THE COMEBACK KID AT 48: IT’S MORE THAN FOOTBALL
ONE-TIME CFLer MARINOVICH CONFRONTS HIS DEMONS BY SUITING UP ONE MORE TIME
• Halfway through a two-hour practice that began in searing 40C heat, the football players formed a sweaty circle in the outfield of a high school baseball park marked with the faintest of yard lines. Arms were raised and hands touched in a standard ritual of team unity.
“One, two, three, family!” came the chant that included No. 12, a weathered man of 48 years, who first joined in such choruses as a young boy.
In the decades since, Todd Marinovich has demonstrated more sides than a hexagon as he drifted in and out of the public eye: high school phenom, object of national fascination in college at Southern California, NFL failure, surfing/ skateboarding dude, drug addict, artist, counterculture figure. Most of all, perhaps, Marinovich is held up as a cautionary tale, widely depicted as a victim of his father’s attempt to engineer a star athlete with intense physical training.
Now, the old quarterback is experiencing a mid-life crisis in the lower rungs of football that is as intriguing as it is desperate.
“We knew you’re crazy,” Marinovich says of the reaction from loved ones when he told them he was going to suit up for the SoCal Coyotes, a team in the World Developmental Football League. “Now it’s confirmed.”
But, in some ways, this makes sense, even as it creates odd scenes like Marinovich being tutored by a teammate half his age. Sports provide the structure, demand the discipline and establish the goals that can benefit a chronic substance abuser.
“I really haven’t known how to deal with life,” Marinovich said.
The CFL “saw” Marinovich when he signed as a free agent with the B.C. Lions in 1999. He was on the sidelines for all the regular season games and one playoff game, but did not see any action and was released in 2000.
Marinovich has tried before, with little success, to parlay his talent for throwing a football into happiness and stability. Sixteen years ago, his Arena Football League career concluded with ejections from consecutive games, followed by a suspension for dodging drug tests so he could hide his heroin addiction.
Marinovich might also be in search of family. His father, Marv, with whom Todd reconciled after a harsh upbringing in Newport Beach, Calif., has Alzheimer’s. Marinovich is divorcing his wife, and time with their two children is limited to weekends outside the summer.
He said he is clean and sober — for now.
On Sept. 2, in his first game since age 15 that Marinovich claims was not in the midst of drug or alcohol use, he threw for seven touchdowns in a 73- 0 win over the California Sharks. A sore shoulder kept him out of the Coyotes’ game last Saturday.
“This comeback has very little to do with football,” said David Miller, coach and conscience of the Coyotes, a self- professed faith- based organization built around family and football.
Miller opens his home to players and their empty stomachs around practices. He pointed to a sofa and said, “Over a hundred of them have slept there overnight.”
Miller texts Marinovich often: “How are you going to stay sober for the next hour?”
No players are paid in this league. They “play for the tape,” with the hopes that talent evaluators in paying leagues will give them a shot.
For Marinovich’s mother, Trudi, there were more visceral concerns about the Coyotes’ offensive line.
“How are we going to be up front?” she asked Todd. “How are we going to protect my boy?”
The Coyotes are a non- profit organization that subsists partly on corporate donors. Last year, Marinovich was one of the team’s assistant coaches. Miller, however, thought it would be good for Marinovich, as well as for the team, for him to take another shot at quarterback.
Marinovich knows about aches and pains. He wears the most protective equipment available, notably a knee brace from the company that supplies an aging quarterback of greater prominence, Tom Brady. In practice, Miller forbids tacklers from making contact with the quarterback, regardless of name or reputation.
But Miller cannot keep Marinovich in a bubble. In August last year, a naked Marinovich was arrested in someone’s backyard while in possession of marijuana and methamphetamine. His drug- related offences have reached double-digits, with some resulting in felony charges.
Marinovich might remain retired had he not pledged to dial down his extreme competitiveness.
“One thing I’m letting go of is perfectionism,” he said. “I’m beginning to learn to live with imperfection.”
That compulsion for mistakefree play was ingrained early by Marv Marinovich. His father set out to build the perfect quarterback. He had Todd lifting hand weights and performing pull-ups at age 3. As the boy grew older, training intensified to the extent that some experts considered it child cruelty and have blamed his father for the son’s subsequent problems.
“That’s unfair,” said Marinovich, who nonetheless refers to Marv as a one-time “rage-aholic.” “He was doing the best he could with the information he had.”
Marinovich says he rises early, prays, meditates and stretches. Sometimes he plays a few holes of golf. His residence sits alongside a course’s 17th green. Marinovich uses glow-in-the-dark balls to whack pre- dawn, before the flagsticks are installed.
“This might surprise you,” he said, smiling, of his eagerness to master a new sport, “but I have an addictive personality.”
I REALLY HAVEN’T KNOWN HOW TO DEAL WITH LIFE.