Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [64]
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said to Eddie Bishop, a Southern University defensive back, “I’m never going to live in a big city like this. I couldn’t survive more than a day.”
CHAPTER 9
HEISMAN HOPES
THEY ARRIVED AT APPROXIMATELY THE SAME TIME—ONE, A MARVELOUS SIGHT for Walter Payton’s lonely eyes; the other, an alluring bronze mistress he aspired to woo.
One was Connie Norwood.
The other was the Heisman Trophy.
Thanks to Bob Hill’s generous offer of a full scholarship, in the fall of 1974 Norwood officially enrolled as a freshman at the newly minted Jackson State University (the school was no longer merely a college). Walter’s girlfriend would settle easily into campus life—she made a handful of close acquaintances and became a member of the Jaycettes, the school’s halftime female pep squad. “Everyone called her ‘Mrs. Thing,’ ” said Robert Brazile, the Tigers’ standout linebacker. “Because Connie referred to everyone as ‘Mr. Thing.’ ” She was energetic, engaging, and hard not to like. Yet if Connie thought life alongside Jackson State’s BMOC would be without its complications, she was badly mistaken.
To begin with, at a time when students were embracing black pride and racial self-discovery, many of the school’s coeds were less than enamored by the football superstar—with pigmentation as dark as charcoal—dating a light-skinned girl like Connie. “He was the school stud,” said Rogelio Solis, a friend and editor of the student newspaper. “The local high school girls would always come up to his car and slip him their numbers. One time he was giving me a ride, telling me about the situation. I said, ‘How bad can it be?’ Walter opened his glove compartment, and scraps of paper came pouring out.”
While she was, indeed, black, Walter’s choice of Connie stirred something in Jackson State’s females. Black women were embracing their heritage—wearing Afrocentric garb, letting their hair grow naturally, anxious to revel in their beauty and to show men that black—deep, dark, rich blackness—was beautiful and worthy of love.
Yet Payton, like many of his football teammates, wasn’t interested. Whether it was some sort of societal conditioning or based upon his roots in segregated rural Columbia, he possessed a strong physical attraction to white and light-skinned women. It began with Colleen Crawley in high school, and continued throughout his life. “Walter made that very clear,” said Mary “Bullet” Jones, his Soul Train dance partner and a person with extremely dark skin. “After we met he told me, ‘You’re the only dark-skinned girl that I’d ever think of being with, because I much prefer light skin.’ ”
Connie felt the eyes of others bearing down upon her and wondered what she could do to be more accepted. “Most of the time, I thought, ‘You can have him. He’s a moody person,’ ” she once said. But, of course, she didn’t want other women to have him. Yes, Walter was moody. If a game went poorly, he brooded for hours. If he didn’t like the number of carries he was receiving, he whined and complained. And yet, Walter was funny. And charming. And extremely well put together. While other Tigers roamed the world in sweatpants and T-shirts, Walter was straight out of GQ. “His jeans were always pressed, his shirt was always fitted so you could see his muscles,” said Brazile. “His shoes were always freshly shined and sparkling white.”
As a senior, Walter was perfectly at ease. Having spent his summers taking classes in Jackson, he actually completed his undergraduate course work in three years, and began the 1974–75 academic campaign taking masterslevel