On the first episode of Listen In With KNN on Fox Sports 1340AM in 2021, host Kelsey Nicole Nelson welcomed WGN News and Sports Reporter Jarrett Payton, who is the son of the late NFL legend Walter Payton to the show.
When he was a kid, he and his sister would go down to Mississippi for the summers. It got him to understand who his family was and what they had to deal with, especially going to Columbia where his dad grew up.
“Everything that he went through playing football with all the racial tension that was going on back then. The way that he was able to bring people together just by playing football. That’s when I knew football is family and football is power,” Payton said.
As a kid, he witnessed his father’s greatness on the football field for the Chicago Bears. The elder Payton would give the football after he scored a touchdown to one of his teammates or to the ref.
“It’s a testament to who my dad was as a football player and as a person off the field. I would show off a little bit when I was in high school, my dad would tell me to cut that out. When you play this game, it’s the greatest game in the world. If you’re going to do something, do it as a team,” he said.
Unfortunately, Payton’s father died in 1999 shortly after committing to play college football at the University of Miami. A few months later, Jarrett and his family went to the Super Bowl between the St. Louis Rams and Tennessee Titans in Atlanta, Georgia where the NFL renamed the Man of the Year award in honor of Walter Payton.
“Our family is truly honored and blessed to be able to see all these guys doing all these great work. With these past winners, we’ve kinda added new people to our family. Guys like Charles Tillman, JJ Watt, Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald are the epitome of playing football and doing what you need to do off the field as well,” said Payton. “It’s an honor for our family.”
After his short stint in NFL Europe and the Canadian Football League, he was hired by WGN-TV to be a sports. One of the teams that Payton covers is the Bears, who lost to the New Orleans Saints, 21-9 in the Wild Card Round.
“You think about Chicago, a lot of Bears fans have been waiting since 1985 to be able to have a chance to win another Super Bowl. For me that morning after the game, I had to bring some smiles to faces here in Chicago because we’re still going to wait another year. The Bears team has a long way to go,” he said.
It was the first ever NFL game to be broadcasted on Nickelodeon, which was aimed for kids to get acclimated to the sport.
“I put on the Nickelodeon broadcast and when my kids saw SpongeBob, the exploding slime and the touchdowns after the Saints first scored. To see that the NFL has the mind because a lot of people were questioning it early. They did a great job and they got to keep doing that because that generates more excitement.”
