Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [27]
Late in the second quarter, with no score and the crowd quiet, the Wildcats took over at their own thirty-yard line. From the sideline, Davis called 22 Sweep Right—a pitch to Payton. The play had already been run four or five times for little gain, but Davis felt Prentiss was about to break. Columbia’s offensive line—four whites, one black—was bigger and faster than the Prentiss defense. They just needed to create a hole. Johnson took the snap from Quin Breland, his center, pivoted his hips, and gently tossed the ball to No. 22, his longtime friend and classmate. Payton tiptoed a couple of steps behind his right tackle, then—whoosh!—burst outside. “He was coming right toward me, and I remember thinking, ‘Here I go! I’ve got him!’ ” recalled Fike. “I go to make my tackle, I man up, and I’m grabbing nothing but air. So I start giving chase, thinking I’ll certainly chase him down, because I’m a very fast runner. Well, he pulls away from me. He pulls away!” Payton dashed down the field untouched, a green-and-white blur of power and speed. By the time he reached the Bulldogs’ twenty-yard line, Payton spun around, raised the football above his head, and waved to the defenders. He jogged into the end zone backward.
It was an act of unheard-of cockiness; an act that, in ordinary Mississippi circumstances, would have resulted in whites branding him an “uppity nigger.” A mere fifteen years earlier Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi, for reportedly whistling at a white woman. And now, 190 miles to the south, here was Walter Payton, taunting his white pursuers.
In one corner of the stands, a handful of college football coaches watched in disbelief. In attendance were assistants from Ole Miss and Mississippi State, as well as Barney Poole, an assistant coach at the nearby University of Southern Mississippi. As soon as Payton held the ball aloft, the men began complaining aloud. One was more vocal than the others. “Can you believe the nerve of this kid?” said Bob Hill, an assistant coach at Jackson State College, Mississippi’s largest historically black school. “To have that little respect for an opponent is inexcusable. I would never sign someone like that.” Hill, of course, wanted Payton in the worst possible way. “I hoped the other coaches would buy my bluff,” he said. “They tended to think in packs.”
Poole, a former all-American end at Ole Miss who played professionally for six seasons, was visibly disgusted. Upon returning to his school’s Hattiesburg campus, Poole filed a scouting report that read: “Tremendous athlete, but we don’t need a smart-alecky nigger on our team.”
Payton was far from “smart-alecky.” He was humble and soft-spoken, but he had been taught to play sports with emotion and flavor. Throughout black high schools in the South, mild trash talking was not merely accepted, but encouraged. So was taunting. Midway through the season Boston had to explain to Davis that the way some of the black players behaved on the bus rides to road games—talking and laughing and busting chops—was nothing to get upset over. “He didn’t understand,” said Boston. “I said, ‘Tommy, they’ll be ready. Just let them be.’ ”
Columbia led Prentiss 7–0 at halftime, but with the exception of Payton’s long run the team looked out of sorts. At the beginning of the third quarter, Payton struck again. On a second down and ten from the Columbia twelve-yard line, Johnson grabbed the snap, spun hard, and presented the ball to his charging fullback, who ran straight toward Keith Brenson, the Bulldogs’ 240-pound nose tackle, cut left, and burst into the guts of the defense. The second Bulldog to have a shot at the tackle was Nobles. “I was playing strong side linebacker, and I was supposed to key on Walter,” said Nobles. “On the bright side, I can honestly say he didn’t run over me. But that’s only because he didn’t need to—he was so fast, I never came close to catching him. He left me in the dust.” It was Walter’s second touchdown of the game. Remarkably, the play had been mishandled—Walter was supposed to head outside,