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Though the scouts in attendance marveled at his performance, Payton was crestfallen. He was outrushed by two other players (LSU’s Brad Davis and Arizona’s Jim Upchurch), and worried that his stock had plunged. “Walter could be very insecure about himself,” said Holmes. “He was confident, but only to a certain point.”

Two weeks later, Payton drove to Mobile, Alabama, to play in his second—and last—pre-Draft All-Star event, the heavily watched, heavily hyped Senior Bowl. Because organizers of the game had mistakenly scheduled it for the same day as the Honolulu-based Hula Bowl, they had to woo players with thousand-dollar payouts. It would be Payton’s first professional check.

Payton had approached the East-West contest cautiously. Not this one. “He actually had an entourage around him leading up to the game,” said Jim Germany, a running back from New Mexico State, “and the entourage was all the black college players hanging all over him. They knew how good Walter was, and they gravitated toward him.”

“The first time I noticed Walter was on picture day,” said Emmett Lee Edwards, a wide receiver from Kansas. “We were all standing together for photos, and everyone was trying to show who they were. I looked over at Walter, and something about him was just different. I came from Kansas, so I’d seen running backs like Gale Sayers and John Riggins. But I knew immediately Walter was in a different category. He looked like a guy who’d gained a lot of yards. You could see it. I went back and told Delvin Williams, my roommate, ‘This Payton guy has something to him. I don’t know what it is—he just does.’ ”

Entering the week of the game, Mark Mullaney, a defensive lineman from Colorado State, had never seen or heard of Walter Payton. One day, after the North and South teams finished their practices, Mullaney was the last person to exit the locker room. He heard a curious noise from the stadium, and wandered over. There, all alone, was Payton, running the stairs and, afterward, standing in the end zone, jumping straight up and hanging from the goalpost. “He could actually grab it with ease,” said Mullaney, who went on to a twelve-year career with the Minnesota Vikings. “It was astonishing. Everyone else was long gone, probably eating dinner. And here’s this kid, by himself, working out.” Shortly thereafter, Mullaney received a call from his father, Ed, who worked as a player agent. “He asked me if there was anybody down there who particularly impressed me,” said Mullaney. “I told him about Walter Payton from Jackson State. And I’ll never forget his reaction. He said, ‘Walter who?’ ”

“I was the captain of the team, and our coach said I could call my own plays, but that I had to give this Jackson State kid his fair share of carries,” said Bob Avellini, a quarterback from Maryland. “I had no idea who he was. On the first day of practice I turned to hand the ball to him and he was so quick, I barely got it to him. Then I watched him run—oh my God!”

Three days before the January 11, 1975, contest, Payton told the assembled media that he planned on cruising off in the brand-new Dodge Charger awarded to the game’s MVP. “I didn’t have a good game in the East-West,” he said, “and I want to show everybody what kind of back I am.” The cockiness hardly came naturally to Payton, who rarely uttered so much as a peep on the football field. But he believed he needed attention to secure his future. “We just didn’t know,” said Brazile. “Everything was a mystery to us.”

In a dull 17–17 tie, Payton led all rushers with seventy-three yards on thirteen carries. He returned two kickoffs for forty-two yards, caught two passes and punted three times for a forty-one-yard average. On the first play of the game, he was stopped for a loss by Dave Wasick, a defensive lineman from San Jose State. “I hit him, and he jumped up real quick,” said Wasick. “So I jumped up real quick, too. I thought we were gonna fight, but he just ran back to the huddle. Later on I asked him why he got up like that. He said,