Honor Bound

Arizona State has announced plans to retire Pat Tillman’s jersey at a ceremony Nov. 13 during a football game against Washington State.

Until then, Connor Banks will don uniform No. 42 through one last emotional, if not ghostly, season.

Banks, to honor Tillman, will carry an American flag into each Arizona State football game this fall and then finally, in a flash-forward visual he can’t contemplate without choking up, take No. 42 off his back and hand it over to history.

“It’s hard to comprehend that moment right now,” Banks said last week during an interview in the school’s media relations office.

Fans and friends will watch Banks play and be reminded of Tillman, the former Arizona State and Arizona Cardinal player who died April 22 during combat action in Afghanistan.

Banks is more than a senior defensive tackle now, wearing the jersey of a man he admired.

Banks becomes a symbol of something larger, an homage payer to a player who turned down millions to join the Army Rangers, only to lose his life in a story that has moved from large to larger than life.

Over the weekend, Tillman was posthumously awarded the Silver Star. A public memorial service will be held today in San Jose, Tillman’s hometown.

If it’s true you can’t walk in another man’s shoes, how do you occupy space in a hero’s football jersey?

“I don’t see it as a burden,” Banks said. “I see it as a responsibility that was somehow bestowed upon me. ... You can’t really live up to somebody like Pat Tillman. It’s something you strive for. It’s a goal. It’s an almost unattainable goal. ... The best I can do is strive for it.”

It was not Banks’ idea to keep wearing No. 42. He said he would have switched uniform numbers in a heartbeat if it had made anyone uncomfortable.

“I would have been happy just to wear it for the time that I did while I was here,” he said.

He picked No. 42 at Arizona State in part because he admired Tillman, a Sun Devil linebacker from 1994 through 1997.

Banks grew up in Richmond, Calif., a bridge crossing from where Tillman was raised.

Banks was lifting weights the morning of April 23 when he heard, sometime between 6:45 a.m. and 7, about Tillman’s death.

Later that day, Arizona State Coach Dirk Koetter called Banks at home and asked if he wanted to wear No. 42 this year.

“He said, ‘We want you to wear it, we feel you’re the type of guy that personifies what Pat Tillman stood for,’ ” Banks said.

Banks, like Tillman, graduated from college before he exhausted his eligibility. Banks is an honor student, a Maroon and Gold Scholar-Athlete.

Banks did not set out to become the last player to wear Tillman’s number.

“I’d much rather have him still here,” he said.

That is not how events unfolded, sadly, so Banks will play football for himself and, as he sees it, a spiritual purpose.

“For it to happen to me is just a huge honor,” Banks said. “It fills me with pride, and just humbles me with what he did for his country and for what he did for ASU.”

Banks doesn’t have to venture far to grasp the impact Tillman’s death has had, especially in Arizona.

He has stepped outside the football offices outside Frank Kush Stadium and watched the steady procession of people who continue to pay respects at a makeshift memorial for Tillman.

The shrine rose from nowhere near the stadium gates, at the end of a circular driveway that has turned a routine turn off 5th Street into a wake on wheels.

Visitors descend here to empty their hearts and pockets. Arizona State hats appear to have been taken directly off heads and placed properly into dirt. The area has become a random resting spot for flowers, American flags, newspaper clippings that have yellowed under the Arizona sun.

Someone placed an empty mug from the “Sun Devil Sports Lounge.”

Parents have carved out time to stop by the site with their children, some of whom have scribbled tributes in crayon.

Thank for protecting us

Matt Keating, age 5 years.

One child left a “Yu-Gi-Oh” trading card of “Great Soldier of Stone.”

On a recent afternoon, a man and woman slowly circled past the memorial site in their air-conditioned car. The woman, on the passenger side, had tears in her eyes when she passed.

Two men in a cola truck, probably on their lunch break, stopped to pay respects.

Military men have left service medals in the dirt; others have fashioned heartfelt poems and placed pebbles on the parchment to keep the desert wind from blowing away their sentiments.

The company that handles Arizona State’s publications donated a 12-by-40-foot banner that drapes over the top deck of the stadium.

It reads: “Honor-Courage-Integrity, American Hero Pat Tillman, We Will Miss You.”

Banks has stood at the Tillman memorial and, like hundreds of others, tried to make sense of eulogies offered to a football player most had never met.

“I guess what struck me the most is someone that wasn’t that big on media, wasn’t big on the limelight just affected so many people,” Banks said. “To have that kind of effect on the nation is unimaginable, it boggles the mind.”

Tillman’s death has clearly struck a chord with Americans trying to come to grips with life, death and the realities of modern warfare.

Since Tillman’s death, Arizona State officials have been inundated with e-mails and phone calls. Several publishers have called to inquire about book deals. Carter DeHaven, who produced “Hoosiers,” reportedly is interested in the movie rights.

The attention comes with a twist, given that Tillman was a man who wanted no publicity for leaving the NFL and joining the Army Rangers.

Banks says he understands why so many have coalesced around Tillman’s story.

“No matter what your political beliefs are, it’s just having people like that standing up for what they feel is right and willing to fight and sacrifice their life,” Banks said.

“If there were more people like that in the world, whether it’s going to war, or just standing up for your beliefs in front of everybody, you feel like we can get everything going in the right direction.”

Banks says you won’t have to worry about his upholding Tillman’s honor in uniform No. 42.

He guarantees a visitor there will be no news regarding him on the campus police blotter or the scrolls of academic probation.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said.

Banks is going to slip on No. 42 for his team’s Sept. 2 opener against Texas El Paso, play as hard as he can, then slip out of No. 42 in November.

“There’s so much emotion it’s kind of hard to think about it,” Banks said. “I actually almost see myself shedding tears at that moment.”

He won’t be the only one.