“Hero” is a very strong word, yet we often see it applied to a sports figure when he/she does something dramatic in the athletic arena.

A baseball player hits a walk-off home run and he is dubbed a hero.

A quarterback leads a game-winning drive and much is made of his heroics with time winding down.

The choice of words is rarely questioned and it is assumed the people using such vocabulary realize true heroes affect much more than the outcome of a game.

The sports world has given us real heroes, though that designation is due to deeds that carry much more weight than any clutch effort while wearing a team's jersey.

Bob Kalsu is one example. In his only season of professional football (1968), the offensive guard was named the Buffalo Bills' rookie of the year.

In 1969, he joined the U.S. Army and soon found himself in the middle of the Vietnam War. He was killed in July 1970 by an enemy mortar, leaving behind a wife and two children. His son was born just two days after his death.

Kalsu had been in the ROTC while enrolled at the University of Oklahoma, but was not called to active duty after graduating. He was able to play the one season with the Bills, who selected him in the eighth round of the 1968 draft.

Those close to Kalsu urged him to join the reserves as a number of professional athletes were doing during that time. That would have allowed him to continue playing football, but Kalsu had made a promise when he joined ROTC to serve in active duty.

According to a 2001 Sports Illustrated article, Kalsu told a friend, “I'm no better than anyone else ... I gave 'em my word.”

Kalsu was highly-touted when he joined the Bills. He had earned All-America honors with the Sooners and Billy Shaw, Buffalo's Hall-of-Fame guard, raved about his teammate's ability.

It's not a stretch to say Kalsu could have become a Hall-of-Famer himself. He could have been a mainstay on Buffalo's line when O.J. Simpson was running wild in the early-to-mid 1970s, but we'll never know. He chose a route that put himself in harm's way, not from charging defensive linemen, but from enemy fire in a far-off land many people at the time couldn't find on a map.

Kalsu's name is on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Bills honored him with inclusion on their Wall of Fame in 2000. Other names on the latter are much more familiar to football fans — Andre Reed, Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith and the aforementioned Shaw, among others.

But none of them made the sort of sacrifice, both with their career and life, as Kalsu.

Now, that's a hero.

Derek Pyda is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle