By Laurie Roberts
The Arizona Republic

Arizona's heart is broken today. Oh sure, the sun came up and it is shining still. But somehow, the sparkle has momentarily dimmed.

The world looks different as we come to grips with the fact that Pat Tillman is dead.

Pat Tillman, who walked away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to serve with the Army Rangers, was killed in Afghanistan Thursday. (AP/file photo)

Over and over today, we watched old TV footage of Tillman bringing down the opposition, of Tillman running with the stolen ball. Though he was a defensive player, it was his nature, it seems, to reach for and run with the ball. To take it whenever it was given and when it wasn't his burden to bear.

Of course, the death of Pat Tillman is no more tragic than the deaths of hundreds of other sons and daughters, husbands and wives who have been lost in the aftermath of Sept. 11. No more so than the deaths of millions of Americans who have died through all the years fighting for their country, for us.

But Tillman's story is the stuff of legend, not because of how he died but because of how he lived.

This is a guy who was 5-feet-11 and had no business thinking he could play football at a major college. But his senior year at Arizona State, he was Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year.

This is a guy who certainly had no business thinking he could play in the NFL. But his 224 tackles in 2000 set a franchise record for the Cardinals.

And then came that astounding day in 2001 when he turned down a $9 million offer to go to the St. Louis Rams, a team that already had won a Super Bowl and had a chance to be champion again. Instead, he took less than half that in order to stay with the 3-13 Cardinals, a team that since moving to Arizona in 1998 has made the playoffs exactly once.

"I try not to make decisions based on money," he said at the time. "One simple reason is they (the Rams) are already good and we're crap. I'd like to be a part of building something. I felt loyalty to the coaches. I've come a long way, and it's been because of them."

That was in April 2001.

Five months later, America changed and everyone knows the story. How Tillman walked away from a $3.6 million contract and from celebrity, how he traded training camp for boot camp. How he shunned not only the easy road but took the toughest, becoming one of America's elite, a United States Army Ranger.

There were no news conferences, no Wolf Blitzer interviews. Instead, he went quietly and served silently.

At a time when the ranks of professional sports are plagued with bullies and babies, with men who beat their wives and expect their due, he served.

At a time when the playing fields abound with prima donnas who hire themselves out to the highest bidder, with no mind to the fans who put them there on the pedestal, he served.

And at a time when Maurice Clarett was whining to the Supreme Court about his right to enter the NFL draft and Eli Manning was threatening to sit out the season rather than play for San Diego, Pat Tillman was dying.

There will be tributes to the man, and rightly so. There will be calls for the Cardinals to forgo millions in order to name their new stadium for Tillman.

And rightly so.

But I think the biggest tribute any of us can make is simply this: Next time, you look at your son or your daughter, speak of the man who did it right.

Today, I'm thinking that no child should aspire to grow up to be president.

Better, I think, to grow up to be Pat Tillman.

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