FanHouse PatTillman

As the U.S. Senate considers approving Army Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the new top commander in Afghanistan, the case of Pat Tillman is likely to resurface.

There is no questioning the very real sacrifice made by former Cardinals safety Pat Tillman. He felt he had a duty to help defend our great country. Whether you agree or disagree with our military involvement overseas, you can't argue that Tillman gave his life to help make our lives better, and make our country a better place.

The NFL, in my opinion, did a very nice job honoring Tillman during the season after his death in April of 2004. The Cardinals have also done the right things when it comes to Tillman's memory.

But could the sport of football do more to honor Tillman?

NBC's Cris Collinsworth worked Saturday's early playoff game between Atlanta and Arizona. During the broadcast, he brought up the fact that Tillman is eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I have to admit that I hadn't previously given much of any thought to the argument Collinsworth proceeded to make.

Pat Tillman is an American hero, and the NFL is, of course, proud to be associated with him. But his mother, Mary Tillman, believes that the league only wants to be associated with him on its terms.

In an interview with Dave Zirin, Mary Tillman said she still doesn't think the Army has given her a straight answer about the circumstances of Pat's death, and she thinks the NFL would rather exploit her son's death than help her find out the truth:

"I think the [NFL] has not gone out of its way to help," she told me. The league has "exploited Pat, just like the military. ... [It has] a beautiful statue to him at the Cardinals' stadium. I don't know if that's more for us or the [NFL]. I feel like it's more for the league."

Zirin writes that NFL owners have the political clout -- thanks to millions in campaign donations -- to put pressure on the government to get to the bottom of what really happened. Mary Tillman thinks they should.

In the seventh round of last month's NFL draft, the Detroit Lions selected Caleb Campbell, a safety who played college football at Army. And thanks to a new U.S. military policy, Campbell will get to play in the NFL, assuming he makes the Lions' roster, while his West Point classmates have to serve active duty, many of them in Iraq.

In a profile in the Boston Globe, Campbell talks about the harsh criticism he has faced from people who think he's doing the wrong thing by going to the NFL instead of serving on active duty:

"The worst was a handwritten letter," says Campbell, a native of Perryton, Texas. "It said, 'Please don't do this. How can you look your classmates in the eyes when they are serving their country and going to Iraq and you're taking the easier way out?' That hit me . . . But I'd be a fool not to take advantage of this opportunity."

I disagree with anyone who suggests that Campbell shouldn't be able to look his classmates in the eye. But I also disagree with Campbell when he says he'd be a fool not to take the opportunity. By that rationale, Pat Tillman is a fool. I certainly hope Campbell isn't suggesting that.

The bottom line, though, is that the Army decided to make this choice available to Campbell. How many people wouldn't do what he's doing if they were in his shoes?

Mary Tillman, the mother of Pat Tillman, appeared on 60 Minutes Sunday night and says she still can't get the truth about her son's death from the U.S. Army. Here's a brief clip:

More from the 60 Minutes web site:

At that time, Tillman's family was led to believe that he was killed by the enemy, which was reinforced when the Army awarded him a Silver Star for his "gallantry in action against an armed enemy." They were told his convoy had been ambushed and he had charged up a hill, forcing the enemy to withdraw and saving the lives of his fellow Rangers.

That story was a complete fabrication, but the whole story is still, according to Mary Tillman, a mystery.

Pat Tillman was an American hero, and it's baffling that our nation's military still won't give his mother a straight answer about exactly what happened when he was killed. It's been more than four years since Pat Tillman died, and it's time for Mary Tillman to hear the truth.

Tillman was a Pac-10 defensive player of the year at Arizona State before playing several years in the NFL. He later joined the US Army Rangers unit where he was later killed by friendly fire during an operation in Afghanistan.

Since that time, Tillman's become a national hero of sorts, while his family has battled to pursue possible negligence that led to his death and how the military handled the investigation of the friendly fire incident.

