Marinovich Exhibits More Than Passing Interest in NFL Return

Todd Marinovich watched the 1998 Super Bowl from behind bars. He’d like to watch the 2000 Super Bowl from behind the offensive line of one of the participating teams.

Pipe dream?

Those who knew Marinovich in the recent past might ask what he’s been smoking. But those same people might barely recognize the Marinovich of today.

Gone, he says, is the drug habit that led to several arrests and a life adrift. Gone, he says, are most of the friends he associated with in those lost days. Gone is the dyed hair, which changed color with different performances of his rock band, Scurvy. Gone, too, is Scurvy.

At 29, Todd Marinovich wants to return to football, the game he turned his back on.

Marinovich has undergone a vigorous training program under his father and mentor, Marv, and biochemist Paul Prinz for the last four months, has added 25 pounds of muscle to his 6-foot-5 frame, weighing in at 220, and has sent out feelers through his attorney, Leonard Shulman, to NFL clubs.

Marinovich had his first tryout Friday at Orange Coast College for a representative of the Seattle Seahawks, who recommended that Marinovich be flown to Seattle for a better look.

“I’m just glad I didn’t waste any more time,” said Marinovich, who has been out of the NFL since he was released by the Raiders in 1993. “Some people waste their whole lives.”

A quarterback, Marinovich was a shooting star at USC before he flamed out, and a rising star with the Raiders before he crashed.

“It just wasn’t meant to be at that time,” Marinovich said. “But I believe football is my destiny.”

A high school star, he was known as “Robo QB” before he ever set foot on the USC campus because there was a perception that he had been programmed for the position from birth.

Both he and his father denied that, but there is no denying that Marv had Todd doing exercises in the first few months of his life, that Todd was not allowed “junk food,” or that Marv employed 13 different experts in various fields of physical development to work with the young phenom.

And, whether it was destiny or development, Marinovich was sensational as a freshman quarterback at USC and led the Trojans to one of their most memorable victories over UCLA in his sophomore season, throwing the winning touchdown pass with 16 seconds left. The play beat the Bruins, 45-42.

That was 1990 and it hasn’t been that good since, for either USC or Marinovich.

With his relationship with then-USC coach Larry Smith deteriorating, his focus on academics diminishing and rumors of drug use escalating, Marinovich left school, declaring for the 1991 NFL draft.

Arrested for cocaine and marijuana possession that year, Marinovich became known as “Marijuana-vich.”

The Raiders, however, long a haven for players unwanted elsewhere, made Marinovich a first-round pick in 1991. He lasted two years in silver and black, even getting an opportunity to start, but struggled with a bad offense on a bad team.

And even with the Raiders, Marinovich never seemed to fit in. A passionate surfer, he kept a surfboard strapped to the top of his car at the team’s Oxnard summer training camp. While the other players relaxed between the two daily workouts, Marinovich took off for the beach to pound the waves.

After being cut by the Raiders, he had a tryout in the Canadian Football League but blew out his knee before the start of the season.

In 1997, deputies, responding to a call to revive an unconscious friend at Marinovich’s Dana Point home, found marijuana plants, a syringe and prescription medicine that was not in Marinovich’s name. He served three months in an Orange County jail.

Football never seemed further away for Marinovich.

But when he got out, he joined a 12-step rehab program.

“I’ve been clean for almost two years,” he says.

And people frequently asked if he was ever going back to football.

“People asked me so much, it finally sunk into my head,” he said.

Friday at Orange Coast, Bill Quinter, the Seahawks’ pro scouting director, said he was pleasantly surprised.

“I think his arm strength has increased from what I remember,” Quinter said.

Was he concerned about Marinovich’s troubled past?

“I don’t worry about the past,” he said. “I came down to watch the Todd Marinovich of today.”