Walter Payton

Walter Jerry Payton was born on the twenty-fifth of July 1954 at Columbia, Mississippi, the youngest of three children of Edward Charles Payton — a worker at the Mississippi-Pacific Tobacco factory — and Alyne Payton, a homemaker. He attended the racially segregated Jefferson High School at Columbia until 1969 and the integrated Columbia High School from 1969 to 1971. He played football at Columbia High School under his older brother Eddie Payton — who would also play in the NFL — and was the principal Mississippi running back of his graduating class. The state-flagship University of Mississippi declined to recruit him on racial grounds; he accepted the football scholarship offered by Jackson State University, the historically Black college at the Mississippi state capital.

He played football for the Jackson State Tigers from 1971 to 1974 under the coach Bob Hill. He was twice named SWAC Player of the Year (1973, 1974), held the NCAA Division II career-rushing record at his graduation, and graduated from Jackson State in three and a half years with a 3.6 grade point average and the bachelor's degree in special education. He was drafted fourth overall by the Chicago Bears in the 1975 NFL Draft.

He played thirteen NFL seasons across 1975 to 1987 — all with the Chicago Bears. He was named to the Pro Bowl in nine of those thirteen seasons. He was the principal Chicago running back of the era and the Chicago Bears' principal offensive player of the franchise's 1985 championship season. He carried the football two hundred and ninety-four times in the regular season of 1977 and gained one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two yards rushing — the second-highest single-season total in NFL history at the date.

His decisive career-statistical achievement was the seven-yard touchdown run against the New Orleans Saints at Chicago's Soldier Field on the seventh of October 1984. The run brought his career rushing total to twelve thousand three hundred and twelve yards and one foot, surpassing the career rushing record held by Jim Brown (placed in this archive) since 1965. He retired in 1987 with sixteen thousand seven hundred and twenty-six career rushing yards — the NFL career-rushing record that stood until 2002.

He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993 in his first year of eligibility. The NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year Award — given annually to the player who combines excellence on the field with charitable work off it — was renamed in his honour after his death.

He was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis in February 1999 and bile-duct cancer five months later. He died at his Wheaton, Illinois, home on the first of November 1999, at forty-five.

He is honored here as Sweetness.