As the son of one of pro football’s all-time greats, Jarrett Payton has had the unique opportunity to meet many other outstanding players during his lifetime.

Yet Payton never has taken that privilege for granted. Representing his late father, Walter Payton, during this week’s Pro Football Hall of Fame “Salute to Greatness” events in Glenview has provided Jarrett with the ability to chat with 17 Pro Football Hall of Fame players. A dinner Monday night and golf outing on Tuesday at the Glen Club have helped raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“To me it’s actually an honor to have an opportunity to be in a room with all of these legends,” Payton said. “I think a lot of people really don’t understand that these are some of the greatest athletes to ever play sports. Last night, seeing Kellen Winslow and Anthony Munoz and guys like Warren Moon … these are guys I looked up to growing up."

Jarrett Payton starred at the University of Miami before playing briefly in the NFL and the Canadian Football League. He also played in NFL-Europe. He said he was proud to represent his father in this event because of Walter’s extensive involvement in charity events.

“A lot of these guys have the opportunity to really use football as an avenue to help their lives and their families. To see them giving back to the community and all of the great things that Make-A-Wish does."


(chicagotribune.com)

On June 3, I will be representing my father, Walter Payton, at a Pro Football Hall of Fame dinner at The Glen Club in Glenview. I will be surrounded by 17 Hall of Famers, all of whom will be in town to raise money for the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Illinois and to promote the positive values of sports — values that were once instilled in me by my dad. When I was growing up, he constantly stressed the importance of hard work, studying the game and practicing until perfection.

These values have helped me immeasurably throughout my life — and to do something at age 12 that no child had done before me.

Twenty years ago this August, I inducted my father into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. My dad told me what I was doing 2 ½ months before we were to go to Canton, Ohio, for the ceremony. I didn’t understand the magnitude of what he was asking.

The first time I understood was when the Hall sent books to our house that showed an aerial shot of the thousands of people who attend the ceremony. That’s when I realized that this was no joke. This was not getting up and speaking in front of your sixth-grade class.

The speech I ended up giving was written by Ms. Luna, our longtime housekeeper. I would sit at our kitchen island in our house on Mundhank in South Barrington and practice, practice and practice.

The week leading up to the big day was filled with activities. My dad was constantly being pulled in different directions, but he always made time for the two of us. One day, after signing hundreds of footballs, my dad and I drove around and found an arcade — no matter what city we were in, my dad and I would always find an arcade and lose ourselves in father-son time.

I still remember the actual ceremony to this day. When my dad reached the podium, he started to cry. It was the first time I ever saw him cry. He said it was because he was proud of me.

As I got older, my dad continued to teach me to study the game of football. People may think of him as a constant workout monster — he was known for running hills — but he actually watched more film than anything else. He would sit in our basement with old reels of film from either his games or an upcoming opponent, and he’d watch over and over again, studying every play.

In 1997, during my junior year at St. Viator, I finally started playing football. My dad would tape all of my games. He wouldn’t sit in the stands; he would take his own video camera and climb way up onto the top of the press box so he wouldn’t be distracted. It was pretty high up, and sometimes he would just sit by himself, through cold weather, rain or wind.

After he recorded the games, we’d sit on the floor in his basement office and watch them over and over again. We had a teacher-student relationship there; he would tell me, “The eye in the sky never lies.”

I know that the Hall of Famers coming to Chicago made it there by studying the game like my dad did. I can’t wait to shake hands with all of them, and to share stories about my dad.

As Father’s Day approaches, I think about that special week in Canton that we had together. I’m so honored to be representing him yet again, and I hope I have a chance to shed a tear one day to show how proud I am of my own young son.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame dinner and golf outing will be held Monday and Tuesday at The Glen Club, 2901 W. Lake, Glenview. For more information visit Profootballhof.com/chicago-salute-to-greatness.aspx.


(suntimes.com)

Jarrett Payton, son of Chicago Bears legend Walter Payton will host the 2012 Jarrett Payton Academy Youth Football Camp from June 11 to 13 at Mooseheart Child City and School in Mooseheart, IL.

The camp is an event of the Jarrett Payton Foundation, which is committed to positively impacting the lives of children —physically, emotionally and psychologically by creating and providing programs that present them with opportunities designed to develop their leadership skills and enrich their lives.

