A cut above
Pat Tillman, Arizona State's height-loving, tree-swinging, book-cracking linebacker, is the best player you've never heard of
By Tim Layden
The following story originally appeared in the Dec. 8, 1997 issue of Sports Illustrated.
Most football players fit into a box. They're big, fast and strong (duh); they submit to authority without resistance; and if asked to define introspection, they would say it's what happens when the defense picks off a pass. Those who don't fit into the box rarely succeed at a major program. Then there is Arizona State senior linebacker Pat Tillman, who not only doesn't fit into the box but also would have to consult a travel agent to find it.
As a senior safety-tailback-kick returner at Leland High in San Jose, Tillman so detested leaving the field that once, after his coach pulled the starters at halftime of a first-round playoff romp, he took the field for the second-half kickoff and ran it back for a touchdown. The coach, Terry Hardtke, confiscated Tillman's helmet and shoulder pads and put them under a bench lest Tillman get the urge to score again. One month later, on his recruiting visit to Arizona State, one of three Division I-A schools willing to risk a scholarship on a 5'11", 195-pounder classified by many college coaches as a too-slow, too-small tweener, Tillman was asked by Sun Devils coach Bruce Snyder what he thought of the recruiting process. "It stinks," Tillman shot back. "Nobody tells the truth."
Taken aback, Snyder filed the comment away. He remembered it the following August when he sat Tillman down to discuss--as he does with all freshmen -- the concept of redshirting. "I'm not redshirting," Tillman said. "I've got things to do with my life. You can do whatever you want with me, but in four years, I'm gone." Snyder thought, This kid is different.
As different as Tempe is hot in July. At Arizona State, Tillman not only avoided redshirting but also progressed from special teams madman (freshman) to situational sub (sophomore) to defensive standout (junior). He had the second-most tackles and the most interceptions, pass deflections and fumble recoveries on a team that reached the Rose Bowl and fell four points short of a probable national title. "Some games I was hard-pressed to make a tackle because Pat was everywhere," says Scott Von der Ahe, who played alongside Tillman in '96 and is now a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts.
Along the way Tillman grew his dirty-blond hair from a Marine buzz to a heavy-metal mane (since trimmed) and made the Sun Devils coaches his personal debate partners. For instance, last season defensive coordinator Phil Snow put in a dime package that took Tillman out of the game in certain passing situations. Whenever Snow called the scheme, Tillman would stand next to the coach and say, "Touchdown this play."
This season Tillman has become simply the best player in the country who doesn't have his own (fill in the blank: Heisman, Outland, Lombardi, Butkus) campaign, living proof that there is room at the highest level of the game for a guy without much size or blazing speed but with a brain and cojones. "He epitomizes what college football is all about," says Southern Cal offensive coordinator Hue Jackson, who was an assistant at Arizona State during Tillman's first two seasons.
The soul of a defense that lost six starters from last year, Tillman led the Sun Devils to the cusp of the top 10 before last Friday's 28-16 upset loss to Arizona knocked them out of a share of the Pac-10 title and a near-certain berth in the Fiesta Bowl. Last week he was named the league's defensive player of the year, a remarkable achievement for a guy who bulked up to all of 202 pounds and made many of his plays against the run. He won the honor over established studs such as Jason Chorak of Washington and Joe Salave'a of Arizona, and it seemed a sweet crowning touch to a terrific career. But don't tell him about it.
On Nov. 24, the day he won the Pac-10 honor, Tillman hunched over a bowl of spaghetti and sausage at a Tempe bistro. He is a walking, talking contradiction: a little guy who plays linebacker, a dedicated student who looks like a slacker, a serious 21-year-old who converses fluently in surfspeak. The public nature of awards gives him the creeps. "Dude, I'm proud of the things I've done, my schoolwork--because I'm not smart; I just worked hard--and this award," said Tillman, a marketing major who will graduate in 3 1/2 years with a GPA of 3.82. "But it doesn't do me any good to be proud. It's better to just force myself to be naive about things, because otherwise I'll start being happy with myself, and then I'll stand still, and then I'm old news." He shrugged. Introspection indeed.
"He's driving on the same highway as everybody else," says Barbara Beard, the athletic director at Leland High, "but he's on the other side of the road."
He always has been. When he was five, he climbed onto the porch roof of his family's two-story house during a windstorm, wrapped himself around a slender tree trunk and swayed in the wind for fun, until his mother, Mary, coaxed him back onto the roof. He then developed a propensity for jumping from high places (bridges, cliffs) into water. He went rock climbing and invented a bizarre hobby: wandering through the woods by leaping from treetop to treetop, like Tarzan without a vine. "He has always liked testing himself," says his father, Pat Sr., a lawyer and former college wrestler who used to grapple in the living room with Pat Jr. and his younger brothers, Kevin (a scholarship baseball player at Arizona State) and Richard (a junior quarterback at Leland High).
Pat Jr. grew into a ferocious high school football player who could intimidate with size, speed and attitude. Unfortunately he often did the same thing off the field. "People in our town were basically afraid of my brother," says Kevin. "He just has this tough-man mentality about him."
"If there was trouble, you looked for Pat first," says Beard. "Usually it wasn't serious." One time it was. In the fall of Pat's senior year, he went to the aid of a friend in a fight outside a pizza parlor and, in Pat's words, "beat the s---" out of his friend's assailant, who was in his early 20s. Several weeks after the incident Pat was arrested and charged as a juvenile (he was 17) with felony assault. Before the case was resolved, he accepted a scholarship to Arizona State (Brigham Young and San Jose State were the other schools that offered) but desperately feared it would be revoked. Pat quietly pleaded guilty to the charge. In the summer of '94 he served 30 days in a juvenile detention facility, and his conviction was reduced to a misdemeanor upon his release.
Tillman's incarceration ended two weeks before his first college football practice. Arizona State never learned of his trouble with the law. Tillman, however, learned much from it. "I'm proud of that chapter in my life," he says. "I'm not proud of what happened, but I'm proud that I learned more from that one bad decision than all the good decisions I've ever made. I'm proud that nobody found out, because I didn't want to come to Arizona State with people thinking that I was a hoodlum, because I'm not. It made me realize that stuff you do has repercussions. You can lose everything." He says he hasn't been in a fight since.
Not off the field, anyway. On the field he started fighting, figuratively speaking, as soon as he arrived in Tempe. "Everybody called him the Hit Man because he was this little guy running around laying licks on people," recalls Von der Ahe. "He had this arrogance about him, as if he knew he was the toughest guy on the field."
Tillman understood from the start that he was a marginal recruit--too small to play linebacker, too slow to play running back or defensive back, the coaches figured, but too intense to pass up. He would have to establish himself every day. "That's fine. I didn't need any damn promises," he says. "I figured I could prove myself when I got here."
He flourished after making the unusual switch from safety to linebacker in the spring of his freshman year. He learned to study tape and study people. "He's the best player I've ever coached at reading body language," says Lyle Setencich, linebackers coach at Arizona State from 1995 to '96 and now defensive coordinator at Cal. "One game, he noticed that a tackle would look inside every time his team ran a draw, and sure enough, Pat read it and hit the fullback right in the mouth." His speed is respectable (4.55 for the 40) but not blinding, yet he is as fast in a game as he is against the stopwatch, a rare quality.
Tillman wears out coaches with his intellect and preparation, and has just enough offbeat humor to keep them on their toes. When Snow told him last year to cut his hair, Tillman said, "Coach, the women are all over me. I keep it messy so I look dirty, and they leave me alone." In fact, Tillman has dated UC Santa Barbara senior Marie Ugenti for four years, and as for pursuit by other women, he says, "My face and my personality are my chaperones."
Predictably, Tillman isn't ready to retire from football. Just as he was told that Division I-A was beyond him, he is being told that the NFL is out of his reach. When asked how many times he can bench-press the standard 225 pounds, Tillman explodes in laughter. "How many times?" he says. "Like, dude, I max 225, and then I rack it." You can't measure or weigh or time guys like Tillman and get the story.
"I know he can play in this league," says Von der Ahe. "Strong safety, linebacker in a nickel package, somewhere. He's tenacious, he's smart, he's got great instincts."
"I've told NFL guys, 'If you don't want him on your team, don't take him, because he won't let you cut him,'" adds Snyder.
What will Tillman do if he doesn't make the NFL? "Beats me," he says, grinning like a man with no fear and, just in case, good grades. Grab a tree and swing in the breeze.
Issue date: Dec. 8, 1997
