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In St. Louis, the news was greeted with mixed emotions. Maybe, just maybe, there was still a reason to believe.

There wasn’t.

On November 30, Jacksonville, Florida—a city one-eighth the size of St. Louis, with the nation’s fifty-fifth television market—was gifted with the second team. Payton knew the situation was looking grim, but he still couldn’t believe it. Jacksonville? Just in case Payton’s devastation wasn’t raw enough, one of the partners in the Jacksonville bid was Deron Cherry, a longtime Kansas City Chiefs cornerback who, thanks in large part to the bumbling St. Louis crew, would beat out Payton to become the NFL’s first African-American owner.

Cherry and Payton shared a friendship dating back to the 1983 Pro Bowl—Payton’s sixth, Cherry’s first. “One of the NFC’s defensive backs warned me about Walter, that if you didn’t tackle him early in a play he’d high-step all over you,” said Cherry. “So they give him the football and he’s high-stepping, and I came over and grabbed him around his neck, hog-tied him like one would a bull and brought him down. He got up and pushed me. I pushed him back. Then he looked me in the face and said, ‘I like the way you play the game!’ ” The two kept in regular touch and years later, when Payton first joined the St. Louis group, Cherry ran into him at an event. “Shoot,” Cherry said, “you’re all but guaranteed a team. You guys have everything working for you.”

Now, as the members of Jacksonville’s expansion unit exchanged hugs inside the Hyatt, Cherry’s joy was mixed with a modicum of guilt. This was supposed to be Walter Payton’s moment. He worked for it. He deserved it. “He was the face of the NFL,” Cherry said. “I remember how sad it was when he didn’t get to score in the Super Bowl, and this was sort of the same way. He was denied something he clearly wanted very badly.”

With nothing else to shoot for, a despondent Payton left the hotel and drove home. Four years of work for nothing.

He never felt more depressed. Or alone.

But wait. Go back. There was a bit of good news in 1993. Although Walter Payton would never fulfill his dream of owning an NFL franchise, on January 30 he became the twenty-third Chicago Bear to be voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As his fellow inductees—Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts, Dolphins offensive guard Larry Little, and coaches Chuck Noll and Bill Walsh—greeted the news with equal parts glee and deference, Payton’s take was odd. He called the honor “nice,” but refused to display even a sliver of outward happiness. When informed of his induction, his reaction was unprecedented and perplexing. Journalists expecting the requisite I’m-just-so-honored response received little of the sort. Payton asked members of the local media whether the vote was unanimous, and brooded when told the tally (a panel of thirty-four pro football writers voted) was never revealed.

“I have mixed emotions,” he said. “I want to make the Hall of Fame unanimously. I try to be the best I possibly can be. If I do something, I want to do it all the way. If I got in unanimously, it means I was recognized as the best at what I did. If I didn’t get in unanimously, it means I wasn’t the best by all people’s standards. That would bother me.” Here was the crowning moment of a football player’s career, and he couldn’t enjoy it.

One week later Payton, citing a general aversion to ceremony, called Pete Elliott, the Pro Football Hall of Fame director, to tell him he wouldn’t be attending the formal introduction of the Hall’s Class of 1993 at the Pro Bowl festivities in Honolulu. “He was very sincere,” a baffled Elliott told the Chicago Tribune. “He said it was a great honor, but he couldn’t make it.” In the thirty-year history of the Hall, this was the first time anyone could remember a living inductee skipping out on the introduction. (Around this same time, Payton also turned down an invitation to a dinner in Baltimore for the All-Time Black College Football Team. Of the twenty-two honorees, seventeen attended—including Deacon