His good looks, cocky deportment, and status as a football star led some people to assume that he was a stereotypical jock—entitled, self-absorbed, intellectually shallow, incurious about the world beyond football. Actually, Pat was none of these things. A diary he kept as a sixteen-year-old reveals an introspective youth who mourned the death of a beloved cat, opined that religion was inadequate to elucidate the mysteries of existence, and ruminated on the downside of his empathetic nature. “I can’t even be an asshole to someone anymore,” the journal sardonically notes, “without feeling bad.
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