Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [62]
Against all odds and logic, Bishop stormed back to take a 9–7 lead into the second quarter, and the Blue Tigers began to consider the possibilities of a shocking upset.
Instead, they were destroyed.
“Those guys from Mississippi were wood-hauling, deep-sea-fishing-withtheir-bare-hands monsters,” said Roberts. “They were Roman gladiators.”
Though Payton put up better numbers in his sophomore-year effort against Lane, those who watched—and played—in the Bishop game considered it the most magnificent showing of his first three college seasons. He started off the second quarter with a forty-six-yard dash through the heart of the defense, then caught a seventeen-yard touchdown pass from Lewis before running for another one-yard touchdown run. His white uniform, bright and unblemished before the game, was bright and unblemished afterward, too. “It was like he was a ghost,” said Jackie Robertson, Bishop’s standout defensive end. “We’d go back to the huddle and talk about stopping him, and we couldn’t. We were hitting him, but it was like he was going right through you. Three or four times I knew I had a perfect tackle on him, and when I made the tackle I put my head down, locked my arms at the wrists, and took the guy down. Only he wasn’t there. He vanished.”
Decades later, Robertson remains haunted—and mystified—by one particular play, when Payton came around end on a sweep and was met head-on by the lineman. “I locked him up, felt him, had my eyes closed when we hit the ground, felt him fall below me,” he said. “I even said to him, ‘Now I’ve got you!’ The next thing I hear is the crowd screaming, and Walter Payton’s crossing the goal line.”
By the time the clock hit 0:00, Jackson State led 60–12, and Payton’s stat line read 162 yards on only thirteen carries. “You couldn’t just hit him,” said Rhiny Williams, a Bishop defensive tackle. “If you wanted to bring Walter Payton down, you had to pulverize him. And it never happened.”
In the aftermath of the game, Bishop’s players shuffled onto their bus for the seven-hour drive back to Dallas. Robertson’s mother, Nerciel Young, had attended the game, and she gave her son a large box of peanuts to share with his teammates. As he walked toward his seat, Robertson shouted, “Anyone here want some nuts?”
Williams perked up. “Are they roasted,” he asked, “or boiled?”
Edmund Peters, Bishop’s defensive coordinator, went off. “Peanuts?” he screamed. “Is this some sort of joke? Walter Payton just ran over your asses and you’re talking about peanuts? You must be fucking kidding me!”
The players burst into laughter.
As the wins mounted and the hundred-yard rushing games piled up, Walter Payton’s legend grew. Against Mississippi Valley State, Hill called a halfback dive—from the Devils’ five-yard line. “Walter jumped up, flew five yards through the air, and landed in the end zone,” said Brazile, the standout linebacker. “Nobody could believe it. But that’s not crazy—it’s Walter.” Against Kentucky State, Payton literally carried five defenders on his back for seven yards. “He was one man,” said Oscar Downs, Kentucky State’s kicker, “but he played like ten.” So revered was the junior halfback that, a couple of days before the biggest game of the year, a clash with Grambling State, he was presented with a key to Jackson by the city council. Around campus, women became increasingly flirtatious, inviting him to parties, lingering outside his dormitory, hoping for a shot with the gridiron star. “He would practice signing his name over and over,” said Matthew Norman, a Tigers defensive back. “Because he knew, one day, he’d be signing a lot of autographs and big checks.”
When he wasn’t on the field Payton was almost always in his room, laughing with teammates and taking some of the younger players under his wing. “Coach Hill had a nine P.M. curfew for freshmen, so we didn’t have much to do at night,” said Herman Burrell, a freshman