Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [157]
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.