Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [47]
Hill’s second priority was changing the way Walter ran. Though larger and stronger than his older brother, Walter tended to take handoffs and immediately break for the outside. This worked in high school, when he was faster than the majority of cornerbacks and safeties. But here, in college, it infuriated Hill. He wanted his ball carriers to emulate Alan Ameche, the legendary Colts fullback who had impressed him during his brief stay with Baltimore in 1956. “I put Walter at the top of the I-formation behind a fullback, but he wouldn’t go up in the hole,” Hill said. “He hated contact.”
Hill had an idea. He stopped a practice and called for Willie Swinning, the team’s trainer. With Walter within earshot, Hill handed Swinning a satchel and bellowed, “Bring this to the brick pile over there and fill it with three or four bricks!” When no one was looking, Swinning placed four footballs—not bricks—into the bag.
Hill positioned himself near the out-of-bounds line and resumed practice. He called for a drill involving a handoff. Sylvester Collins, the quarterback, gave the ball to Payton, who—as always—started to drift outside. Hill charged forward, wildly swinging the bag toward Payton’s head. “Back inside!” Hill screamed. “Get your ass back inside!” The play was called again. And again. And again. “It took him a couple of times with me swinging that bag of bricks,” said Hill, “but he finally started charging into the hole. That’s how he began running inside.”
Back in Columbia, Boston had advised Walter to run with raised knees—to lift them as high as possible in a chopping motion. Hill, the old workhorse back, hated the style. Great running backs, he told Payton, run with long strides and extended legs. They make it as hard as possible for opposing defenders to drag them down. “If you’re running with your knees high, they’re gonna be close to your body,” he said. “And if your knees are close to your body, a tackler can grab everything at once.
“If you want to be explosive, the best thing to do is run with long strides. The longer your strides, the faster you go. We’re gonna open holes for you, but if you have short, choppy steps somebody will grab you around the legs and trip you up. I want you to stick your legs out, and if someone tries grabbing them, keep extending . . . keep pumping. I know you’re from the country. You know when the cows come out to the pasture and eat all the green corn? Then you come out to get them and if you’re running they start shitting over everything and the shit is flying everywhere? Well, that’s how I want you to run. I want to see shit flying.”
As a boy, Walter Payton had never milked a cow, chased a cow, or watched a cow eat green corn. Nonetheless, he grasped what his coach was saying—run hard.
If the botched kickoff return against Prairie View taught Hill anything, it was that perhaps he was asking too much, too soon of Walter. In the 42–33 win over Kentucky State, Payton dressed and played, but only occasionally spelling his brother or John Ealy, another back.
Next up for the Tigers was their home opener against Bishop College at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium. Located five miles from campus in downtown Jackson, Memorial was considered a football jewel. Beginning with its grand opening in December 1950, the stadium—oval in shape, with dueling cement stands reaching high into the sky—served as home to many of the great contests in Mississippi football history. The place officially held forty-six thousand spectators (though an extra fourteen thousand could be crammed in), and the state’s two Division I football powerhouses, Ole Miss and Mississippi State, regularly scheduled games there. “When