Published: February 25, 2006 12:30 am         

Ex-ISU assistant Payton ready to take Saints higher

INDIANAPOLIS — Despite his recent hiring as new head coach of the New Orleans Saints, former Eastern Illinois quarterback Sean Payton has not been one to forget his roots.

An All-America playing career at EIU, followed by college coaching career that got its start at Indiana State, has helped Payton reach the heights of his profession. When he was hired by the Saints last month, he became the third Eastern Illinois graduate to become a head coach in the NFL — joining Denver’s Mike Shanahan and Minnesota’s Brad Childress.

”It’s interesting and kind of unique. It’s certainly a credit a little bit to the football tradition there at Eastern,” Payton said during an exclusive interview Friday at the National Football Scouting Combine. “It started in the mid-1970s and all of a sudden it gravitated to a lot of people going there to play football or having an interest in football.

“I think that translated into a lot of guys that ended up coaching football. In the end, if you were recruited there, maybe you were undersized or not big enough, maybe you could play at Eastern. But when it was over with, you knew that you were going to end up getting into coaching. I knew that if I couldn’t play any more, I wanted to coach at a young age. But it is interesting. Three coaches from that school, but I know they’re proud of that.”

After becoming one of the premier passers in Division I-AA, Payton had a brief playing stint in the NFL with the Chicago Bears and with the Arena League’s Chicago Bruisers before accepting a graduate assistant coaching position at San Diego State. His first full-time coaching job came at ISU where he became the Sycamores’ quarterback coach under Dennis Raetz.

In a recent interview, Raetz said that he knew that Payton — who met his wife Beth while at ISU — had the opportunity to be “something special” as a coach. NFL assistant coaching stops with the Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys have helped to bolster that evaluation.

“He’s [Raetz] a guy who has a great ability, and I saw this in the recruiting process, he really could evaluate the player but also the type of person he thought the player was. Dennis had a pretty good handle on the pulse of the team and what it took to win games,” Payton said.

“For me it’s a great compliment because I always thought he was pretty good at evaluating people. He really is the guy that gave me my first full-time job. He gave me a salary, some insurance and a dealer car. He was the guy that hired me that day after Christmas (1989). My experience with Dennis and Indiana State was outstanding and obviously exciting.”

Learning under coaches like Raetz, Jon Gruden, Jim Fassell and Bill Parcells has taught Payton one important lesson that he intends to use with the Saints — be true to yourself.

“The worst thing that I could do is try to be someone other than myself. I’m going to be demanding, I’d like to think detail oriented. I think the little things are awfully important in this game. So many of them are won in the last two or three minutes. I’m going to work extremely hard at it,” he said.

“There’s going to be an X-amount of discipline, detail, and hard work that’s required and that’s been maybe a little bit of my formula up to now. So I don’t anticipate changing a lot of that.”

I I I

n Williams, Brown gone; Brock expected to re-sign — The Indianapolis Colts have reportedly terminated the contracts of defensive tackle Josh Williams and backup quarterback Travis Brown.

Defensive end Raheem Brock, an unrestricted free agent as signed a 5-yaar contract extention with the team. Complete terms of the deal are now known but the agreement was confirmed by Brock’s agent Kevin Pompey on Friday night.

n Doss undergoes surgery — Colts safety Mike Doss recently underwent surgery to repair ligament damage in his right shoulder.

He expects to be ready to go by the time the team is scheduled to report for training camp at Rose-Hulman.

n Combine to leave Indy? — The combine, a staple in Indianapolis for nearly 25 years, may be moving to another city at some point in the near future.

Jeff Foster, executive director of National Football Scouting, said Friday that there is a possibility that the five-day event might end up relocating to a warm-weather site.

“When you are in one place for a long time, sometimes there is tendency to take each other for granted,” Foster admitted. “But we’re still talking [to city officials], so we’ll see what happens down the road.”