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By Root 1415 0

let it be known that, for the right opportunity from the right school, the running back was still on the market. Apparently word got around. That spring a portly defensive assistant from Florida State University was traveling through Mississippi when Boston got ahold of him. “He said to me, ‘Coach, we got a guy here who didn’t get signed by any of the college teams but I think he’s a really good player. Do you have any scholarships left?’ ” recalled the Seminole coach—a man named Bill Parcells. “I said ‘Yeah, we got one but I don’t think we’ll use it. We’ll probably keep it.’ ” Boston was determined that Parcells see Payton, so he had Walter take part in a spring practice with the upcoming varsity team. Parcells attended. “The kid’s about five foot nine, one-seventy, and he’s a running back,” Parcells recalled. “And he runs pretty good, but I look at [Boston] and say, ‘Coach, we’ve got six backs better than him at Florida State, plus he’s a little too small.’ ”

Walter’s future came down to two schools. Wildcats? Tigers? When Jackson State signed Moses to a scholarship, it wasn’t because the college collected five-foot-seven scatbacks. “Truthfully, we gave that to the little guy because we craved Walter,” said Hill. “That’s how you recruit.” Kansas State took an equally direct approach, promising all sorts of greatness and glory. “We wanted him terribly,” said R. C. Slocum, at the time a Wildcat assistant. “You don’t get those type of players every day.” Despite his differences with Eddie, Walter was intrigued by the idea of playing in the same backfield as his brother. But he thought Kansas State—with games against national powers like Nebraska and Oklahoma—offered an amazing opportunity. There was, however, the winters of Manhattan, Kansas. There was, however, the tyrannical rule of Hill, who, according to Eddie, ran a football team like a military platoon. “Bob Hill was the black Bear Bryant,” said Moses. “Walter didn’t like what he heard about Bob Hill’s style. He was brutal and raw.”

Finally, in the late spring of 1971, Walter made up his mind, signing a national letter of intent to attend Kansas State.3 A few weeks later, in early June, Payton returned to Manhattan for a summer recruiting party at the breathtaking Turtle Creek Reservoir. With twenty-five of his fellow incoming freshmen on hand, Payton partook in waterskiing and swimming and gorged on hotdogs and hamburgers grilled by the coaching staff. “He was a really handsome, clean-cut, articulate kid,” said Slocum. “When he came to the cookout, we knew he would play for us. It was exciting.”

With that, Kansas State’s coaches made a program-defining error: They relaxed. When Payton returned to Columbia, he took up an offer from Eddie to move into a Jackson State dorm room for the remainder of the summer. Moses came along as well, and Hill encouraged both players to enroll in summer school classes. He also set Payton up with a go-only-if-you’re-verybored job working in a nearby gymnasium. “Coach Hill wanted his hands on Walter,” said Moses. “But Walter was turned off by it all.”

Payton took two classes that summer, and made regular trips from Jackson to Columbia. With each passing day his feelings of dislike toward Hill grew. He failed to understand the coach’s demeanor. Not an hour went by without Hill checking in on Payton, gauging his happiness, urging him to embrace Jackson State’s campus for all its splendor. Finally, enough was enough. The pressure was too much. On one of their trips home together, Payton and Moses took a drive to Pearl River Junior College in Poplarville, Mississippi. The school had gained fame for producing Willie Heidelburg, a running back who had recently become the first black to sign with the University of Southern Mississippi. “We all knew about Willie, and what he’d done,” said Moses. “So we got in Walter’s mother’s car, unbeknownst to his mom, his dad, Eddie, and Coach Hill. And we looked into getting a tryout.”

Payton and Moses tracked down John Russell, Pearl River’s head coach, and requested an on-the-spot audition. According