FOOTBALL STAR DIES IN HONOR.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

Why did he do it? Why did Pat Tillman walk away from a multimillion-dollar pro football career two years ago to join the Army and America's fight against terrorism?

"He wanted to go out and help somebody and do something about it," said Paul Reynolds, a graduate assistant with the University of Oregon football team who was Tillman's roommate during away games when both played for Arizona State University in the mid-1990s.

"He wanted this country to remain safe and free," said Sherry Arbuckle of Eugene, whose husband, Dick Arbuckle, recruited Tillman out of high school as an assistant coach at ASU.

"Probably nobody except those who are closest to him probably knows the answer to that question," said Dick Arbuckle, a former UO player and head coach at Sheldon High School who moved back to Eugene after retiring from coaching in 2000.

The 27-year-old Tillman had played four seasons with the Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League, who offered him a three-year, $3.6 million contract. But he turned it down to join the elite Army Rangers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, for an annual salary of $18,000.

Tillman was killed in a firefight while on combat patrol Thursday night 25 miles southwest of a U.S. military base in Khost, Afghanistan.

Tillman, a sergeant, was assigned to a special operations unit that was weeding out members of the Taliban.

The White House on Friday called Tillman "an inspiration both on and off the football field."

`Doing your best'

"Anytime anybody dies like that it puts life in perspective and shows you what's important, and that's serving people and doing your best - and he was doing that," said Reynolds, 31, who also thought about joining the Army after Sept. 11, just because Tillman did.

When Tillman, who played on ASU's 1996 Rose Bowl team, made his startling decision to join the Army Rangers, Reynolds was not surprised. Tillman was a different sort of man from a different sort of stock. His younger brother, Kevin Tillman, a former ASU and minor league baseball player, also joined the Rangers and is a member of the same unit.

Reynolds remembers Tillman, a small player by football standards at 5-feet-11 and 200 pounds but one known for his bone-crushing hits, laying awake at night on road trips and talking about how he just wanted to help people, however long he lived.

"There were a lot more important things to him than football," said Reynolds. "Everybody thought he was crazy on the football field, but he was the most level-headed, intelligent guy I ever knew. He was a hero and a leader and I hope people don't forget about him."

Not likely.

In an age when college athletic programs are often painted as nothing more than sports factories that churn out either professional athletes or uneducated young men who never get their degrees, Tillman graduated summa cum laude after just 3 1/2 years with a marketing degree and a 3.84 grade point average.

"He was just a genius," said Sherry Arbuckle, who got to know Tillman's parents, Pat Sr. and Mary, after her husband brought him to ASU from his home in San Jose, Calif.

She remembers Mary Tillman telling her that her son's principal at Leland High School would call them almost every day to say that Pat was again being disruptive in class, and could they please talk to him about it. "He just asked too many questions," Sherry Arbuckle said. "He never did it out of disrespect, he just wanted to know if what they were trying to teach him was the truth."

As Barbara Beard, the athletic director at Leland High, put it in a 1997 Sports Illustrated article, Tillman was always "driving on the same highway as everybody else, but he's on the other side of the road."

After high school, only ASU, Brigham Young University and San Jose State University offered him a football scholarship. Most schools either didn't know about him or questioned whether he was able to compete at the sport's highest level, said UO assistant head coach Neal Zoumboukos, but he proved everyone wrong.

"Pat Tillman was a warrior," UO head coach Mike Bellotti said. "He became not just the best player (at ASU), but the best player in our conference." There are many others who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bellotti said, but what Tillman did, walking away from the NFL and the money, "should send a huge message to everyone."

`I've got things to do'

According to Dick Arbuckle, when Tillman arrived at ASU in the spring of 1994 and gathered with other freshmen, Bruce Snyder, then the Sun Devils head coach and a former UO player and assistant, explained that most of them would red-shirt, meaning they'd sit out their freshman season and play the following year, thus being in the program for five years.

"Well, coach," Tillman told Snyder, "you can red-shirt me if you'd like. That's your decision. But I'm only going to be here four years. I'm going to graduate, and then I've got things to do."

Snyder told Arbuckle to find Tillman a place on kickoffs and punts. And Arbuckle did. "He was a kid who played more snaps than any other player on our team," Dick Arbuckle said. Although he wasn't a starter his freshman season, he still played a lot, was a starter his last three years and was named defensive player of the year in the Pac-10 Conference his senior year before being drafted by the Cardinals.

But football was just a game to Tillman, not a way of life.

"He knew what he was doing and he had great loyalty to his country," Reynolds said. Although young women were constantly after Tillman - who wore his dirty-blond hair in a heavy-metal mane at ASU - he was always loyal to his high school sweetheart, Marie, who he recently married, Reynolds said.

Becki Suvoy, Dick and Sherry Arbuckle's daughter, attended ASU the same time as Tillman. She remembers how nonmaterialistic he was, so much so that he rode a bicycle to football practice - while all his teammates had cars - despite his big-man-on-campus status. "That was the running joke around town, that he rode a bike to practice," she said.

CAPTION(S):

Specialist Pat Tillman marches in graduation ceremonies in October 2002 at Fort Benning, Ga. Tillman walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to serve with the Army. Chris Pietsch / The Register-Guard Dick Arbuckle and daughter Becki Suvoy reminisce in Eugene about Pat Tillman after news of his death. Rudy Lopez of Phoenix, Ariz., pays tribute at a memorial for former NFL player and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Tempe, Ariz. Tillman was killed in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday. Arizona State linebacker Pat Tillman tries to tackle Oregon tailback Jerry Brown in a 1996 game in Tempe, Ariz. "Pat Tillman was a warrior," UO head coach Mike Bellotti said.