Marinovich Upbeat About Son’s Pro Draft : Sports: Todd will be a high pick in NFL selections today, father predicts, and he says their relationship is as strong as ever.

A year ago, Marv Marinovich believed he had silenced critics of his controversial athletic training methods.

His son Todd, custom-coached from infancy with Soviet Bloc techniques, had turned into a star quarterback at USC, a lucrative future in pro football ahead of him.

Marinovich’s other son, Mikhail, had been analyzed at the age of 2 as possessing “fast-twitch muscle fiber” and was already jogging two miles. Parents continued to bring children into his Anaheim gym for training.

Now, after a bumpy year--during which Todd’s squabbles with his coach were eclipsed by his arrest on cocaine possession charges and his quitting of school--an ever-confident Marinovich says nothing has changed and the future is bright enough for shades.

Not only has Todd impressed professional scouts, many of whom consider him a top draft choice, but Marv said their father-son relationship is as strong as ever.

“He’s a happy-go-lucky, enthusiastic person,” the father said. “I don’t see that anything has changed.”

The 21-year-old continues to train eight hours a day, up to seven days a week, with three different specialists, including an expert in martial arts.

Today, father and son will face perhaps the ultimate test of Marv Marinovich’s training theories: the National Football League draft.

“Everyone wants to be the No. 1 draft choice,” Marv Marinovich said. “It’s part of the dream when you’re young.”

Marinovich said professional scouts are “abuzz in New York and San Francisco” about Todd.

“They couldn’t be more impressed. The scouts say: ‘This isn’t the guy I read about. He’s a great kid.’

“As a father, you like to hear that.”

His son’s arrest on cocaine possession charges in January disappointed the elder Marinovich but prompted little soul-searching because psychologists told him Todd did not have a drug problem, he said.

“Kids are kids,” he said. “In my day it was alcohol. Now it’s another area. . . . “He’s allowed to make a mistake. Why should he be different from any other kid because he’s a great athlete?” he said.

“When you talk about maturity, I don’t know any 21-year-old who’s mature.”

Todd, living with his mother and her parents in Newport Beach, has begun a yearlong, twice-weekly drug counseling class in Laguna Beach, a diversion program that, if completed, will result in the dismissal of misdemeanor possession charges against him.

Family members have said he is now handling most of the appointments with doctors, lawyers and football scouts on his own. Marv Marinovich was unsure what the drug classes were teaching.

Meanwhile, under his father’s coordination, Todd is training with specialists in quarterbacking, motion and martial arts. The martial-arts expert teaches him the concept of the “warrior’s heart”--an ability to control emotions and focus on the task at hand.

Marv Marinovich also uses biofeedback techniques that can send confidence-inspiring messages to a quarterback’s subconscious, such as, “You will see the entire field. Everybody else will be in slow motion. Your decision-making will be simple.”

Mikhail, now 3, plays two hours of tetherball with his dad. They play catch and do “puzzles and little map things. He probably dances now more than anything,” Marinovich said.

As an athletic coach, the 51-year-old Marinovich, a former lineman for the USC Trojans and the Oakland Raiders, said he is now trying “to do a better job” preparing Mikhail and his other clients for the pressures of competition and leadership.

Over the years, it has occurred to him that he should have included more spiritual training in Todd’s upbringing. “In some of our Sunday workouts, maybe our time could have been better utilized,” he said.

That’s not to say he believes religion is an antidote to social ills.

Besides, he said, no one ever proved Todd used drugs; he was arrested only for possession. His new, broad-based training is not a result of the year’s events, he said.

“Something I’ve always been concerned about is trying to touch all the bases,” he said. “I felt all along there needs to be some type of preparation (for success). You can get cut and your career’s over. The pressure of dealing with the media. Leadership. How to get along with the boss. All areas are important, as much or more so than the physical ability.

“I don’t think anybody is ready for the pressures of college athletics,” he said.

“Can you prepare anybody for stardom?” he asked.

“I just try to be the best parent you can be.”

THE RAIDERS LIKE HIM: The Los Angeles team might draft Marinovich in the first round. C3