Walter & Me (16 page)

Now, I do understand what was behind that question. My brother was becoming a big star in the NFL. While I was waiting to get my shot in the league, Walter was busy casting his shadow on me. I finally made it to the next level of play, only to be standing in the shadow of Sweetness. The worm had turned, as they say, and I was now trying to emerge from his shadow to prove who I was. And you know, that’s when I finally understood what it was like for Walter growing up as the little brother. That’s when I connected with him in a way I hadn’t before. I found myself reflecting on growing up with him, seeing things in a way I wish I could’ve seen them when we were kids. Everything we’d done growing up had a whole new meaning. Everything he’d talked about when he was a freshman at Jackson State, all his fears and what he wanted to do and what people expected from him…well, I don’t think I fully understood all of that until I experienced it myself. I had to make it into the NFL to really get it. I had to put on cleats as a pro before I could know what it was like to be in his shoes. And despite how some have spun my response to that reporter in Cleveland, I embraced being the brother of a superstar. Hell, I even took advantage of it.

When Walter came to Jackson State, he was the freshman and I was the established player telling him how things worked, how you just don’t mess with Coach Hill, what he needed to do in practice, and all of that stuff. I’d been there and done that, and I knew how it all worked. I was the big man on campus answering all the questions he had about why we were doing this or that, and what the coaches were looking for. Walter would come to me as a freshman in college and we’d sit up late at night just talking about things like how our other teammates were doing and how Walter could stand out from them. Well, when I came into the NFL, Walter was already there, and our roles had reversed. It was his turn to teach me what I needed to do as a rookie and how to make it in the league. I was now the one calling him up while I was at training camp, asking him what I should be looking for or doing to stand out from the crowd. The little brother was now teaching the big brother the tricks of the trade. And you know, I think the best advice he ever gave me was when he said, “The only thing you need to remember, Eddie, is that you are responsible for your job. It’s up to you to do it right, and you can’t get away with not doing it right. It’s all on film.”

He was the one on TV, but he was right that we were both on film. That’s how he saw it. I was an NFL player who needed his advice. Sometimes we’d be on the phone, and he’d take time to talk about the other guys who were there at camp with me. We’d talk about who was doing well at the beginning of camp and who wasn’t, and how I couldn’t be one of the latter. I’d tell him the details of what was going on with all of that and which guys were getting cut, and he’d tell me why they got cut and how I could avoid it. Walter would also point out that at Bears camp, some guys would bring attention to themselves by messin’ up, and they’d get released. He’d say you want to build yourself up in camp, start off doing well and each week just get better and better, because they’re looking for improvement. The key, he said, was to just keep making progress, no matter how hard you need to work to do that. Oh, and he also mentioned that if you get injured or nicked up, you need to learn how to treat yourself without alerting the training staff. He presented it as inside NFL knowledge, but I think he actually learned that one from Coach Hill and John Ely back at Jackson State. As it turned out, “Too hurt to practice, too hurt to play” applied in the NFL, too.

Some might think it would’ve been a hard thing for me to take when the roles reversed for Walter and me. But let me remind you that when I was teaching him growing up and on into college, those were just some of the best days of my life. And it’s not because he was under me or anything like that. It’s because we were bonding through it all. When the roles reversed in the NFL, we were bonding just the same. You see, it’s true that he was standing in my shadow growing up and heading into college, and yes, I was standing in his shadow in the NFL. What’s important, though, whether I was casting the shadow or Walter was, was that we were standing together. You can’t be in another man’s shadow without standing right next to him. When we were both in the NFL, the roles were reversed, but we just got closer and closer to each other through it all.

Bud Holmes, Walter’s longtime agent, knows more about it than anyone. He has said some very nice things about how I handled being the big brother of a superstar NFL player. He saw firsthand that it wasn’t long before my limelight moved toward my little brother. Bud said it was kind of like the new guy coming into town and taking your girlfriend away from you. Perhaps he was right, but he also pointed out that, instead of resenting Walter, all I did was brag and brag on him and promote my little brother, even after I made it to the league myself. Bud tells everybody, “Eddie’s attitude was, ‘You think I’m good, you ought to see my brother.’” And I don’t mind the things he had to say about how I carried the ball as a kick returner, either.

