Special Teamer

Arizona State had one scholarship left to offer in 1994 when Sun Devil Coach Bruce Snyder paid a recruiting visit to Pat Tillman of Leland High School.

Every coaching bone in Snyder’s body told him it was a wasted trip.

A 200-pound linebacker from San Jose?

No way.

That was before Tillman interviewed Snyder for the job.

First off, Snyder said, Tillman told him not to bother with any rah-rah recruitment speech.

Tillman said, “I’d rather be skiing this weekend, but I need to know if you’re offering a scholarship.”

Wow.

Snyder walked out thinking, “You’ve got to have a guy like this on your team,” even if it was to carry water.

It was always that way with Tillman. He hit you hard and fast. There was no middle ground with him, no indirect eye contact.

Phil Snow, Arizona State defensive coordinator during Tillman’s college days, called the player a “man’s man.”

You knew Tillman was different the moment you met him.

Snyder, as we know now, took a flier on the long-haired high school kid. The next fall, at the team’s training camp in Camp Tontozona, Snyder told Tillman he would redshirt his freshman season.

“I’m not redshirting,” Tillman said.

Snyder started to get upset.

“No, no, Coach,” Tillman said. “I’m not saying you have to play me. I’m just not going to be here [for five years]. I’ve got other things I’ve got to get done and want to do in my life, so you might as well run me down on kickoffs.”

How do you forget a kid like this?

Answer: You don’t.

That’s why Friday’s news of Tillman’s death hit Snyder like “someone kicking me in the stomach.”

Snyder wasn’t alone.

Tillman, 27, who gave up an NFL career to join the Army Rangers, was killed Thursday during a firefight in Afghanistan.

“I always knew in the back of my mind that could happen,” said Snow, now the defensive coordinator at Washington. “The first time he was over there, I would wake up every morning and hope there wasn’t anything about Pat in the news.”

Everyone who knew what Tillman had signed up for knew it could end like this, but that doesn’t dampen the blow.

“Shocking,” is how Snow described it.

Tillman, from the time he arrived at Arizona State until his death, never ceased to amaze.

Snyder honestly thought Tillman might become president of the United States.

“I mean really,” said Snyder, now an assistant coach at Nevada Las Vegas. “If I lived long enough, I would have voted for him.”

Snyder wasn’t sure what to make of Tillman as a football man -- maybe a solid special teams player?

Instead, he developed into a star as an undersized outside linebacker.

Tillman was the defensive heart and soul on the 1996 Arizona State team that finished 11-1 and came 19 seconds from winning the national title.

The next year, Tillman was named the Pacific 10 defensive player of the year.

Snyder said Tillman was so smart as a player Sun Devil coaches went to great lengths to make sure there were no mistakes in the weekly game plans.

“Or he would catch it,” Snyder said. “It may be a typo, it may be a formation name.”

Tillman left an imprint. When the athletic department moved into new facilities not long ago, Doug Tammaro, Arizona State’s associate sports information director, got his pick of pictures to hang in his office.

“There wasn’t even a question who was going up on that wall,” he said.

Even as Tillman continued to confound skeptics, Snyder didn’t think the player, at 5-11 and 200 pounds, had a chance to make it in the NFL.

Snyder had a standard message for the scouts:

“I’d say, ‘Watch him, if you don’t like him, don’t take him. Because if you take him, he will make your team.’”

Tillman lasted until the seventh round of the draft, yet he became a starter at safety for the Cardinals. In four years, he played in 60 games. In 2000, in fact, he set the team’s single-season record with 224 tackles.

Two years ago, not long after events of Sept. 11, Tillman walked away from a $3.6-million contract offer to join the Army.

As with everything, Tillman’s decision was straight and to the point. He walked into then-coach Dave McGinnis’ office and broke the news.

“People have said to me so many times, ‘God, he walked away from a multimillion-dollar contract,’ ” Snyder said. “What they’re saying is ‘I couldn’t have done that, and I admire him.’ But to him, I don’t believe money was the issue. It’s not that he didn’t like the money, although his lifestyle was very simple. But I think he was totally confident he could be rich if that’s what he chose to do.”

Snyder spoke to Tillman shortly after he had made his decision to enlist.

Tillman thanked Snyder for giving him a chance at Arizona State and said he was appreciative of his college experience.

Snyder told Tillman he was proud of him and to take care of himself.

“I would like to have said something very profound, but I probably didn’t,” Snyder said.

Snyder said while events of 9/11 no doubt inspired Tillman to join the Army, he thinks the player was looking for the next challenge in his life.

In a strange way, the thrill of playing in the NFL might have waned, Snyder said, that it might have become boring “because he had proven he could make it.”

Arizona State announced it will retire Tillman’s uniform, No. 42, at the end of next season.

Connor Banks, a defensive end, will be allowed to wear No. 42 through his senior year.

Banks grew up in Richmond, not far from where Tillman was raised.

“Part of the reason that I did wear the number was because of Pat Tillman,” Banks said. “ ... Having the number retired is a great honor, for me, to be able to wear the number for the last time because it doesn’t happen very often in these circumstances.”

Bruce Snyder, like many others, is going to miss Pat Tillman.

Here’s the crazy part.

Snyder is 64. As an NFL assistant with the Rams, he coached running back Eric Dickerson. Snyder spent 14 years as a head coach in the Pac-10, at California and Arizona State. He won national coach-of-the-year honors in 1996. He has seen just about everything there is to see.

Tillman died at age 27.

Yet, Snyder says, “I learned a lot more from him than he did from me.”