The camp is a three-day summer skills camp geared toward enriching lives and building confidence in young men grades four to eight through football.

Participants will leave the camp with further education in specific football skills and knowledge, as well as leadership skills, wellness tips and strengthened relationships with peers.

The fourth to fifth grade camp takes place from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and the sixth to eighth-grade camps from 1 to 4 p.m.

Registration before or on May 15 is $100 and $125 thereafter.

For more information call )847-922-3420, email info@jarrettpayton.com or on the web at www.jarrettpayton.org.

Jarrett Payton is coming out with an All-American Wheat Ale from Argus Brewery and it’s referred to as a “craft beer.”

“My dad was always a craft beer admirer and he would always talk to me about what a craft beer means,” Jarrett said in a statement announcing that the inaugural pour will be at Public House on Mar. 8, doors opening at 5:30 and glasses opening at 6.


(csnchicago.com)

The University of Miami 2001 Baseball and Football National Championship teams were honored at halftime of the Cavaliers Hurricanes game last night. Check out our exclusive photos below!

ELGIN — Friends and family are what are most important in life, giving back is part of being a good person, and children should always believe they can do whatever they set their minds to do, Jarrett Payton said.

Payton, the son of the late National Football League and Chicago Bears great Walter Payton, was at the Elgin Salvation Army on Wednesday to talk to children there about teamwork, but also talked with them about what should be important in their lives.

Hannah Reynolds works with the children’s Spark Academy program at the Elgin Salvation Army, and asked Connie Payton — whom she knows “a little bit” — if her son would be interested in speaking to the Elgin group.

Each Wednesday, the Salvation Army holds the Spark program for Elgin children ages 3 through 18. The night includes singing and devotions, as well as musical classes and homework help time, Reynolds said.

The program is just a year old, brought to Elgin when Salvation Army Captains Fred and Nancy Mead came in as the new leadership at the Elgin location.

Payton walked into thunderous applause from the 100 children assembled on Wednesday — applause that he videotaped on a cellphone and promised to upload to his Facebook page.

The 30-year-old, a former NFL player himself, told the children about his connections to Elgin. For kindergarten through second grade, he attended Elgin Academy. When he was in his early teens, he also stepped in to help a friend with her dance recital and performed on stage at The Hemmens Cultural Center — a location where he saw many performances in his younger years.

Teaching giving
A recently published book on Walter Payton contains allegations of infidelity and abuse of painkillers. But his son told a different side of his father, including sharing a story about a family shopping trip right before Christmas.

His father took the 11-year-old Payton to Toys ‘R’ Us in Schaumburg after the store had closed. Walter Payton told his son that he could have any toys he wanted, and that he had to pick out toys for his sister, too. But instead of going home with those toys, the Paytons stopped at an apartment complex. All of those toys instead went to a family who was out of work and wouldn’t have had a Christmas if not for his father’s help.
“That taught me the value of giving back. You have to get to know the person next to you” and find out about his or her life, he said. “That was the first gift my dad gave to me … the first time I really understood giving.”

Family, friends and faith — and the place those things should have in their lives — is another lesson he learned from his father before his untimely death in 1999, when the younger Payton was just 19 years old and about to leave for college at the University of Miami, where he was a Hurricane for five years.

That experience — going to college across the country — is where he learned how to rely on friends when family wasn’t nearby. While many of his high school friends attended college at Notre Dame or Wisconsin and could drive home on the weekends, going home for him meant scheduling a flight back. So he ended up spending time with his classmates and fellow players. They were the people he relied on through that tough time in his life, he said.

“Life is hard, but you have to make your life simple,” Payton said. “The biggest thing, for me, is family and friends.”

He also learned the value of hard work. When he was a junior in high school, the younger Payton was disappointed when his name was not included in the Chicago Sun-Times list of the best high school football players in the region. That made him work hard every day to ensure his name would be on the list the following year. It was that determination, followed with good grades, that got him into Miami, Payton said.


(suntimes.com)

The son of former Chicago Bears great Walter Payton expressed his appreciation to the NFL Network for their upcoming documentary on his father, despite author Jeff Pearlman’s presence in the hour-long piece.

In Pearlman’s book, "Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton," Pearlman reported that the elder Payton abused drugs and had extramarital affairs.

