In the end, Pat Tillman died for the sake of a broken Humvee. Out patrolling the Afghan back country with fellow Rangers in search of Taliban and al Qaeda militants, one of the Humvees in his unit broke down so completely that it couldn’t be repaired on site, and the vehicle couldn’t be airlifted out of the wilderness via helicopter because most of the Army’s helicopters were being used in Iraq, and the Army required four days notice to send one out in Afghanistan. And it couldn’t be ditched, because Humvees cost money.

So Tillman’s regiment was ordered to split in two against the wishes of everyone in the group, including the platoon leader in charge, who made repeated requests to command to keep the group united, all of which were denied without much explanation. This was done because towing the Humvee out of the woods was going to throw the regiment off schedule. They were due to reach the town of Mana that evening and conduct a sweep for enemy combatants. But there was no dire need to get to Mana so quickly, other than to fill an arbitrary timetable. Regardless, orders were orders, and the caravan split in two (so that half the regiment could get to Mana on time), eventually ending up going in separate directions. Serial One (Pat Tillman’s group) took the high ground. Serial Two towed the busted Humvee through a tight canyon. Once in the canyon, Serial Two was attacked by mortars from a Taliban ambush.

Rangers in the second vehicle of the Serial began firing back, continuing to do so as they emerged from the canyon. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the caravan traveling through the valley, Tillman’s group had heard the skirmish and rushed to provide cover fire from above, with Tillman joining two other soldiers (one an Afghan) behind a large boulder. As the second Humvee emerged from the canyon, they mistook Serial One’s cover fire for enemy fire and continued shooting.

They continued shooting despite direct Army orders to positively identify all targets before opening fire. They continued shooting despite clearly seeing the friendly Afghan soldier wearing the distinct camo pattern of the US Army (he ended up being killed). They continued firing despite the fact that Tillman and PFC Bryan O’Neal raised their hands to signal that they had laid down their guns and were Americans. Indeed, before being shot to death, Tillman screamed out his name to his comrades over and over, to no avail. And the boulder he was hiding behind was, by some estimates, less than TEN YARDS AWAY from the firing Humvee. They continued to fire despite being ordered to cease fire repeatedly (they couldn’t hear the orders over the gunfire).

I knew Pat Tillman died from friendly fire, but I assumed he had been killed by a stray American bullet in the middle of an enemy skirmish. This isn’t true. Tillman and his two fellow soldiers were fired on for over fifteen minutes with heavy artillery before the shooting stopped. One of the men shooting was a callow Ranger named Trevor Alders, who changed his shooting position to fire on Tillman’s group despite Army rules forbidding gunners from freelancing. Alders was the soldier who ended up killing Tillman, firing three small rounds from his Squad Automatic Weapon into Tillman’s forehead. The three bullets exploded inside Tillman’s head, and his brain was blown out onto the rocks below and O’Neal’s uniform. According to O’Neal:

“I remember hearing what I thought was running water. I thought that Pat had urinated on himself. I asked Pat if he had urinated on himself, but he did not answer. I looked at the rock next to us, and I remember seeing a stream of blood.”

Once Tillman was killed, the Army went to astonishing lengths to cover up how he died. All KIA American soldiers are required to be sent home with their uniform and equipment for forensic testing. Tillman’s clothes and possessions were instead burned by the Army, including a notebook he specifically asked not be discarded, his corpse sent back to America naked and raw. Also deliberately burned was an ammo can containing pieces of Tillman’s brain. Tillman was awarded a posthumous Silver Star despite no one officially signing the necessary forms. I may be wrong, but the firefight that left Tillman dead appeared to be his very first time in a live combat situation.

The Army also ordered soldiers in Tillman’s platoon to not disclose to anyone that Tillman was killed by a fellow Ranger. This meant they weren’t allowed to tell Kevin Tillman, who was also in the regiment, about how his brother died. Day after day, fellow Rangers had to walk around Kevin Tillman knowing how Pat had died, without being able to just come out and tell him the truth. Nor did the Army ever give a full explanation to the rest of Tillman’s family about how he died. His mother learned he died from friendly fire through a call from a newspaper reporter. For weeks after Tillman passed away, the Army purposely led those close to Tillman to believe he had been killed by enemy forces. Immediately after Tillman was killed, Kevin Tillman made his fellow Rangers swear they’d take revenge on whoever committed the crime. Little did he know.

