Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [212]
Clinton approached him toward the latter months of 1989, when several NFL officials told the St. Louis folks that the bid would be enhanced with the running back’s experience, image, and ethnicity. Payton had first outwardly expressed an interest in ownership in the summer of 1986, when he mentioned to The Washington Post that he would one day like to buy a team and move it to London. Now, three years later he had already met with groups attempting to expand into Oakland and North Carolina. Both efforts, though, had drawbacks—California was too far from Chicago and North Carolina was headed by Jerry Richardson, a wealthy restaurateur with little interest in sharing the load. Holmes insisted St. Louis was the best option, and Payton agreed.
There were, though, reservations. Like Payton, Clinton was heavily involved in motor sports, having also raced on the Sports 2000 and Trans-Am Series and sharing a close relationship with Paul Newman. Payton and Clinton were first introduced at a race in Long Beach, California, by Indy-driver Willy T. Ribbs, and became teammates, driving twin Mustang Cobras and at comparable skill levels. On the morning of the day Payton flipped his car at Road America, Clinton gave him a warning at the hotel. “This is a difficult track,” he told Payton. “There are a myriad of things you have to look out for. Take four, five, or six laps at a slower speed so you can get a feel for the track.”
Despite their shared history, however, Payton never felt especially at ease with Clinton (or Murray) as a business partner. They simply were not his preferred genre of people—loud, boastful, arrogant. He found Murray uncomfortably quirky and Clinton uncomfortably talkative. When Clinton entered a room, Payton noticed, the oxygen drained like helium from a punctured balloon. He talked and talked and talked and talked. As a racing cohort, that was fine. As a business partner—not so much. The last thing Payton desired was to join forces with a bunch of bigheaded executives with dreams of gridiron glory. Having grown up watching an aged George Halas, Payton was a fan of understated and reserved. Sure, Halas wasn’t the ideal owner. But he knew his strengths, and his concern was winning, not PR. “Jerry was just kind of an ego guy,” Payton once said. “A big name-dropper, a big egomaniac. Even though Jerry was not my type of guy, I always gave Jerry the limelight, always pushed it to him with the interviews.... Jerry wanted the prestige of being the team owner. I just wanted to get a team.”
Payton ignored the warnings in his head and charged forward. He was, after all, being told that no money had to be put up and that his 10 percent share would be paid for out of the team’s revenues. He was also promised to be the face of the franchise. When people thought St. Louis football, they’d think Walter Payton. “Walter wanted this to happen so badly, and he saw in St. Louis the best opportunity,” said Ginny Quirk, his assistant and the vice president of Walter Payton, Inc. “Was there reason to be suspicious of some of the people involved? In hindsight, definitely yes. But when you’re in the middle of something this big, and you see such a golden opportunity, you tend to hope for the best and overlook the little problems.”
Payton was a wayward soul in search of meaning, and here—in NFL ownership—was meaning. He wanted to remain important and impactful. He wanted to have a voice that people would listen to. He heard about so-called NFL legends from past decades sitting behind a card table in ballroom C of the McCall, Idaho, Holiday Inn, signing autographed pictures for ten dollars a pop. Attention ladies and gentlemen, now appearing alongside Tony Dow is . . .
That would not be Walter Payton.
So, against his better judgment, Payton jumped headfirst into the St. Louis endeavor. He spent the next three years doing one of the things he did best—schmoozing. When Payton wasn’t attending to his businesses in Chicago or racing cars at some far-off track, he could usually be found in St. Louis, talking football as the guest speaker