Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [158]
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