At Tillman’s memorial, the Army gave a false account of how Tillman died to a friend of his in the Navy SEALS, Steve White, (who had no reason to think the story was a lie) who then revealed the story during the memorial, the first time Tillman’s family or America had “learned” the story of his death. Email records show that press manipulation of Tillman’s story went all the way to Bush White House.

No one went to jail for Pat Tillman’s death. Trevor Alders and a handful of others were demoted into the regular Army (Alders vehemently protested the demotion. One fellow Ranger described him as “pathetic”), along with the platoon leader who begged Central Command to not split the regiment in two. “Shit rolls downhill,” is how one Ranger explained it.

Where Men Win Glory isn’t Jon Krakauer’s best book. In fact, for the first 150 pages or so, it’s a pretty dry read. There’s a shitload of back history about modern day Afghanistan (Surprise! It’s fucked!) intertwined with Tillman’s childhood and football career. This is all necessary information, but sometimes it gets a little dull and hard to follow.

But once the story turns to Tillman’s death and the myriad ways in which the Army tried to suppress the truth, it becomes devastating. The truth about Tillman was finally uncovered for a couple of reasons: his notoriety, and his family’s dogged determination to get answers. But Tillman is merely one soldier. If the Army was more than willing to actively sugarcoat his death in the midst of conflict, how many other families have they lied to? How many mothers go to sleep at night thinking their son passed away one way without ever knowing the real facts? Hundreds? Thousands? According to Krakauer, forty-one percent of all American casualties in Iraq are caused by friendly fire, an estimate considered low because of underreporting.

Krakauer’s book reveals, as I’m sure many other books have, that the US military is just as fraught with bureaucratic nonsense and petty political bullshit as your office back home, if not more so. What Tillman’s story illuminates is how that sad reality contrasts with the incredibly noble intentions of many who volunteer to fight for our country. These people are willing to fight and die, and they rarely get reciprocal treatment from the US government, especially when killed by their fellow soldiers. You probably already knew this, but to see it play out at such a personal level, it makes you want to punch a wall.

Despite never wavering from joining the Army, Tillman constantly feared the toll his absence would take on his family and new wife back home. But he joined the Army for three years because he felt that serving his country would justify the relatively cozy life he would enjoy back in America once he returned home. He wanted to start a family and play football again. And he wanted to earn the right to live that life and bask in it. It was part of a personal quest for him to become a complete person who lived a passionate existence filled with memorable highs and lows. And he ended up being punished mightily for it, for his love for intense living.

It’s hard not to feel like a lesser man when you read about what Tillman sacrificed. But it’s also hard not to think that, by joining the Army, Tillman made an extremely noble mistake. When you consider the gross, widespread negligence of both Tillman’s fellow soldiers and the Army, AND the Department of Defense, why would anyone bother joining the fight anymore? The US Army treated Pat Tillman like a goddamn sucker, and it’s one of the most shameful things you’ll ever read about. It makes you wonder if Tillman died not for his country, but for his government. Only the former is worth dying for.

Best-selling author and liberal Jew from New York Jeff Pearlman has a new book on the 1990s Cowboys that comes out today (Buy it here). Now, you probably already know that this book has already given us the profound gift that is Charles Haley masturbating in front of teammates. A little meet and skeet, if you will. Ah, but that is merely one of the many juicy tidbits that litter Pearlman’s book, which reads like a virtual “Hammer Of The Gods” for football.

For instance, there’s the fact that Michael Irvin, in addition to being a cokehead, a philanderer, and a selfish prick, is also an… how does one put this? Oh yes… AN ATTEMPTED FUCKING MURDERER. See now, I had remembered long ago that Irvin had gotten into a fight with teammate Everett McIver, but I had forgotten about this tidbit of information:

Irvin grabbed a pair of scissors, whipped back his right arm, and slashed McIver across the neck… inches from the carotid artery.

