JSU's Eddie Payton selected as Guest of Honor for SWAC Alumni Association Roast in December
ATLANTA – One of the names most synonymous with winning during the Southwestern Athletic Conference’s first 99 years of existence will be the headline honoree during the SWAC Alumni Association’s Annual Legends Awards and Roast here at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on December 20.
Eddie Payton, a star football player during his collegiate days at Jackson State University, a five-year veteran of the National Football League and one of the winningest coaches in any sport in the SWAC, will be the Guest of Honor during the roast segment of the SWAC Alumni Association’s awards luncheon. The event will start at 11 a.m. the day prior to the Air Force Reserves Celebration Bowl. Tickets are on sale at $75 each, with the proceeds benefitting the Association’s Degree Completion Scholarship Fund.
“Anytime you’re being recognized in the league that made you, it’s a big honor,” says Payton. “I never did anything thinking about what honors I would receive. The things I did, I did because I was surrounded by talented people.
“It took a conference to raise the Paytons,” said Payton, the brother of Jackson State and Chicago Bears legendary running back Walter Payton. “I never thought I’d be given the honors that I’m now receiving from the SWAC. The SWAC is the best conference in the world.”
Payton, a native of Columbia, Miss., is a 1973 graduate of Jackson State who was a four-year letterman, a three-time All-SWAC honoree, a SWAC Offensive Player-of-the-Year and an All-America selectee by Ebony Magazine and the NAIA. During his five-year stint in the NFL, he played for the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs and Minnesota Vikings. He’s most renown for his career with the Lions, where he led the NFL with 53 kickoff returns for 1,184 yards during the 1980 season. Also with Detroit, his 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown is the fifth-longest in franchise history, while his 87-yard punt return stands as the third-longest in franchise history. He’s one of just three Detroit Lions to register two touchdowns off returns in a single game.
His playing heroics aside, Payton is perhaps most widely known as the architect of a golf program which was one of the most successful in all of the collegiate golf world. During his 31 years of coaching golf at Jackson State, the men’s program won 25 consecutive conference championships while the women’s program captured 16. He was named SWAC Coach-of-the-Year 25 times and National Minority Golf Coach-of-the-Year six times.
On the links, Payton coached Tim O’Neal, who’s regarded as the most recognized black college golfer ever, and Shasta Averyhardt, who’s competing on the LPGA tour now. His men’s program at JSU was the first HBCU golf program to make it to the NCAA regionals. Four years later, his women’s program became the first from the HBCU ranks to make it to the NCAA women’s regionals.
“It was fun,” Payton said, recalling the feats of the student-athletes that he coached through the years. “Now, as the Vice-President of the NFL’s Mississippi Players Alumni Chapter here, I talk to students, athletes and church groups. I tell them the only thing that can keep them from being successful in life is the person in the mirror.”
Among the other activities that keep Payton busy during his retirement days are bike riding, fishing, working out in the gym, deer hunting in the fall and golfing in the spring.
On the same platform that Payton will be roasted on December 20, the SWAC Alumni Association will also be honoring several other individuals for their contributions to the SWAC and college athletics in general. SWAC Hall of Famers Larry Smith of Alcorn State University and Alicia Pete of Prairie View A&M University will receive the SWAC Alumni Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award along with renown sports anchor Michael Rubenstein of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss., who will be honored posthumously. Additionally, George Stubbs, the longtime athletics equipment manager at Grambling State University, will receive the Charles “Chuck” Prophet Wagon Master Award, while longtime Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference commissioner Dennis Thomas, who played and coached football at Alcorn State University, will receive the Association’s coveted Distinguished Service Award.
Tickets for the SWAC Alumni Association’s Legends Awards and Roast Luncheon can be purchased by contacting Alvin Moore at (205) 222-1044 or by mailing a check or money order made payable to “SWAC Alumni Association” to Moore at P.O. Box 5815, Birmingham, AL 35207.