Sweetness (22 page)

“It was a controlled rage,” said Rodney Phillips, Payton’s roommate and teammate. “Archie was getting all that publicity, and Walter couldn’t. But he knew he was the better football player. We all did.”

Payton’s goal was to show it to the world and have the finest season in college football history. Though the resentment certainly fueled him, it was naïve. In actuality, the so-called doubters didn’t exist, because few people who mattered took Walter Payton’s efforts seriously enough to even be termed doubters. (Noted Jefferson at the time: “Lots of newspapers around the nation don’t even print our scores, much less give details of the games.”) Payton was a true Heisman candidate, in the same way Lyndon LaRouche runs for president every four years. He could accumulate ten thousand yards and five hundred touchdowns in 1974, and the feats would still be largely dismissed as low level. To most Heisman voters, SWAC statistics were meaningless.

“Walter felt he needed to go above and beyond in order to get the due he was deserved,” Hill said. “He probably needed to be perfect. As did our team.”

The Tigers fielded a preposterously talented club in 1974, with thirty-eight returning lettermen and a fully intact offensive line. Rickey Young would emerge as an elite fullback, and quarterback Jimmy Lewis was often mentioned (incorrectly, it turned out) as a professional prospect. With Brazile and Tate at linebacker, the defense was fierce. Twelve members of the team eventually played in the NFL—more than both supposedly superior in-state schools, Mississippi State and Ole Miss.

The spotlight, however, was on Walter Payton. In practices, defensive players could unload on quarterbacks, on receivers, on linemen. “But if you touched Walter, Coach Hill would hit you with a wood board,” said Perry. Or worse. A Bishop wide receiver named Joe Pierce recalled watching a Jackson State morning practice the day before the game. “A linebacker hit Walter and made him fall down,” said Pierce. “There was a collective gasp, and the coach walked over to a tree, ripped off a branch, ordered the linebacker to bend over, and then hit him across the butt several times.”

Jackson State won two of its first three games, with Hill giving the ball to his star halfback in every possible scenario. After opening the season with a heartbreaking 10–6 loss to Morgan State in a benefit game at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia (Payton returned a kickoff eighty-one yards, but fumbled near the goal line on the potentially game-winning drive), the Tigers kicked off their home schedule by destroying Prairie View at Memorial Stadium, 67–7. Payton ran for two short touchdowns and threw a thirty-six-yard spiral to Jeremiah Tillman for a third. They followed with a 25–6 homecoming triumph against Mississippi Valley, with Payton contributing two touchdowns, a field goal, two extra points, and a two-point conversion.

Payton’s numbers were terrific, but Hill wanted more. The coach believed that in order for Jackson State to become a nationally known program, Payton needed to appear Jim Brown–like in his splendor. A bunch of hundred-yard rushing games wouldn’t cut it. Neither would a handful of touchdowns and field goals. He couldn’t merely be a good running back at a SWAC school of limited note. “We wanted to open eyes to Walter,” he said. “To let everyone in the country see that this was no ordinary football player.”

Enter Nebraska-Omaha.

One year earlier, Hill’s team had opened its season by flying to the Midwest and crushing the Division II Mavericks, 17–0. Now, as part of a homeand-home agreement, UNO would be coming to Jackson for an October 5 meeting—the rare predominantly white college willing to trek to Memorial Stadium and face the Tigers. This was, for Payton and Jackson State, the perfect storm. “The way we saw it, those teams had an opportunity to play a so-called nigger school,” said Charles Brady, a Jackson State defensive tackle. “And we wanted to punish them.”

In 1973, the Mavericks were a solid football team coached by the engaging Al Caniglia. They finished the year 7-2-1, and hope abounded. On a February evening in 1974, however, Caniglia returned home after a day of meetings, collapsed from a massive heart attack, and died. He was fifty-two. “Al was a great man,” said Bill Daenhauer, the team’s defensive coordinator. “He took care of you, and always made sure everything was going well for those around him. He wanted you to succeed.” With his death less than two months before the start of spring practices, the school acted quickly to find a replacement. Don Leahy, Nebraska-Omaha’s athletic director, hired C. T. Hewgley, a standout offensive and defensive tackle at the University of Wyoming from 1948 to 1950 who, in 1973, coached his alma mater’s offensive line.

A tank driver with the 45th Infantry Division in Europe during World War II (as well as an infantry company commander in Korea), Hewgley used his first meeting with the Maverick players to let them know long hair—a staple under the liberal-minded Caniglia—was no longer tolerated. “We had a quarterbacks session once, and he took us to his house to show us a jar of the ‘Gook ears’—his words—that he brought back [from Korea],” said John Bowenkamp, a UNO quarterback. “We were eighteen, nineteen, Vietnam was winding down and most of us were against the war. The ears didn’t go over so well.”

Neither did Hewgley’s football philosophies. Befitting an ex–drill sergeant, the new coach used the preseason to run his players into the ground, often implementing three-a-day practices with no water. “I was two hundred and thirty-eight pounds the year before he arrived,” said Ted Sledge, a star defensive tackle. “After some of the games my senior year I weighed one-ninety-eight. You can’t play the line like that. Not possible.” Under Caniglia, the Mavericks relied on star halfback Saul Ravenell, a third-team all-American in 1973, by operating the I-formation. “We switched to the wishbone when Hewgley took the job, only we didn’t have fast quarterbacks,” said Ravenell. “The whole thing was a disaster. A bunch of guys quit. Others didn’t play very hard. When you have a coach like C. T. Hewgley, the motivation is hard to come by.”

