Todd Marvin Marinovich (born July 4 , 1969 in San Leandro, California) is a former American and Canadian football quarterback. He is known for the well-documented, intense focus of his training as a young athlete as well as his quick fall from grace upon reaching the professional leagues due to personal problems. He played for the Los Angeles Raiders of the National Football League and also had stints in the Canadian Football League and Arena Football League. He is of Croatian ancestry.
Early development and national attention
Marinovich was born Marvin Scott Marinovich, which was written on his birth certificate, but his mother changed it a few years later to Todd Marvin Marinovich. He spent most of his childhood being raised on the Balboa Peninsula of Newport Beach, California. His father, Marv Marinovich, had been a two-way lineman and a captain at USC during the 1962 national championship season and player in the 1963 Rose Bowl (where he was ejected for fighting). Marinovich's mother, Trudi (née Fertig), was a high school athlete and sorority girl at USC; she dropped out of college after her sophomore year to marry the football captain, Marv. After a brief time as an NFL lineman, Marv studied Eastern Bloc training methods and was hired by Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis as one of the NFL's first strength-and-conditioning coaches. Marv Marinovich later opened his own athletic research center, and began applying the techniques to his young son, introducing athletic training before he could leave the crib and continuing it throughout his childhood and adolescence. After over-training and harming his own NFL career by focusing too much on weight and bulk, Marv saw an opportunity to use techniques focusing on speed and flexibility (techniques that later formed the basis for modern core-based training). During her pregnancy, Trudi used no salt, sugar, alcohol, or tobacco; as a baby, Todd was fed only fresh vegetables, fruits, and raw milk.
Marinovich had a very successful high school career, becoming the first freshman to start a high school football game in Orange County. He began his career at Mater Dei High School, a large Catholic high school in Santa Ana that had turned out Heisman Trophy winner John Huarte (and later winner Matt Leinart). During his two years at Mater Dei, he threw for nearly 4,400 yards and 34 touchdowns; however, the team's record was mediocre, with no blocking for Marinovich, so his father engineered a transfer to Capistrano Valley High School, a public school in Mission Viejo, California. Marv had been friends with Capistrano Valley's coach, Dick Enright, who was a USC alumnus and former coach of the University of Oregon where he groomed quarterback Dan Fouts. Under Enright, Todd flourished and broke the all-time Orange County passing record and later the national high school passing record by passing for 9,914 yards, including 2,477 his senior year. He received numerous honors, including being named a Parade All-American, the National High School Coaches Association's offensive player of the year, the Dial Award for the national high school scholar-athlete of the year in 1987, as well as the Touchdown Club's national high school player of the year.
Marinovich took his college selection seriously, noting: "This is the biggest decision of my life. It means not only where I will play football but, most likely, who I will marry, who my best friends for life will be, where I will live. It means everything. And the one thing I know for sure is I'm too young to make this kind of decision by myself." He was heavily recruited by colleges; as a freshman he began getting letters from Stanford University, and at a Stanford camp he worked out with then-NFL quarterback and Stanford alum John Elway. Almost every major program recruited him, and he soon narrowed his choices down to Stanford, Arizona State, BYU, Washington, Miami and the University of Southern California (USC).
As his high school career progressed, Marinovich's unique development led to growing media attention. In January 1988, a California magazine placed him on the cover with the headline: "ROBO QB: THE MAKING OF A PERFECT ATHLETE." During his senior season, Marinovich came to national attention when Sports Illustrated published an article, titled "Bred To Be A Superstar", that discussed his unique upbringing under his father who wanted to turn his son into the "perfect quarterback". The article declared Marinovich "America's first test-tube athlete", and mentioned his mother took him to museums, played him classical music and jazz while banning cartoons as too violent and instead viewing films by Alfred Hitchcock and Agatha Christie. His father assembled a team of advisers to tutor him on every facet of the game. In a noted passage, the article described that:
He has never eaten a Big Mac or an Oreo or a Ding Dong. When he went to birthday parties as a kid, he would take his own cake and ice cream to avoid sugar and refined white flour. He would eat homemade catsup, prepared with honey. He did consume beef but not the kind injected with hormones. He ate only unprocessed dairy products. He teethed on frozen kidney. When Todd was one month old, Marv was already working on his son's physical conditioning. He stretched his hamstrings. Pushups were next. Marv invented a game in which Todd would try to lift a medicine ball onto a kitchen counter. Marv also put him on a balance beam. Both activities grew easier when Todd learned to walk. There was a football in Todd's crib from day one. "Not a real NFL ball," says Marv. "That would be sick; it was a stuffed ball."
