Remembering real football heroes on Memorial Day

Football is rooted in militaristic terms: the blitz, bomb, cannon arm, shotgun, trenches, and many others.

Game strategy is often likened to battle strategy: offensive, defensive, the audible.

But football is football—ultimately my favorite game and spectator sport. War is...well, hell, as Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman famously said.

This story is personal. My father was a Marine in World War II in the Pacific on islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He was one of the first ground troops into Hiroshima and Nagasaki mere weeks after atomic bombs were dropped.

Those days, he said, were among his toughest.

He was one of the lucky ones who came home. As he and almost every war veteran says, "The real heroes are still over there."

My son, 19, is now in the Marines and at Camp Pendleton for his first permanent duty station. He chose this path of his own volition and as a complete surprise to everyone who knows him.

But on this Memorial Day, we remember all those who died serving their country, specifically the nameless and faceless heroes.

Here are some famous football players who died in service.