Da Bears! by Steve Delsohn

Author:Steve Delsohn [Delsohn, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-46469-9
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2010-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

On July 25, 1954, Walter Payton was born in Columbia, Mississippi, about 80 miles from New Orleans. His father, Edward, worked as a custodian at a parachute factory. At night his mother, Alyne, worked in the same factory her husband did. During the day she took care of Walter, his older brother Eddie, and his older sister Pam. Money was always tight, and all three Payton kids were always on the lookout for odd jobs.

Walter didn’t start playing organized football until his junior year of high school. As a freshman and sophomore, he was a long jumper on the track team and a drummer in the school band. Walter’s decision to go out only for track disappointed the locals because Jefferson High School was small and needed every good athlete it could find. Furthermore, people figured Walter had talent since his brother Eddie was the team’s star running back.

Wrote Don Yaeger in the book Never Die Easy, which Yaeger coauthored with Payton in the final months of Payton’s life, “The belief around Columbia was that Walter never wanted to compete with his older brother on the Jefferson playing fields. For his part, Walter said he was more into the band until he realized that girls paid running backs more attention than drummers.”

In 1970 Walter was a junior when Eddie graduated. The Jefferson football coach asked Walter to join the team, and Walter said he would if he could stay in the band.

But after one great season at Jefferson, the nearby all-white Columbia High School was ordered to integrate, and Payton and some of his teammates transferred there. As a senior, he made All-State, but Payton had limited options. College football was so racially backward that if he wanted to play at a major program, he would need to enroll in the Big Ten or the Pacific 8. The other top conferences still mostly ignored even the best black athletes. This included the Southeastern Conference, the closest to his Mississippi home.

It’s hard to believe today, but when Walter Payton graduated from high school, only Kansas, Alcorn State, and Jackson State offered him scholarships. Payton chose Jackson State, a historically black school where his older brother Eddie already played. In four years at Jackson State, Walter scored 65 touchdowns and a collegiate-record 464 points, and he averaged 6.1 yards per carry. He also punted, kicked field goals and extra points, and threw four touchdown passes. In 1974, his senior year, Payton probably should have won the Heisman Trophy, which went to Archie Griffin at Ohio State. But Jackson State was too small and too black, and Payton finished fourth.

Not only was he perhaps the best college football player in the country, he also may have been in the best shape. Before his senior year, Payton found a sandbank near the Pearl River outside Columbia. He laid out a training course of 65 yards, which felt like twice as long because he was running in sand. Early in his NFL career, before he became more comfortable in Chicago, Payton continued to train there in the off-season.

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