Pat Tillman Coverage 'The Most Important Story ESPN.com Has Ever Done'

You can't fully understand America in the 21st Century without knowing the story of Pat Tillman. The story of Tillman encompasses 9/11 and our nation's response to it, the way a tiny portion of the country bore an enormous portion of the burden for the war on terror, the failures of the war on terror and the ways the American government has misled its people about those failures.

And no news outlet has done as good a job explaining the Tillman story as ESPN.com, led by Mike Fish's An Un-American Tragedy.

ESPN.com isn't often noted for investigative journalism, but Fish's work would be worthy, if it had appeared in a newspaper, of a Pulitzer Prize. And Raquel Christie writes in the American Journalism Review that ESPN is justifiably proud of its role in shedding light on the Tillman story.

"I think this is the most important story ESPN.com has ever done," says Kevin Ball, the site's copy chief, who also worked with Fish on the story. "Because it goes beyond sports. And I think that's the greatest thing about sports – it's not just about the field, but it's about life."

If you haven't read Fish's work, you need to.