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’s attorney, wanted people to see. Holmes’ PR advice to his client was simple: Say little, accentuate the positive, keep negative opinions to yourself. Hence, the bundle received by SI’s Eleanore Milosovic was a glowing ode to Walter. He liked the drums and listening to music, once interned briefly at Jackson’s NBC affiliate, and was loved and respected by teammates. Wrote Lamb: “When Steve Schubert dropped a punt against Atlanta that set the Falcons up on the Bear fifteen in the fourth quarter of a scoreless tie, Payton was the first to talk to him on the sideline and console him. Last year a Lion player was running out-of-control toward a portable heater when Payton caught him.”

Was Payton the only Bear to console Schubert? Hardly. Were there NFL players who actually would have allowed the Lion to barrel into a heater? Probably not. Did veterans find Payton’s ongoing pranks obnoxious and irritating? Yes. But Chicago was a town crying for a hero, and Payton—handsome, talented, young—fit the suit.

With the mounting hoopla (Payton appeared on the cover of the November 22, 1976, Sports Illustrated, beneath the headline THE NFL’S NEW STARS), even People magazine joined the fray. Dennis Breo, a Chicago-based freelance writer, pitched the idea of a young, newly-married heartthrob who was tearing up the NFL—then was shocked when a lifestyle publication that rarely delved into sports actually bit. Breo spent ten days with Payton, and found himself neither liking nor hating the man. “Mostly, I was confused by him,” Breo said. “He was shy and very secretive. Most of the time I was trying to interview him he was wearing his headphones, bobbing to music coming from his hi-fi stereo. I literally had to pull them off his head to ask a question.”

At the time, one of the hot books in America was Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? which hypothesized that the technologies and religions of many ancient civilizations were supplied by space travelers. Though generally mocked, von Daniken’s work had its supporters. Like Walter Payton. “Walter was a believer in it, which I found surprising,” Breo said. “He believed in life on other planets, and that aliens had been here before us. He said it was something that intrigued him.”

The story was published in the November 22, 1976, issue of People, and Payton—not one to express pleasure or scorn to the press—was livid. “The article is fine,” he told Breo. “But what you guys did with that picture was just wrong.”

That picture depicted Walter and Connie, fully clothed, rolling around on their bed.

“He was a private guy,” said Breo, “and he didn’t want people thinking of him that way.”

What way is that?

“Good question,” said Breo. “I guess the kind of guy who sleeps on a bed.”

Long before the Hertz commercials. Long before The Naked Gun. Long before the Monday Night Football gig. Long before Nicole and Ronald, before the Ford Bronco, before the ill-fitting leather glove, before the acquittal heard around the world, before the thirty-three-year sentence for armed robbery.

Long before it all, O. J. Simpson was a football player. A fabulous, gamechanging football player.

Heading into the 1976 season, there was Simpson, Buffalo’s eighth-year halfback, and there was everyone else. The Juice had led the league with 1,817 rushing yards in 1975—his third crown in four seasons. The closest challenger, Pittsburgh’s Franco Harris, trailed him by a whopping 571 yards. Though hardly the type to barrel over opposing tacklers, like Payton or the Redskins’ John Riggins, Simpson’s blinding speed made him a defense’s nightmare. “When I was a rookie with the Patriots in 1975, we played O. J. at Buffalo,” said Steve Schubert, a Bears wide receiver. “I swear, I saw the guy come into the line of scrimmage, then float out the other side without being touched. He was smooth like silk.”

Drafted by the Bills out of USC with the first pick of the 1969 NFL Draft, Simpson walked with an air befitting a Hollywood star, not an upstate New York rookie. That’s the way Simpson viewed himself—as a multifaceted entertainer