Obituary: Walter Payton

THE NICKNAME they gave Walter Payton was "Sweetness". The sobriquet might have had something to do with his soft, high-pitched voice. More probably, it was tribute to the personality of a man who captivated almost everyone who knew him. For sure, though, it had nothing to do with the playing style of arguably the greatest running back in the history of the National Football League.

In his 13 seasons with the Chicago Bears between 1975 and 1987, Payton set a string of NFL records which still stand: the most career rushing yards (16,726), the most combined yards for rushing, receiving and returning (21,803), the most 100-yard rushing games (77) and the most 1,000-yard rushing seasons (10). Capping everything was his 275 rushing yards against the Minnesota Vikings on 20 November 1977, a single-game mark which may never be surpassed.

And all this in a team which for most of his career was mediocre, or worse. Not until 1986 when they had been reinforced by the likes of William "The Refrigerator" Perry, did the Bears win the SuperBowl, having previously put together a 15-1 regular season. For many of his years at Chicago, Walter Payton was the Bears, in 1983 contributing no less than 36 per cent of the total yardage of the entire team. Not until Michael Jordan came along would America's most sports-obsessed city have an idol to match him.

One reason Chicago loved him was his style, a mix of aggression, durability and sheer ruthlessness that awed opponents. At 5 feet 101/2 inches and 14 stone, Payton was not large for a running back. But once he had the ball he was unstoppable. A low centre of gravity made him almost impossible to knock over, and anyone who tried was taking a considerable risk. "The guy's amazing," Doug Plank, the Bears' free safety, once remarked. "Week after week I see him put his head down and hit guys in the chest and they get carried off." Tackling him, an opponent reminisced, was like "trying to rope a calf".

If there was a secret to his success, however, it was his physical fitness, legendary even by the exacting standards of pro football. His physique was so perfect that it prompted a former Bears coach to remark that when he first saw Payton in the locker room, "I thought God must have taken a chisel and said, `I'm going to make me a halfback.' " Warming up for each season, Payton made a point of running up a steep hill near his home 20 times a day. Few of his team-mates could manage it twice without collapsing. This kind of preparation enabled him to avoid serious injury thoughout his career; indeed in 13 years, he missed just a single game.

As a child, Payton was a strong-willed boy more interested in rock music than sport, who at high school in Columbia, Mississippi, was the drummer in the school band, leaving his elder brother Eddie to star on the football field. But his exceptional football talent quickly became apparent when he entered Jackson State University, and in 1975, aged 21, he was the first college draft pick of the Bears, who paid him a signing bonus of $126,000, unheard of at the time for a rookie. By 1983 he had landed the NFL's richest contract ever, complete with an annuity guaranteeing him $240,000 for life.

Payton, however, never needed the money. After retirement he threw himself into business with the same obsessive energy he displayed on the football field, and by the time he died, of a rare and untreatable liver disease, his company, Walter Payton Inc, had become a veritable conglomerate, owning restaurants, timber land, property, nursing homes and travel agencies.

Almost his only failure was in 1993 when he bid unsuccessfully for a new NFL franchise that would have made him American football's first black owner. But it is for his exploits on the field the he will be remembered: in the words of Mike Ditka, his last coach at the Bears, as simply "the best football player I've ever seen".

Walter Jerry Payton, footballer: born Columbia, Mississippi 25 July 1954; married (one son, one daughter); died Chicago 1 November 1999.