Because of his strict upbringing and almost mechanical lifestyle under his father, some nicknamed him the "Robo QB." Long after Marinovich's professional career had ended, an ESPN columnist named the elder Marinovich one of history's "worst sports fathers." Marinovich eventually decided on USC, after being impressed during an official campus visit. His parents had both gone to USC and his sister, Traci, was a senior there. His uncle, Craig Fertig, was a quarterback at USC and, at the time Marinovich matriculated, an assistant athletic director.
During his high school career, Marinovich started drinking in after-game parties and smoking marijuana. His parents divorced around the time he transferred high schools, and he lived in a small apartment with his father for his final two high school seasons. Marinovich enjoyed the period, noting: "Probably the best part of my childhood was me and Marv's relationship my junior and senior years. After the divorce, he really loosened up. It was a bachelor pad. We were both dating." His use of marijuana grew to the point that he would meet with a group of friends--athletes, skaters, surfers and musicians--everyday before school to share a bong before classes in what they nicknamed "Zero Period." Having previously dealt with social anxiety, Marinovich found marijuana relaxed him and did not affect him later during sporting events. However, the rumors of his use spread to opposing fans which began to taunt him with chants of " Marijuana -vich" during basketball games.
College career
Marinovich entered USC as a Fine Arts major. He redshirted his first year during the 1988 season, as the Trojans were led by Rodney Peete. Already under intense pressure as a high school prospect, he was soon overwhelmed by the combination of high expectation and the many temptations that were prohibited under his strict upbringing. He was torn between embracing the freedom and following his father's teachings, noting that "I'm finally away from my dad telling me everything to do. And I've got to say I have taken advantage of it. Full advantage. He keeps telling me, 'Come on, you've got the rest of your life to fool around. Not now.' I know he's right. But there are a lot of distractions at SC." At one point Marinovich left school in his freshman year to see his mother (his parents divorced while he was in high school), stating "I wish I could go somewhere else and be someone else. I don't want to be Todd Marinovich."
Outside of his personal travails, Marinovich's football career for USC had an abrupt start. As a redshirt freshman in 1989, he was set to back up junior Pat O'Hara; however in the fall preseason practices, O'Hara suffered a major leg injury that thrust Marinovich to the starting spot. He became the first freshman quarterback to start a season opener for USC since World War II. After an upset loss to Illinois in the opener, where his performance garnered some criticism, Marinovich was able to rise to the challenge of the position: He completed 197 of 321 passes during the regular season for 16 touchdowns and 12 interceptions with a 61.4% rate, just .1% behind the NCAA freshman record. UPI and The Sporting News named him the College Freshman of the Year for 1989 and he was the only freshman on the All-Pac-10 team and the first freshman quarterback ever named. Against Washington State, he led a last-minute comeback that became known as "the Drive", where he led the offense on a ninety-one-yard march downfield with eleven crucial completions, including a touchdown pass and a two-point conversion, that prompted former President Ronald Reagan to call Marinovich in order to congratulate him and welcome him over to his home in Los Angeles. The Trojans went 9—2—1, won the conference and the season was capped by a victory over Michigan in the Rose Bowl in what was Bo Schembechler's final game as a head coach.
Marinovich entered the 1990 season as a redshirt sophomore and a Heisman Trophy-candidate. However, the pres
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