America at Large: On Christmas evening Reggie White took his family to see the film Fat Albert. He went to bed early that night, and never woke up.

When I heard the next day that the "Minister of Defense" had died in his sleep, my thoughts immediately raced back 14 years to the old Veterans' Stadium in Philadelphia and a late-season NFL game between the Eagles and the Packers.

A highly-touted Green Bay rookie named Tony Mandarich had drawn the duty of blocking White that day. Mandarich had been a first-round selection in the previous year's draft. The Packers thought so highly of him coming out of Michigan State that they passed up chances to draft both Deion Sanders and Barry Sanders and made him the highest-picked lineman in NFL history.

That year, 1990, was also when the NFL began testing the incoming collegiate crop for steroids, and once he got off the juice, Mandarich failed to evince the brute strength that had made him such a force in college. Never was it more evident than on two successive plays that day at the Vet.

On the first, White simply overpowered Mandarich, using his leverage to flatten him like a pancake as he steamrolled over him to sack Green Bay quarterback Don Majkowski. On the next play, White didn't even bother with guile or treachery. He drove off the line of scrimmage and hoisted Mandarich like a fork-lift. Without even slowing down, he carried his 300 lb quarry straight into Majkowski, and the three of them collapsed in a heap.

Half a dozen years later I watched White, by then playing for the Packers, duplicate the feat in Super Bowl XXXI. This time his overmatched victim was a New England tackle named Max Lane. Three times in that game White tossed Lane aside like a rag doll to sack the Patriots' Drew Bledsoe. One of my colleagues was moved to note afterward that "an offensive lineman is rarely noticed - unless, of course, a defensive end is picking him up and using him as a bowling ball to knock down the quarterback".

"I don't know if he was the best," said former Green Bay general manager Ron Wolf upon hearing of White's death, "but it won't take too long to call the roll."

When the NFL chose its all-time 75th anniversary team, White was listed as one of the defensive ends. He was elected to the Pro Bowl for 13 straight years from 1986 through 1998, and was twice - in 1987 and 1998 - named the league's Defensive Player of the Year.

Following an All-America collegiate career at the University of Tennessee, White began his professional career in 1984 with the Memphis Showboats of the late, unlamented USFL. When that league folded a year later, he signed with the Eagles, where he became a mainstay of the defence for the following eight years.

His impact off the field was even greater. Reggie White was a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit that brought about the current NFL system of free agency.

"He meant as much to us off the field as much as on it," said NFL Players' Association executive director Gene Upshaw. "He had his name on the lawsuit and he didn't get one penny. That's just the type of guy he was."

Having emancipated himself, White was free to sign with the highest bidder, and shocked his peers when he revealed that God had told him to sign with the Packers.

White had been courted by more glamorous franchises (the 49ers, Cowboys, Redskins, and New York Jets had all made offers), and his decision to cast his lot with a backwater Wisconsin town nearly devoid of African-Americans surprised many.

The Packers' few black players tended to live in places like Milwaukee and Chicago and made the long commute to work, but White would alter both perception and reality.

"It changed the fortunes of this franchise," recalled Packers president Bob Harlan. "Everyone thought Green Bay would be the last place Reggie would sign. It was monumental, because not only did he sign, he recruited for Green Bay. He sent a message to the rest of the NFL that Green Bay was a great place to play."

After the addition of White, and a concomitant trade in which Green Bay acquired an Atlanta back-up quarterback named Brett Favre, the Packers - who had won just one play-off game since the departure of the legendary Vince Lombardi in the late 1960s - won two straight Super Bowls.

A deeply religious man, White ultimately became an ordained Baptist minister, and helped found something called the "Christian Athletes United for Spiritual Empowerment". His contention that God had directed him to sign with the Packers was only the first indication of a fuzzy theology at work.

Presaging 2004's volatile debate on same-sex marriage, White caused public outrage when, in a 1998 address to the Wisconsin State legislature, he described homosexuality as "one of the biggest sins in the Bible".

"Homosexuals are not a race," said the Reverend White in his rant. "In the process of history, homosexuals have never been castrated."

White later apologised for the offensive remarks, but lest they be construed as a mere slip of the tongue, consider that when White, after his retirement, failed in an audition for a job as a television football analyst, his wife, Sara, claimed the network had succumbed to pressure from "the Sodomite community".

His penchant for the politically incorrect saw him resort to what the rest of us might consider dangerous racial stereotypes. Caucasians "know how to organise, run businesses and tap into money". Hispanics were "gifted at family structure. You see a Hispanic person, and he can put 20 or 30 people in one home". African Americans? "You go to a black church, and people are jumping up and down."

When one considers how other public figures have been vilified by history for similarly intolerant pronouncements, that Reggie White was able to overcome his indiscretions and died with his legacy that of a football legend and not that of a homophobic laughing stock is perhaps the greatest tribute of all.

"He was just a wonderful player, first of all," said Seattle coach Mike Holmgren, who was White's coach at Green Bay. "Then as a person, he was just the best. I'm a better person for having been around Reggie White."

Preliminary autopsy reports suggest that White died of sarcoidosis, a respiratory ailment which apparently triggered a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. "It was not only unexpected, it was also a complete surprise," said his friend Keith Johnson, director of White's athletic ministry. "Reggie wasn't a sick man. He was vibrant and had lots of energy and passion.

"A 43 year-old," said Johnson, "is not supposed to die in his sleep."