“Eddie Payton, pound for pound, was the better athlete,” Bud once said of my skills. “If you could put Walter’s frame on Eddie, add those extra pounds to him, he’d have been great, too. Eddie was quicker and faster. It’s just that Eddie happened to come along at a time when the rosters in the NFL were short. If teams would’ve carried the same numbers on the rosters back then as they’ve got right now, Eddie would’ve had an even longer career than Walter, because no one has ever been any better in the NFL in the return game.”

It’s nice to hear those things from a guy who really knows his stuff like Bud does, but it’s even nicer to know that Bud saw how Walter’s success didn’t get me down. In fact, instead of letting it get me down, I was always cheering on my brother. His doing good was like I was doing good, and vice versa. We were one and the same on the field back at Jackson State, but we were also that way generally in life. I loved him. I lauded him. I lifted him up. I wanted him to succeed, and I cheered him on when he did.

“Eddie never indicated to me one iota of resentment or jealously,” Bud went on to say. “I never detected it. It would’ve been so normal to have had it, too. I mean, the Bible is full of it. Cain and Abel, they got to whipping up on each other. But you didn’t have any of that with Walter and Eddie; they were always very, very supportive of each other.”

My brother was a superstar, yes, but he was so much more than that to me. The reporter in Cleveland asked how it felt to have a superstar as a brother, but he should’ve just asked, “How do you feel about your brother?” It would’ve been out of place, but that’s a question I would’ve gladly answered. I mean, Walter Payton was Sweetness to you, but he was my brother above all else to me. And I was his. We saw ourselves as the same, even if the sports reporters didn’t.

While we were in the NFL together, Walter and I’d talk every week about what happened during the games, what we could do better, what was going on behind the scenes, and yes, we’d also usually laugh about who did something stupid (and trust me, in the NFL, someone is always doing something stupid). We’d just talk about some of the things that pro football players talk about, and we’d talk about some of the things that pro football players do after a game. You know, what different people did to relax, and the kind of things they’d enjoy off the field. Good or bad. But you know, Walter was a bit of a workaholic and was just obsessed with football at the time. He was different than a lot of other players in that way. He’d go lock himself up in a room after a game and watch other football games. Some other players, like yours truly, would be looking to enjoy what being a professional athlete can get you off the field. While Walter was locked up in that room with the TV, I (for example) would be looking to go lock myself up in a room with a woman…and try to get locked up with her, if you know what I mean. Walter wasn’t into all of that. He wasn’t a typical pro football player in that way. He was always doing something. He lived a hectic life, but he wasn’t into wild living, and he was a one-woman man. I mean, the guy had more temptation in a week than most men have to deal with their whole lives, but he was pretty damn monogamous through it all. No, we weren’t together every night (we were on two different football teams), so I can’t tell you I saw his every move. I can tell you that we talked all the time, and we knew each other like we were a set of twins. Trust me, he was the good twin.

A lot of people actually never realized just how shy Walter was when he was coming up, from back when he was a kid all the way to when he was a star running back. It sometimes seemed like he had social anxiety disorder and couldn’t really deal too well with the type of attention women threw at him. He had no trouble in front of faceless crowds, of course, but he wasn’t so good with actual faces. He’d get in front of a big crowd and light up the room. His warm personality would just come out and make its way to everyone in a general sort of way, but one-on-one, he was a mess.