What was McIver’s transgression? He wouldn’t get out of the team’s barbershop chair when Irvin showed up for a haircut. When Irvin showed up and saw McIver getting his hair cut, he screamed: “Seniority! Seniority! Seniority! Punk, get the fuck out of my chair!” When McIver refused, the two got into a fistfight, which then led to Irvin STABBING HIM IN THE NECK WITH SCISSORS. Irvin then paid McIver off for six figures, charges were never filed, and the team tried to bury the story (They were not very successful in this regard).

So, yeah, there’s a Hall of Famer for you. Pearlman has a knack for getting great stories from everyone surrounding the team. The book is packed top to bottom with tales of players fucking, fighting, or doing drugs. And that’s the hallmark of any classic book, as far as I’m concerned. I know that’s all I ever want to read about.

As Pearlman tells the tale of the team, from Jimmy Johnson’s hiring all the way through to the end of the Switzer era, it became clear to me that a team like this simply doesn’t exist anymore. It can’t. As the NFL has become a corporate monolith, and as the Internet has taken over the way NFL news is both created and digested, the idea that a football team can get away with everything depicted in Pearlman’s book is now laughable.

Those 1990’s Cowboys represented the end of an era, an era that had no salary cap, an era where players (and coaches) could party all the time and still win multiple titles. There’s a tone of wistfulness here, the idea that this was the end of true old time football, and that the NFL has lost a bit of its soul in the ensuing years as it has grown bigger and bigger.

Just as real rock stars don’t walk the earth anymore, NFL players are now packaged and micromanaged to the point where they aren’t allowed to be the gloriously flawed people that fans, against all rationality, grow to love. In some ways, that’s tragic. In other ways, Michael Irvin STABBED A FUCKING GUY IN THE NECK WITH SCISSORS. So I suppose you take the good with the bad.

Some more fascinating tidbits:

-Charles Haley once cut a hole in the roof of Tim Harris’ BMW and pissed onto the steering wheel. This story made me happy, because as a Vikings fan I fucking hated Tim Harris.

-Once in a team meeting, Haley came back from the bathroom, pulled down his shorts, wiped his ass, and threw his poopy toilet paper at 49ers linebacker coach John Marshall.

-During another team meeting, Haley whispered to teammate Scott Case, “Scott, turn around, I gotta show you something… Scott, dammit, turn around! You need to see this!” When Case turned around, according to Pearlman, he “saw Haley’s erect penis stretched across the desk.”

-The Cowboys often held position meetings at strip clubs.

-Michael Irvin financed a Cowboys charity basketball team called the Hoopsters that had its own private plane, which was mostly used to hold airborne orgies, with Irvin dictating who should be fucking who. “There was nothing Mike couldn’t think of,” said his assistant. “He had quite the imagination.”

-Irvin also charged huge personal appearance fees for the Hoopsters to show up at events. In one case, he charged the Little Dribblers of Fairfield Texas $5,600 to appear, then RAISED the fee, then failed to show up and refused to refund the original money after the organizer balked at paying the increased charge. Irvin also slugged a volunteer ref during one of the team’s games.

-The Cowboys gave specific instructions to American Airlines to only hire beautiful attendants for their charter flights, and kept a book with photos and measurements of the best-looking stewardesses.

-One Christmas, Emmitt Smith gave teammates copies of his own autobiography as a gift.

-When he was very young, Barry Switzer’s mother committed suicide in front of him. Even worse, she did it just after Switzer had bravely (and quite eloquently) confronted her about her alcoholism. And if you can’t feel for Switzer after reading the whole story, I don’t really want to know you.

-Nate Newton once hid a Snickers bar in his uniform, which then flew out during a game. Afterwards, cornerback Larry Brown was heard to remark, “Did a damn candy bar just fly from Nate’s body, or am I imagining things?”

-Jerry Jones routinely cheated on his wife with a Texas Stadium Corp employee named Susan Skaggs, often using the team plane to do so. (What is it with the Cowboys and fucking in the sky?) Jones’ pilot said, “We could feel the airplane moving and shaking. It didn’t move and shake that long.” WOO HOO!!! YOU AIN’T EVER HAD LOVIN’ LIKE THE OL’ DOUBLE-J! Excuse me for moment. I now have motion sickness.

