive end] Alan Page wrote it, because he had a law degree,” recalled Jim Osborne, a lineman and Payton’s teammate for ten seasons. “We knew if they let Buddy go the defense would be set back another three or four years. We all signed the letter and sent it off, hoping for the best.”