Perhaps no figure in the world of college and NFL football is as deep and intriguing as the late, great Pat Tillman. He was a high-achieving intellectual whose rare combination of distinctive individual traits shattered every stereotype you could ever hold of a: “football player,” “soldier” or “Arizona State University student.” When he was alive he was a man whose actions worked on many levels.
He was much more than the one-dimensional football player-turned-war hero archetype presented to the American public by the far right military and NFL establishments. His personal depth and complexity also went beyond the Noam-Chomsky-loving bookworm atheist conveyed to us by the far left.
You’ve heard of that game where you can pick any five people in history to have a dinner party with? Tillman would easily make my top five. I wish I could have met the man while he was alive. Instead, I’ll have to settle for getting to know him through cinema.
And beginning next month, Tillman’s memory will be kept alive by “The Tillman Story,” a movie revealing how both the military and the government covered-up his death by fratricide (or “friendly-fire”) in Afghanistan. The lies and conspiracy surrounding his tragic death reach to the very top of our government and military-industrial complex hierarchies.
By Paul M. Banks
Here’s more about the film. And the trailer of the movie is below
For more information about Tillman; his life, his death and the criminal cover-up surrounding it, you can find numerous Pat Tillman books. The two I recommend are “Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman” written by his mother Mary Tillman with Narda Zacchino.
An even better read is “Where Men Win Glory: the Odyssey of Pat Tillman” by best-selling author Jon Kraukauer.
Also it was announced Monday that Arizona State University and the National Football Foundation (NFF) & College Football Hall of Fame will jointly honor the late Pat Tillman with an NFF Hall of Fame On-Campus Salute Nov. 13, 2010 as the Sun Devils host Stanford in Tempe. On May 27, the NFF announced that Tillman, an All-American linebacker at ASU from 1994-97, will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a member of the 2010 class. For more on these honors go here.
Written by Paul M. Banks, President and CEO of The Sports Bank.net , a Midwest focused webzine. He is also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, the Chicago Tribune’s blog network, Walter Football.com, the Washington Times Communities, Yardbarker Network, and Fox Sports.com
You can follow him on Twitter @thesportsbank and @bigtenguru