I can't speak for his NFL career, but he was an absolute demon while at ASU as an undersized safety/linebacker. Tillman was on the 1997 Rose Bowl ASU team that nearly won the national championship before surrendering a last-minute touchdown drive to Ohio State.

Tillman's name is among 74 others on the ballot. Inductees will be announced May 1. Like Tillman, coach and broadcaster Lou Holtz is also making his first appearance on the HOF ballot.

Matt Ufford is the editor of With Leather and a co-founder of Kissing Suzy Kolber. The Prelude is his sincere examination of the coming NFL weekend.


The last time I wrote about Sean Taylor's death, one comment I received stood out from the rest. It said, in essence, "Not to take away from the tragedy, but it's too bad our military members aren't met with same admiration when one of them dies in Iraq."

The sentence struck me as profound. By all accounts, Taylor was a bright, talented young man who was taking steps to distance himself from his troubled past now that he had a family and job security, only to lose it all unfairly in the prime of his life. That background is one I know well: it describes a number of Marines with whom I served.

Many of them, like Taylor, were unfairly cut down: not just in the physical prime of their lives, but after leaving childish things behind.

Like many people who care about the NFL, I've been trying to make sense of Taylor's death this week. Though I'm not a Redskins fan, his passing affected me more deeply than another untimely, high-profile death of an NFL safety: that of Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan while serving as an Army Ranger.

You can't fully understand America in the 21st Century without knowing the story of Pat Tillman. The story of Tillman encompasses 9/11 and our nation's response to it, the way a tiny portion of the country bore an enormous portion of the burden for the war on terror, the failures of the war on terror and the ways the American government has misled its people about those failures.

And no news outlet has done as good a job explaining the Tillman story as ESPN.com, led by Mike Fish's An Un-American Tragedy.

ESPN.com isn't often noted for investigative journalism, but Fish's work would be worthy, if it had appeared in a newspaper, of a Pulitzer Prize. And Raquel Christie writes in the American Journalism Review that ESPN is justifiably proud of its role in shedding light on the Tillman story.

"I think this is the most important story ESPN.com has ever done," says Kevin Ball, the site's copy chief, who also worked with Fish on the story. "Because it goes beyond sports. And I think that's the greatest thing about sports – it's not just about the field, but it's about life."

If you haven't read Fish's work, you need to.

"An Un-American Tragedy," Mike Fish's investigative series on the death of Arizona Cardinals safety-turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman, won the top prize in this year's Military Reporters and Editors journalism competition.

Writing for ESPN.com, Fish explored how Tillman died in a friendly fire incident, and how the military subsequently covered up the true cause of Tillman's death. ESPN.com also won an award for its online multimedia presentation of Fish's reporting, and ESPN won a broadcast journalism award for a program called "Tillman's Final Mission," also based on Fish's reporting.

Fish's reporting was posted on ESPN.com as a series that ran for three consecutive days beginning on July 19, 2006. New information has surfaced since then, but it's still worth reading now. We bloggers bash ESPN a lot, and often with good reason, but they sometimes do phenomenal journalism at the Worldwide Leader, and this is one instance of that.

Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who was censured for lying about the death in Afghanistan of former Arizona Cardinals safety Pat Tillman, says he's being made the fall guy for the Army. And Mary Tillman, Pat's mom, agrees.

Mike Fish of ESPN.com extensively quotes Kensinger's attorney explaining the retired general's side of the story, and he also quotes Tillman's mom:

"I don't think Kensinger is the definitive bad guy. I absolutely don't. I think he is the scapegoat. I actually told Secretary of the Army Pete Geren the same thing. I said that I did not believe that Kensinger was the ultimate culprit here. That there are a lot of people who played a role in this and they are getting off without any punishment."

It does seem unlikely, given how many people lied publicly about the death of Tillman, that it all ends up on Kensinger's doorstep. Of course, Kensinger refused to answer questions before a Congressional committee, and he refers all media questions to his lawyer. He's not acting like someone with nothing to hide.