They named a stadium after his sacrifice and his image is on the coin used at the start of every Big 10 Conference football game
Pat Tillman would probably want to be commemorated by nothing more than the simple hush we devote to other lost infantrymen we didn't know. He no doubt would have preferred that we dwell instead on the photographs of those caskets draped in flags coming home from Iraq. He would surely disapprove of so much attention diverted to a single serviceman, simply because he played football. In the two years since he abandoned his NFL career and enlisted to become an Army Ranger, he steadfastly declined interviews and refused to use his military experience for renown or profit.
Instead, he embodied the words of an anonymous war poet: "I was that which others cared not to be. I went where others feared to go and did what others failed to do. I asked nothing from those that gave nothing . . . "
Snip...
But of course this applies to all of our service men and women and the vast majority ask nothing from those that gave nothing.
Rest of commentary at Life Is No Life to Him That Dares Not Die by Sally Jenkins.