FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Wabash Valley is never far from Sean Payton’s heart. And for good reason.
Payton attended Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill., where he became the nation’s leading passer and earned NCAA I-AA All-America honors as the Panthers quarterback. He led EIU to consecutive trips to the NCAA I-AA playoffs, losing one hard-fought game to Indiana State at Terre Haute’s Memorial Stadium in 1983.
A few years later, Payton was hired for his first full-time coaching job at ISU by the same coach he had competed against, Dennis Raetz.
He was the Sycamores’ quarterbacks coach for two seasons, 1990-91, and became a favorite of the ISU coaching staff.
One of Payton’s non-official responsibilities while at Indiana State was to bring pizzas to weekly get-togethers of Sycamore coaches and fans at a Terre Haute watering hole. Not counting the improvements he made in ISU’s offensive attack, which were considerable, that act alone solidified the affection felt for the future New Orleans Saints head coach.
It was while he was working at Indiana State that Payton met his future wife, Beth, who was a student at the school at the time. She is a native Hoosier, having grown up in the small Indiana town of Morocco.
It’s his ties to east-central Illinois and west-central Indiana that are making things confusing for die-hard Indianapolis Colts fans in the area. Who should they root for? There were no doubt some who had hoped for such a Super Bowl XLIV match-up. If so, they certainly got their wish.
“Well, I don’t know if they’ve been rooting for this match-up, but I’ve got a lot of family back in Indiana. Beth and I met at Indiana State when I was coaching. Her family is from back in that area, Morocco, Indiana, which is in the northern part of the state. I spent two years as a coach [at ISU]. My high school coach [J.R. Bishop] was from Indiana. Had a lot of good friends and family that lived back there,” Payton said Friday.
“My brother and sister-in-law live in Greenwood, just south of Indianapolis, and I think all of them were on the flight out here [Thursday] and probably were the only ones wearing Saints jerseys. But I consider that region home. Being from Illinois, you really, as you move from one state to the other, unless there was a sign that [read] you were entering Indiana, you wouldn’t know it. So there has been a lot of people that I’ve met and am close with over the years there, and it’s still a pretty special place for me.”
He feels the same way about playing at Eastern Illinois, which has become a hotbed of future National Football League head coaching talent. In addition to Payton, Washington’s Mike Shanahan and Minnesota’s Brad Childress are both EIU alums, as is Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger. Heimerdinger has been mentioned as a potential head coaching candidate in recent years.
“I don’t know what it is at Eastern that is a common thread to all of us,” Payton said. “But there has been a history of pretty good college football being played there. They’ve had some consistency in the program, which probably started in the late 1970s when Darrell Mudra took over. He won a [NCAA Division II] national championship there.
“And there was Al Molde, who was the head coach when I was there, and we went to the [I-AA] playoffs. And now there’s Bob Spoo. They’ve had really good head coaches over the years who have built on what the coach before them had accomplished. I enjoyed playing there. And I try to get back to Eastern whenever I get a chance.”
Payton’s ties to Eastern Illinois remain strong. He is scheduled to take part in a fundraiser for Eastern Illinois’ athletic department on Feb. 24, while he is in the area for the National Football Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. The event is being held in Effingham.
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