-Switzer fucked the wife of player personnel head Larry Lacewell. And Lacewell wasn’t even mad about it.

And now some money quotes:
Haley to Steve Young in the locker room after a 49ers loss: “I could have fucking won that game in my sleep! You’re a motherfucking pussy faggot quarterback! A motherfucking pussy faggot quarterback with no balls!” You know, I used to say the EXACT same things about that guy!

James Washington on Jim Everett: “Yeah, I would smash Jim Everett when I wasn’t supposed to, but I thought the bitch was a punk.”

Washington: “A lot of were addicted to it… to the pussy.” Well, who can blame anyone for pussyholism?

Irvin, to teammates in the locker room: “How can I allow only one woman to have a body this good? This is the body you will aspire to have. This is the body you will aspire to achieve. You will not achieve it, but this is what you will strive to achieve.” Notice he made no similar boasts about his brain.

Anonymous player: “Mike got more Cowboys laid than touchdown catches.”

Anthony Montoya, Irvin’s assistant: “The one thing I felt guilty about is helping Mike lie so many times to Sandy (Irvin’s wife). He cheated on her nonstop.”

Columnist Mike Freeman on Emmitt Smith: “He had a huge ego that made him sort of a dick.”

Emmitt Smith to cornerback Clayton Holmes, after Holmes asked Smith to sign an autograph for his mom, with his mom standing right nearby: “Man, I ain’t signing shit!”

Anonymous player: “Mike didn’t have a drug problem. Mike had a pussy problem.”

Jerry Jones: “I could step out and hire Barry Switzer as coach of the Dallas Cowboys tomorrow and he’d do a better job than Jimmy (Johnson). Hell, I could probably get Lou Holtz over here.”

“I had one of those anal probes, but I’m a little more clearheaded now… Did you say you wanted me to coach the Cowboys?…” Switzer to Jones, after being offered the Cowboys job right after having a colonoscopy. Jones never bothered to interview Switzer before offering him the job.

Switzer, at his first meeting with the team: “Where the hell is Charles Haley? I’m mad at you! I heard you flicked your dick at everybody, and you didn’t do it to me? What am I, chopped liver?”

“Give me five minutes and I’ll take you to heaven,” Jones to a female friend of a reporter. He also asked the woman if she had any panties on under her skirt.

And all that barely begins to scratch the surface of what Pearlman was able to dig up. So I implore you to buy “Boys Will Be Boys” with all due haste. That way, we can all make inside jokes about Charles Haley’s Frankencock TOGETHER, as a family.

As I’ve said before, I’m not really much of a reader. Your parents may have told you that reading is cool, but that’s a lie. Reading is crazy gay. If one of your roommates is playing Madden and the other one is reading “Eat. Pray. Love,” guess which one you’re gonna want to go drinking with? Not the douche trying to expand his mind, that’s for sure.

But recently, best-selling author and Official Friend Of The Blog Stefan Fatsis sent us a copy of his new book ”A Few Seconds Of Panic,” which comes out today. So I read it. And, in doing so, it occurred to me that one way to alleviate the agony of not being able to watch football during the offseason is to read about it. Who knew? It’s almost as good as the real thing. Except I can’t hold a beer, eat chips, and hold open a book simultaneously. Hey publishing industry: if you want more of us to read, every book should come with a free music stand to rest the book on. That would be some good shit.

Fatsis wrote his book after spending training camp with the Broncos as a place kicker and then covering the team through the 2006 season, a season that included Jake Plummer’s benching in favor of Jay Cutler, and Darrent Williams’ murder on the same day the 49ers knocked the Broncos out of the playoff hunt. Fatsis also did not take part in ANY contact drills. What a puss! Hey Fatsis, put a hat on and go hit someone, you timid little Greek bastard. I don’t care if you’re “too old”, or “too small” or “in possession of two reconstructed knees that could crumple any second”. NFL players routinely destroy their bodies purely for my enjoyment. I see no reason why you can’t do the same.

