Who: Walter Payton’s brother
Worthwhile links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhGFE_heEcE
http://jsutigers.cstv.com/sports/m-golf/mtt/payton_eddie00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Payton
Breakdown: Before Walter came along, Eddie Payton was probably the greatest all-around football player Columbia, Mississippi had ever produced. Starring for segregated John Jefferson High, Eddie was so explosive … so quick … so dynamic that the all-white Columbia High players would often venture over to watch.
Eddie went on to star at Jackson State, and helped convince his brother to bypass Kansas State and join him in Mississippi’s capital city. It was, arguably, the best decision of Walter’s life.
Yet Walter and Eddie had a complex relationship. Eddie never seemed fully comfortable at being outdone by his little brother, and many of Walter’s friends insist his sibling was often an irksome presence.
Both Eddie and Walter played in the NFL, though Eddie’s career only lasted parts of five seasons. On December 17, 1977, Eddie ran a kick return and a punt return for a touchdown for the Lions in a game against Minnesota.
Today, Eddie is the highly decorated golf coach at Jackson State.
Pearlman’s take: Eddie Payton is one of the oddest birds I’ve ever met. Like his brother, he can be hot one second, icy cold the next. He’s a dazzling storyteller and owner of a wonderful laugh. Yet being in his presence can also be somewhat … uncomfortable. On multiple occasions during the reporting of this book, he told me I would only be able to speak to his mother should I donate a scholarship to Jackson State.
Needless to say, I never spoke to his mother.
From Sweetness: Not that Walter particularly cared. Jackson State quickly felt like home, especially when he was assigned to share quarters with his brother, Eddie, and his best friend from Columbia, Edward “Sugar Man” Moses, also a freshman running back. The three were placed in a second-floor room in Sampson Hall, the school’s football dormitory. There was one regular bed and a bunk, two small bedrooms with a common area, and a bathroom located down the hall. As a star senior with the Tigers, Eddie possessed enough sway to have his own room or, at most, one upper- class roommate. “But I wanted to show Walter the ropes and take care of him,” Eddie said. “He was my little brother, and this was going to be a new experience for him.”
Despite lingering sibling resentment, Eddie made Walter’s early collegiate adjustment signifi cantly easier. He talked to him about which classes to take, where to hang out, who to trust, and who not to trust. Their mother, Alyne, made regular drives up to see her boys, and when the season started she would arrive Saturday mornings with fresh- baked treats. (In Eddie and Walter’s years at the school, Alyne never missed a home game.) “I was feeling right at home,” Walter once wrote. “Eddie was a great kid with just the right personality for a football player— maybe better than mine. He was the type who believed he could do anything if he really tried.” Though far from a wallflower, Walter couldn’t compete with his brother’s social ease. He watched in amazement as Eddie lingered in front of Sampson Hall, heckling people as they passed. “If he saw a carload of girls to fl irt with,” Walter wrote, “he’d walk right out there and hold up traffic for half a block to talk with them.” Eddie also introduced Walter to the large oak tree positioned approximately three feet from the window in their room. When Hill imposed curfews, often stationing himself at the Sampson Hall front entrance (Hill was fond of a cologne appropriately named “Trouble,” and players could smell him as they snuck back in), Eddie, Walter, and Sugar Man would grab ahold of the tree, use its branches to scale down the trunk, and indulge in a night on the town at Nita’s or the Doll’s House or one of the other clubs on Lynch Street. “We’d go out to dinner, go out to the park, get some girls, and do some making out. Then we could come back in and go up,” Eddie said. “Security would never stop us because of who we were, but then one day Coach Hill found out what we were up to.”
“And,” Eddie said, “he immediately had all the branches removed from the tree.”