"I hope people see the documentary for what it is, and I think it’s a great piece," Jarrett Payton told the Tribune. "Pearlman’s in it, so I don’t want people to discredit it and not look at it because he’s in it. I want them to really see if for what it is and just watch it."

The documentary airs at 9 p.m. (Chicago time) Thursday.

Payton admitted it has been a difficult last few weeks ever since the revelations in Pearlman’s book. His father passed away at age 45 after a bout with a rare form of cancer.

"But I don’t hold grudges against anybody, and I’m speaking from my heart," Payton said. "Everybody has a job, to write or do whatever they do to the best of their ability. We all have to feed our families. So I understand that. It’s just hard for me to be 30 years old now and to have your life in a book or in the paper. Some of the stuff was true. Some of it wasn't.

"It’s hard because someone passed away and is not here to defend himself. But my family and I have gotten so much stronger through everything. We have to really thank the Bears fans here in Chicago because we’ve gotten so much love."

Payton previewed the documentary and is interviewed in the piece along with his mother, Connie, and sister, Brittany. Former Bears coach Mike Ditka also appears.

"I don’t think my dad knew how much he was loved until he got sick," Payton said. "I hear stories about my dad every single day. But it takes something like this to see how much he really truly affects people. They truly, truly loved him.

"With every bad, there’s some good. We’ve gotten stronger.  As long as my family’s OK, I’m fine. A lot of what’s going on in the last few weeks has just made me reflect on my life and my relationship with my dad. He was my best friend. He really was. He was the best dad in the world because he taught me everything. He taught me to be the person that I am. I’ll take being the person that I am today over any money in the world. My joy and my happiness is the most important thing. And I appreciate my dad for showing me the way.’’


(wsbt.com)

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JOLIET — Jarrett Payton, professional athlete and son of football legend Walter Payton, gave a little history lesson Thursday at Joliet Township High School.

“For some of you young kids out there who might not know who my dad was, my dad was the greatest player to ever play the game of football,” he said.

Hundreds of freshmen erupted in cheers and applause in the West Campus auditorium. It was an inspiring sight, given that Walter Payton retired in 1987, before any of these students was born. The Chicago Bears running back was inducted into the National Football League Hall of Fame in 1993, also before any of these freshmen was born.

The students were very young when Walter Payton died in November 1999.

Nevertheless, Jarrett’s history lesson stuck, and the freshman crowd gave him round after round of applause Thursday.

They laughed at his jokes; they listened to a song, played on YouTube, that the younger Payton wrote for his father and family; and, at the end of the presentation, a couple of students even got to dance with him on stage.

Payton came to Joliet West on Thursday to discuss another kind of history — the life stories of these freshmen.

His message to them was simple: These four years are big years. Enjoy this time, study hard and build friendships.

Payton listed his own football accomplishments — particularly at the University of Miami and for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans. However, he emphasized his own high school days at St. Viator in Arlington Heights.

“I’ve played in national championships, I’ve played for the World Bowl Championship, I’ve played in Tennessee. But the one thing that I think about the most is high school,” he said. “I think about my last game in high school. We lost against Marmion Academy in the first round of the playoffs my senior year.”

Specifically, he compared his college years to high school: “We beat Nebraska (in the 2001 national championship). And then we lost to Ohio State the next year in the Fiesta Bowl. But I still think about high school. I still have the same friends from high school. This is the time when you really, really start to shape yourself and you get to know who you are as a person.”

“Don’t take it for granted, because it goes by so fast,” he said.

Freshman Jordan Siebers said, “He knew what he was talking about. He wanted us to be successful. He didn’t want us to be put down by what other people think of us.”

Freshman Ismarie Deeter’s favorite part of the speech was Payton’s tribute to his father as the greatest football player ever. He also credited his father for not pushing him to play football. Jarrett played soccer till his junior year in high school, when he switched to football.

“My dad understood; he loved anything that I loved,” he said.

Jarrett also emphasized the importance of academics.

“It doesn’t matter what your last name is. It doesn’t matter who you are. It really doesn’t matter how much money you have. The biggest thing that it comes to, when you’re at this age right now, is your education,” he said.

Payton declined to comment on the controversial new book written about his father. “Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton,” by Jeff Pearlman, alleges that Walter Payton had extramarital affairs and told friends he wanted to kill himself.