The most illuminating thing about the book is the fact that, by and large, most football players can’t stand their fucking jobs. Oh, they like playing in games. But they only get to do that three hours a week. The rest of the week blows. The coaches are assholes. The fans are assholes. The media are assholes. The pay isn’t really all that great if you’re just a practice squadder. You get hurt constantly. And chronically. And, when you do get hurt, you don’t get a card that everyone in the office signs like at my day job. You get fired.

There’s no job security unless you’re an All-Pro, and 99% of guys aren’t that. Most of the players can’t even figure out why they do it. They’re constantly being hired, then fired, then rehired, and the re-fired. Hundreds of guys are hired every year to bust ass through camp, despite management having no intention of keeping them when roster cuts come down. Your pay for going through camp? A few grand. Most of those guys never even earn the yearly minimum. Coaches constantly tell players their jobs are in jeopardy, yet refuse to clue them in as to where they stand. If your boss did this, you’d fucking murder him.

In a way, it makes sense that NFL players are so jaded and cynical. Unlike most sports, football is the one sport where your time spent actually playing is but a mere fraction of the time you invest: lifting, practicing, going to boring as shit meetings, going to game “rehearsals” where you stand in formation 90 times over, etc. Compare that to baseball. Baseball players get to spend most of their time playing in REAL games. That’s fun. Football? Eh, not so much. You gotta sit through a whole lotta bullshit to get to Sunday.

You also come to learn a few other things from Fatsis’ book, like:

-Todd Sauerbrun is a total asshole.

-I mean it. A real douche. But you probably already surmised that.

-Tight end Nate Jackson’s hip hop name is “Jack Nasty”

-Mike Shanahan can best be described as aloof, detached, insensitive, unemotional, manipulative, uncharismatic, controlling, uncommunicative, petty, and at times incompetent. And, of course, overly tan. But most players agree, he’s one of the BETTER coaches to play for.

-Jake Plummer’s a badass.

-Jason Elam is one of those Tebow-esque, Evangelical Christian overachievers who seems kinda cool to hang out with. Unless you’re gay. He might not like that.

There’s also no shortage of candid, profanity-laced quotes from people in the Broncos organization that, when extrapolated from the broader story, could be totally blown out of proportion by the media. So let’s go ahead and do that right now…

Jake Plummer: “Yeah, I missed some (offseason) workouts. And you know what? Mike Shanahan, you can kiss my fucking ass for being pissed at that… I don’t want to be here every fucking day in the offseason.”

Nate Jackson: “Half the guys out there fuck up, basically, every single play.”

Ian Gold: “This is a business. When I’m here on this field, it is absolutely business. When I’m in the meeting rooms, it is business. Don’t hug me, don’t touch me, don’t call me your buddy, don’t tell me you love me, because I know you’ll motherfuck me as soon as I leave the room.”

Mike Shanahan (after a bad practice): “Guys get their opportunity, they shit in their hat.”

Tom Nalen (to Fatsis after missing a kick that would have saved players 30 minutes of meeting time): “Thanks for fucking us.”

Jake Plummer (to Pat Bowlen): “Hey, Mr. Bowlen, those are sweet boots. Where’d you get ‘em?”

Pat Bowlen (to Jake Plummer): “Aw, these are some fuckin’ ostrich skin. You got to get yourself a pair of these, you little fucker.”

(NOTE: Bowlen will indeed become a new KSK kharakter. He’s like the Double-J’s brother.)

Jason Elam (regarding the theory of evolution): “You’ve got this goo man they want you to think we came from. It doesn’t make sense to me.” (Yeah, scientists! What’s with this half-assed goo man shit? There’s nothing in the New Testament about Swamp Thing!)

Ian Gold: “The hard part for me is dealing with a lack of loyalty, dealing with people who have such a lack of integrity that it’s just sickening… You have coaches that will smile in your face and they’ll shit on you the next second.”

Jake Plummer (to Mike Shanahan during a game): “Just call the plays. I’m going out there and playing fucking football.”

Good stuff, Fatsis. You gave me a real glimpse inside the minds of NFL players. You got me to sympathize with them. Not enough to stop making fun of them, but a good amount nevertheless. I give your book a hefty FOUR THROWGASMS. I would have given you five, except that you say in the book that Matt Stover deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Pfft. Matt Stover can suck my balls.