As far as being a womanizer, well, let me tell you that he couldn’t have been one. I know some people say he was, and they get a lot of attention for themselves or sell a lot of books and magazines that way, but I’m telling you, as his brother, that Walter was not a womanizer. He just wasn’t. You know, a lot of people ask me about Jeff Pearlman’s book and all the accusations in there about Walter’s womanizing ways, and I tell them that the guy made a mistake. He had Walter and me mixed up. I mean, listen, if somebody said “Payton” was out with three women or whatever, they weren’t talking about Walter. They were talking about me. I was flying under the radar, of course, because I wasn’t leading the league in rushing like my little brother, but when it came to rushing up to women, I had him beat big time. Whenever I was with Walter out at a party of whatever, probably 100 women would throw themselves at him. But at the end of the night, he’d just go home to Connie. Now, I know that’s not headline news because people like to focus on the “dead fish,” as I said before, but truth is truth. Walter resisted women far better than any other man I know could’ve done in his situation. And that, my friends, is the truth.

Of course, when Walter went home to Connie, I often picked up the pieces with the disappointed ladies he left behind. You see, I wasn’t monogamous at that time. I didn’t have to be because I was single, but still, I was basically a dog. I’ll admit it, okay? Walter and I would be at some NFL function together or party of some sort, and women would just throw themselves at him looking for their 15 minutes of Sweetness (if not fame), but I’d be the one who ended up with ’em. To those women rejected by my little brother, I suppose I was the next-best thing. That was just fine by me. Walter would always figure out how to blow ’em off, and I’d always try to figure out how to get a…well, you can figure it out. Let me just say, there were definitely some benefits to standing in the shadow of Sweetness.

Of course, it got to where it didn’t matter if I was in Walter’s shadow or not. When I went to Kansas City, where I played one year, it was kind of like one continuous orgy. I won’t say I’m proud of that, but I will say that’s how it was. In Kansas City, just being on the team meant women would just flock to you. It was the damndest thing I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life. And they’d follow us everywhere. It didn’t matter if we were playing at home or away, they’d be there trying to get with us. And let me tell you, they didn’t need to try hard. If we were on the road, we’d get in the morning before the game and we’d go out on the field and warm up. Then we’d have our meetings and stuff like that. When we went back to the hotel, those women would already be there in the lobby just hanging around. As a player, you didn’t pick them—they picked you. They’d already know our stats, our pictures, our shoe sizes, and some things that even we didn’t know about ourselves. They’d all done their homework and knew exactly who they wanted.

There was this one girl I got with who was either Korean or Vietnamese. She had picked out one of our defensive linemen as her target, and she was pursuing him hot and heavy. He kept resisting her advances, though, and kept telling me, “Man, I wish she’d leave me alone. I wish she’d just go away. I don’t want nothing to do with her. I’ve got a girlfriend.” I was thinking,
Well…um…do you mind if I uh…?
He and I had become good friends that whole season, until he came over to the house one day to get a game tape and that Korean/Vietnamese girl answered the door. He never spoke to me again. I guess if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want anybody to.

It’s hard to be monogamous and in the NFL at the same time. I mean, my brother and that defensive lineman are two of the exceptions. But even though Walter shied away from the ladies, one thing he never shied away from was good, clean fun. You already know how much he liked prankin’ people, and that carried over to the NFL. How could Walter have so much social anxiety and at the same time be such a prankster? I’m not sure, but I know he never stopped punking people. He’d even go back to Jackson State as a pro and start looking for his next victim. One time that victim was his college coach. I guess once you leave college and become a big star in the NFL and lead the league in rushing and all of that, you’ve earned the right to mess with Coach Hill.

Coach Hill and Walter kept in touch and would often talk about Jackson State’s current players, how they were doing and all of that. One time, Coach unintentionally gave Walter some ammunition for a prank. He told Walter about this one player who had a crazy girlfriend that he needed to get out of his life. Well, Walter was back in Jackson between seasons one year, and he and Brazile got bored (which was always a dangerous thing), so they decided to call up Coach Hill and have a little fun. They waited until about midnight so Coach would be asleep (or at least very tired), and they dialed his number. Coach picked up and Walter told him in a bit of concerned panic, “Coach, look here, this kid got in a fight with his girlfriend that he’s been living with. You know, that girl you’ve been telling me he needs to get rid of? Well, they got into it big time, and they got them down there in the jail.”