Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [59]
One year later, Connie was a Jackson State student.
And Walter Payton was happy.
Though Bob Hill could be a sentimental sort, he was first and foremost an obsessive winner. Loyalty was loyalty, but it only extended so far. As great as Payton had been over the course of his freshman and sophomore seasons, Hill would never turn down the opportunity to bring in another elite ball carrier.
That’s why, in the late summer weeks of 1973, Walter was dismayed to find that the incoming freshman class included a halfback with superior speed; a halfback the legendary Red Smith would later call “a greyhound with muscles.” As a product of Greenville High School in Greenville, Mississippi, Wilbert Montgomery faced the same barriers Payton had two years earlier—despite eye-opening statistics and abilities to rival any player in the South, the state’s white universities refused to pursue him. Hill, however, was smitten. “Man, I loved that kid,” he said. “[While I was recruiting him] I took him to a local sporting goods store where I had a credit and I said, ‘Get anything you want—get clothes, get shoes, get anything.’ Wilbert bought about three pairs of pants and a pair of shoes, and I thought, ‘That’s all he gets? What a kid! What a terrific kid!’ ”
In his first week of practice with the Tigers, Montgomery exceeded all expectations. He ran hard and he ran fast. Montgomery only lacked one component vital to Jackson State. “Toughness,” said Matthew Norman, a defensive back. “He passed out on the field one day from the heat. He just couldn’t handle it.”
“We were going through drills,” recalled Jackie Slater, the star offensive lineman, “and Wilbert was just a freshman, asking out loud, ‘Do I really want to go through this?’ ”
Payton, on the other hand, was as determined a player as most Tigers had ever seen. Much of his free time was spent at Memorial Stadium, running the mountainous steps until he could barely breathe. He would deliberately show up around noon, when the facility was empty and the moist air could be sliced like a piece of sponge cake. If the stadium was being used, he’d either run miles through the streets of downtown Jackson (“We’d jog to the movies, to the zoo, to get something to eat,” said Robert Brazile. “Walter just loved to jog.”) or retreat to a nearby high school. “You could look out the window in the women’s dorm at certain parts of the day and you’d see Walter working out by himself in the insane heat,” said Jo Ann Durham, a Jackson State student who briefly dated Walter. “Nobody else could hang with him.”
“His training was unparalleled,” said Vernon Perry, Jackson State’s safety. “He’d take me to the Pearl River and we’d run through the sand in our football cleats. In our football cleats! Who would even think to do that?”
Certainly not Montgomery. Hill was familiar with the new kid’s shortcomings, but figured he could beat toughness into him. Hill was also made aware that Abilene Christian, a small NAIA school in central Texas, had desperately craved his services and wasn’t giving up easily. According to Hill, Jackson was home to a wealthy Abilene booster with a private jet who had been snooping around campus, whispering sweet nothings to Montgomery. During one weekend in late August, Hill had to depart to Memphis for a meeting. Before leaving, Hill ordered assistant coach Sylvester Collins, a former Tigers quarterback, to babysit Montgomery. “Don’t let him out of