The Mavericks arrived in Mississippi on the afternoon of October 4 and spent the night at the Ramada Inn, a short drive from Memorial Stadium. On the evening of the game (scheduled to begin at eight P.M.), the team took a bus to the stadium, only to be greeted by hundreds of Jackson State diehards. “We went there and everyone was black,” said Ravenell. “The fans, the cheerleaders, the players. We were mainly white, and our players had never been in that sort of setting. I’m black, so I wasn’t affected. But they were intimidated. Normally our team would be all pumped up before a game. This time, nothing was said. We were surrounded by tens of thousands of black faces, and we were afraid.”

“We had no chance,” said Daenhauer. “None.”

The Mavericks won the opening toss and elected to receive. Their offense took over on the twenty-nine-yard line, and Bowenkamp, a Kansas State transfer starting in place of the injured John Smolsky, jogged onto the field. Hewgley called for a swing pass to Ravenell out of the backfield. Bowenkamp took the snap and rolled right. With Ravenell covered by Tate, the quarterback tucked the ball and turned upfield. POP! He was clocked by Brazile, a six-foot-four, 240-pound linebacker who would later be nicknamed “Dr. Doom” during a fabulous ten-year NFL career. Bowenkamp crumpled to the ground before Brazile’s hand grabbed his shoulder pads and jerked him upward. “White boy,” Brazile growled, “don’t you
ever
run this way again.”

The Mavericks punted, and moments later Young scored on a twenty-yard romp through the middle of UNO’s defense, kicking off an offensive explosion unparalleled in the history of Memorial Stadium. The Tigers led 48–0 at halftime, with Hill having decided early on that the day would be devoted to Payton and his Heisman hype. The highlight film—black-and-white and grainy—serves as an ode to a great runner at his absolute greatest.

“My best safety was a kid named Mike McDermott—a real tough guy from Colorado,” said Daenhauer. “Walter broke through the line one time, and Mike hit him squarely in the chest . . . just unloaded on him. Walter ran right through him like he wasn’t even there. I’d never seen that before.”

“There was one play when Walter Payton was running, and he was going to my right down the sidelines,” said Jim Sledge, a defensive tackle (and Ted Sledge’s sibling). “My brother was going full steam at him, and he stiff-armed him right in the chest, knocked him back, and scooted another fifty yards.”

The Tigers won 75–0, the most lopsided game in college football that season. Payton carried the ball eighteen times for 183 yards and six touchdowns. Afterward, UNO’s players expected to receive a stern browbeating from their coach. “There’s nothing I can really tell you after a game like that,” Hewgley said, his voice near a whisper. “We got our butts handed to us by a superhero.”

Four days later, the
Associated Press
named its National College Back of the Week. According to an
AP
article, among those considered for the award were Andrew Johnson of the Citadel, Joe Washington of Oklahoma, Walt Snickenberger of Princeton, and Billy Waddy of Colorado.

The winner was chosen by unanimous consent: Archie Griffin.

“Walter,” said Hill, “never got his due. Never.”

Indeed, overlooked in the aftermath of the 75–0 rout was a monumental achievement: With the six touchdowns against Omaha, Payton scored his 410th career point, breaking the NCAA record. So lightly regarded was Jackson State and the SWAC by the national media that John Husar of the
Chicago Tribune
dismissively wrote toward the end of his weekly column that Payton “
apparently
has broken the record—
his school claims.
” The old mark, set by Dale Mills of Northeast Missouri, had stood for fifteen years. “The record meant a lot to me,” said Mills. “Because it showed what you can accomplish with drive and hard work. But I wasn’t disappointed when Payton broke it, because he seemed to be that type of player.”

Mills and Payton actually shared some uncanny commonalities. Payton was from Columbia, Mississippi, Mills from Columbia, Missouri. Payton was a five-foot-ten halfback, Mills was a five-foot-ten halfback. Payton followed his older brother Eddie to Jackson State, Mills followed his older brother Bill to Northeast Missouri. Payton started playing as a freshman. Mills started playing as a freshman.

“It’s all very odd,” said Mills, now seventy and a retired high school science teacher. “I actually met Walter once in the Kansas City International Airport. It was 1988 or ’89, and my son saw Walter and brought me over to introduce us. I said, ‘Walter, you broke my scoring record.’ I don’t think it meant too much to him, but he was very gracious about it.”

Through late October Payton continued to believe he had a shot at the Heisman. Inside the Jackson State locker room, coaches and teammates insisted the honor was within reach—a dangling carrot that consumed the running back’s attention. “If they are going to go by ability and stats,” he told the
Blue and White Flash
, “they will have no other choice.”

Was he deliberately fooling himself? Sort of. Payton certainly knew that while he was wallowing in SWAC obscurity, Griffin was in the midst of a phenomenal streak of exceeding one hundred rushing yards in thirty-one straight games. Yet, in his mind, stranger things had happened. What if Griffin and Anthony Davis got hurt? Or slumped? What if Jackson State won the rest of their games, and Payton ran for more than two hundred yards in all of them? Then, surely, he’d receive his due. Or, at the very least, be strongly considered.

The Tigers followed the Omaha bloodbath by walloping Bishop in Dallas, 36–10 (Payton ran for 144 yards and three touchdowns), then traveled to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a Homecoming Day face-off with Southern University, a SWAC rival. Like most of the league’s teams, Southern could not match Jackson State’s talent in a position-by-position comparison. They were thin in most of the skill areas, and ran a wishbone offense that was as simple as it was ineffective.

The Jaguars entered the game 4-1, and Charlie Bates, the team’s cagey coach, based his entire defensive game plan around stopping Payton. “Let them throw, let other guys run the ball, let them kick field goals,” he told his players. “But if you let Walter Payton get space, he’ll run all over us. Choke him at the line, we win.”