After the presentation, Payton commended the Joliet West audience. He recalled the moment when he filmed the crowd screaming and cheering. He was here to motivate them, but their energy caught him as well.

“To be able to be around kids — they inspire me,” he said.


(suntimes.com)

Jarrett Payton will be the keynote speaker at a breakfast hosted by the Downers Grove Area Chamber of Commerce and Industry Oct. 4.

Payton is a motivational speaker and son of the late Walter Payton, former Chicago Bears running back and member of the NFL Hall of Fame.
Jarrett and his wife have established the Jarrett Payton Foundation working with Chicago-area schools to implement anti-bullying messages and programs to encourage safe environments for young people.

The breakfast buffet will be from 7:30 a.m. to 8 a.m. and the presentation will be from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.

To register, visit www.downersgrove.org or call (630) 968-4050. The cost for chamber members is $25, non-members $35. Tabletops cost $50.



(mysuburbanlife.com)

After spending the last 14 years running the ball everywhere from Arlington Heights to Miami to Amsterdam to Montreal to Hoffman Estates, Jarrett Payton stopped running this year.

“It was weird to give up,” Payton said. “But there’s more to life than playing football.”

And the 30-year-old Barrington native has started running harder than ever to keep up with all of his keening interests.

As Payton enthusiastically shifts from topic to topic, he punctuates the changes with a high-pitched laugh that sounds remarkably similar to a particular Bears Hall of Fame running back.

•The radio career: What began last year as a three-days-a-week gig on chicagolandsportsradio.com (“The Jarrett Payton Show” on M-W-F from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.) has mushroomed into appearances on WMVP 1000-AM.

Did you notice his presence Sunday night on the station’s postgame Bears coverage?

“I’ve always had a passion for radio,” Payton said last week while sitting in his studio on South State Street in the Loop.

Last November on the anniversary of his father’s passing, Payton hosted a “Remembering Sweetness” show and used his contacts to get a star-studded cast to call in: Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders, Jim Brown and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

“It was so huge,” Payton said. “I couldn’t really wrap my head around what happened until I got done.

“I take it as a responsibility to keep my Dad’s spirit alive. As long as football is around, he will be around.”

•The writing career: He’s putting together a book tentatively titled “Letters to My Dad.”

“It’s stuff I’ve been writing to my dad for years,” Payton said. “I wrote him a letter when I went to (the University of) Miami. I wrote him a letter when I got married (in 2009). Hopefully we can do it by Father’s Day. I think it will be motivational.”

•The beer career: Working in conjunction with Chicago-based Argus Brewery, Payton thinks he will have the first product for his “JP” line of beers within the next month.

He envisions the “JP” private label taking a place next to “312” and “Goose Island” at Chicago’s taps.

“I want to get into the market,” Payton said. “I want to know everything from the bottom up. I’m learning a lot.”

He’s learning nothing comes easy in the business and brewery worlds, but Payton believes his limitless energy and unforgettable surname can help him succeed.

“I’m actually going to come in and do the deliveries,” Payton said. “You’re going to see me bringing in the kegs. I’m going to put in the sweat equity.

“And if you put my beer in your bar, I’ll make appearances there. Do shows from there. I’m excited.”

•The volunteer career: He has worked for years on behalf of the Walter and Connie Payton Foundation, but Jarrett wants to do even more for the community.

He started the Jarrett Payton Foundation recently to address more causes he wants to solve. When he speaks at schools in October, he will focus on anti-bullying programs.

“I’m just trying to add on to what I was taught by my parents,” Payton said.

With all of his passions, it’s hard to believe he finds time to repair to his home in the western suburbs.

“I’m working on it all,” he said. “It’s just me, my wife and a couple friends. I don’t sleep that much, but it’s cool.”

He still finds time to dream about running again, but not in a Payton way. In a Daley way.

“I think I was a born politician,” Payton said with a laugh. “I’ve talked about running for mayor. Maybe in the next 15-20 years.”


(dailyherald.com)

Jarrett Payton Running Chicago Marathon 2011 for Team Sweetness: MyFoxCHICAGO.com

A professional football player, an aspiring musician, an internet radio host and the son of bears legend Walter Payton, Jarrett Payton does it all.

This October, he'll be running the Chicago Marathon in his father's honor with Team Sweetness. Payton joined us to tell us more.

For more information and to register, go to www.teamsweetness.com