He is walking away from a million dollars a year.

For a job that pays $1,022 a month.

With the chance to be killed just about every day.

So what kind of fool does this make Pat Tillman, anyway?

Just about the best kind, it looks like from here.

For the last four seasons, Tillman has played safety for the Arizona Cardinals, and also has served as one of those nerveless, invaluable, plug-him-in-anywhere special-teams volunteers.

Now he's trading in that job for a position on a very real, very lethal sort of bomb squad. Tillman has enlisted in the United States Army. Specifically, he wants to join the special forces, become a Ranger.

He wants to do this along with his brother, Kevin, and they both want to do this because of what happened just over eight months ago. The wrenching events of 9-11 roused something in both of them and they are fueled now by an irresistible surge of patriotism.

So here we have two professional athletes (Kevin was an infielder in the Cleveland Indians organization) volunteering to give up the life of privilege and perks for the opportunity to kill terrorists. Or vice versa.

Professional sports being occupied as it is these days by so many pampered egoists, your antennae began to quiver with suspicion immediately. Was this some self-serving act of indulgence? A pitch for publicity? A photo op and nothing more?

All available evidence suggests, rather forcefully, no.

Pat Tillman went to Denver, where he wouldn't be known, to enlist. And he has steadfastly refused to hold flashy news conferences or allow the Cardinals to do so. He has insisted there be no media coverage of the training. It isn't about him.

So the testimony summoned so far is unanimously in favor of the Brothers Tillman. In graphic contrast to many of the current breed, they are not, and never have been, of a materialistic bent. And Pat Tillman's sense of loyalty runs uncommonly true and deep.

His employer has been the sad-sack franchise of the NFL for decades. In 2001, though, he had a chance to move on up to the swanky side of town. The St. Louis Rams came courting Pat Tillman. The contract they put in front of him was for $9 million over five years.

And he turned it down.

To stay with a team that had no chance.

His agent, of course, had apoplexy.

Pat Tillman spurned the money and the opportunity to play for a Super Bowl team for no other reason than he felt obligated to the Cardinals. They had selected him. They had wanted him. He had pledged himself to them, in writing.

So he felt a sense of responsibility. How old-fashioned. How quaint. How extraordinarily wonderful.

"Pat's well runs very deep," Cardinals coach Dave McGinnis said. The Army "is something he feels very strongly about."

Tillman is 25. The age limit in the Rangers is 28. So he could still rake in some big paychecks for the next season or so, then enlist. But of course that misses the point entirely. What impels him is a sense of urgency to defend his country against terrorism.

It was hardly a coincidence that he chose the week leading up to Memorial Day for his enlistment.

So for the second time in a year, he's taking a pass on a huge sum of money.

"Materialistic things never meant much to Pat," said his agent, Frank Bauer.

Tillman played college football at Arizona State. He was an undersized linebacker, one of those players who will run into a burning building again and again. As much on grit and gristle as anything else he was the Pacific Ten Conference player of the year in 1997. And the Cardinals, who had promised him they would, took him in the seventh round of that draft.

In return, over four seasons he made 478 tackles, and a reputation. Some of his teammates told interviewers they had agreed that if anyone on the team would be compelled to do something about defending the country after 9-11, it would be Tillman.

When the Cardinals wide receiver Frank Sanders heard that Tillman had enlisted, he said he was not at all surprised.

"Pat's like Forrest Gump," he said. "He tries everything."

When Tillman had first arrived at Arizona State, it was suggested that he redshirt his freshman year, sacrifice a season to pack on some size before butting helmets with the big boys. His response was: "I'm graduating, and I'm doing it in four years."

He failed to do so.

Instead, he got his degree in 3 1/2 years.

With a grade point average of 3.84.

His degree, in marketing, reads: Summa Cum Laude.

Pat Tillman is 5-foot-11, 200 pounds. They have not invented an instrument to measure principles such as his.

"The guy has got something to him," McGinnis said.

Yes. Yes, he does. And you'd like some of it for yourself.