Did You Know – Ohio State Buckeyes
11/12/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 12, 2005
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Did you know the reason linebackers A.J. Hawk, Bobby Carpenter and Anthony Schlegel grew out their hair before this season is to pay tribute to Pat Tillman, a former linebacker with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals and the Arizona State Sun Devils?
You might remember Tillman as the player who gave up the glamorous life of professional football to join the Army Rangers in May 2002 in the wake of the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. Since losing his own life April 22, 2004 on active duty in Afghanistan, he now is remembered as a role model of courage and patriotism.
Long before this season, Hawk and Carpenter, as well as Schlegel, decided to grow out their hair as a tribute to the former Arizona State walkon who went on to become the Pac 10’s Defensive Player of the Year in 1997, the season after the Buckeyes defeated the Sun Devils in the Rose Bowl. Tillman’s locks were long when he led his team with six tackles and a sack against the Buckeyes. He cut them off following that game, only to grow them out again when he reached the NFL, where he spent four seasons earning league-wide respect for his hard hits despite his small stature. He passed up a three-year $3.6 million contract to enlist in the Army Rangers with his younger brother Kevin, once a minor-league prospect in the Cleveland Indians’ organization. Hawk, Carpenter and Schlegel read about Tillman’s story in the 2004 “Winner’s Manual,” a handbook given to Ohio State football players by coach Jim Tressel before the season, and decided on the tribute.
“We read about his story in the Winner’s Manual,” Hawk said. “He played the game the way it was supposed to be played. We patterned our game after his.”
They patterned their hair style after him as well.
“It was a collaborative effort,” Carpenter said of their decision to pay tribute to Tillman in this way. “More than anything we wanted to show our appreciation of the way he played the game. He played his butt off every play. That is what made him successful.”
The group of seniors has become one of the top linebacking crews in college football this season. They rank among the Top 4 tacklers on the squad this season, led by Hawk, a semifinalist for the Lombardi and Butkus awards, who has 84 tackles. A season ago, he registered 141 tackles to pace the Buckeyes. Schlegel is second on the team with 52 tackles and Carpenter has 42 tackles with 10.5 tackles-for-loss and eight sacks, including four against Michigan State. In that game, in which the Ohio State defense set a school record with 12 sacks, the trio combined for 40 tackles, led by Hawks’ 19 stops.
