Todd Marinovich's Story is The Ultimate Cautionary Tale

Sports Dad's Beware

As a parent, you take pride in your kids. If they are well-behaved, smart, kind, or athletic, a good parent will take some pride in those things.

But this pride can easily fall out of balance and if it does it can create a little monster or a big monster.

Little Monster

If you take so much pride in what your kid does that you are blind to their faults, and you spoil them and tell them they're the best at everything when that's simply not true, that’s how you create a little monster.

A spoiled, entitled brat who thinks the world owes him or her praise everything, me they breath or leave the house.

Big Monster

But if your pride in your kid’s accomplishments feeds your ego and you like the taste a little too much, that type of pride can create a big monster.

An overbearing parent who pushes and forces their kid in directions of the parents choosing, with zero regard for the kid’s actual happiness.

It’s similar to ancient times when a king would marry his daughter to a prince who he knew was an immoral man, but he was still happy to trade his daughter's life for political gain; that was her only true purpose in his eyes.

These types of parents use the kid as a tool to get what they want, and sometimes, it breaks the kid so badly that they can never recover.

This was the case for Todd Marinovich, a first-round quarterback from back in the day. His father, Marv, set out to create the perfect QB through intense and, some might say, inhumane training methods.

From the time Todd was conceived, his dad was crafting what he believed to be the perfect environment to essentially “grow a quarterback.” Todd’s mom wasn’t allowed to have salt or sugar while she was pregnant with him, and when the newborn baby got home from the hospital, his dad had him doing leg stretches before he learned how to crawl.

He did eventually make it to the NFL, though he didn’t have anywhere close to the career his dad had tried to engineer. The “Robo QB” was treated as such, and the human being behind the magazine covers was deeply damaged and still struggles til this day.

His dad set out to make the perfect quarterback, but he made a costly miscalculation. He poured everything into Todd’s athletic pursuits and poured nothing into his pursuits as a human.

Maybe the environment Marv created for his son Todd would have been the perfect environment for a piece of AI machinery.

The Robo QB was just human after all, but it was the one skill that his dad never taught him.

This is a cautionary tale for a whole bunch of reasons, but one of the main reasons that doesn't always get highlighted in this story is that Marv Marenovich (Todd’s dad) wasn't a completely unredeemable guy. He had many good traits. This is important because sometimes we lean so heavily on a person’s good traits that we use them to justify the bad things they do.

This is key when examining ourselves. Just because we have good traits doesn’t mean we don’t need to make adjustments in other areas of our lives.

Marv Marinovich Good Traits

When he worked as a St. Louis Cardinals assistant coach, Marv set up an innovative light system so that Bonnie Sloan, the league's only deaf player, could read his lips in film sessions.

In the 70s and 80s, he treated black athletes like family, inviting several of them on family vacations in the face of racism.

In a bigoted society, he preferred working with girls. He said they worked harder and had less fragile egos than the guys.

Marv had the capacity for many good things, but his dark side would often cast a shadow over his light.

Marv’s Shadow

Marv was obsessed with molding athletes. On its own, this isn't a bad trait to have. But he ultimately put this obsession above all else, and instead of allowing his sons or his wife to be fully realized people, he made them all puppets in the Marv Puppet Show.

Let's start in 1969, when Trudi Marenovich was pregnant with the so-called Robo QB. When a woman is pregnant, she often has powerful cravings. These are sometimes associated with nutritional needs during the pregnancy or all of the hormonal changes the body is going through.

On a strictly human level, when these cravings get too strong, allowing some indulgence is a way to offer a drop of comfort during a nearly year-long process of pain and struggle that is unique to women. A little ice cream and pickles (or whatever weird combination of stuff your girl wants) can help provide a few moments of comfort. But when Marv’s wife Trudi was pregnant with Todd. Marv didn’t allow her to have even a drop of sugar or salt because it would interfere with his experiment. His obsession to mold the perfect athlete completely overrode his compassion. This would become a lifelong trend once the child was actually born.

Robo QB is Born

It started out a little obsessive, but it was probably not damaging in any real way. Marv started by having his newborn son stretch his hamstrings the first day he got home from the hospital and teething on frozen kidneys to sneak in extra nutrients.

Then it starts to get weird as he had this baby, trying to lift medicine balls before he learned how to walk.

I’ll give the man this; he put a lot of thought into molding this athlete. But that immediately shines a light on how he completely neglected part of his job as a dad, molding a young man.

As a trainer and coach himself, he understood the human body and, just to be safe, consulted experts in biochemistry and psychology in an attempt to build the perfect quarterback. But, I’m not sure how much of the psychologist’s advice he actually took; a high school level psychologist could have predicted issues with how he raised his son.

Todd’s Crazy Diet

I say that because I wonder what the psychologist's take would be on Todd’s crazy diet.

Todd wasn’t allowed to have any processed foods or sugar. Not as a snack, on his birthday, we talkin bout NEVER.

So a kid growing up in the 1980s (we talkin bout the absolute heyday of McDonald’s) was never allowed to indulge in a Happy Meal or a Big Mac. Yeah, that’s overkill.

Again, at its core, Marv’s intentions can be seen as good. Mcdonald's damn sure aint healthy for your body. Nobody’s arguing that. But to impose not just limitations but to strictly prohibit what was a staple of just being a kid is way over the top and, in most cases, will have more negative effects than positive.

Todd couldn't even have a slice of cake at a friend's birthday party. He had to take his own sugar-free cake to the party…so fun.

Many kids' earliest memories are of going to birthday parties, eating cake and ice cream completely guilt-free, getting a sugar rush, and running around until they drop into a hibernation. You can easily get away with that at that age.

Again, this is unhealthy if done every day, but I’ll make the argument that it's also unhealthy to be completely robbed of this experience. And once you're an adult and out from under this dictatorship, you are likely to overindulge in all the things you were prohibited from.

Todd’s Messed Up Childhood

Marv didn't realize it, but in his attempt to create the perfect quarterback, he actually created a broken human being.

According to an LA Times article, Todd's mom, Trudi, noticed this early on and tried to run away with Todd on multiple occasions. (This seems significant but is relegated to only one sentence, and I can’t find any more information on this part of the story.)

But Todd always ended up back with his father. When dude was in 6th-grade, his dad had him playing basketball against an 11th grader who was instructed to play as physically as possible.

At one point, Marv ordered his 6th-grade son and the 11th-grade hooper to stop playing and start fighting. Todd had gotten his ass kicked several times due his dad forcing him to fight against his will. Since they lock people up for dog fighting, this behavior from your dad should go in the same bucket.

There's a difference between old school dads whose kids were being picked on, and they made them stand up to their own bully, and forcing your son to play physical against a kid five grades ahead of him, then forcing him to fight that kid when he gets pushed around.

But that story gets wilder cuz when a sensible person saw an 11th grader fighting with a 6th grader, he stepped in to break it up, which pissed Marv off. Marv punched the peacemaker so hard he knocked his teeth out. This is a core memory for Todd, who says it looked like a cartoon.

This only further solidified Todd’s fear of his father and made him believe there was no one who could stand up to him.

Marv had a violent streak that didn't exclude women or kids.

He once threw Todd’s mom across the room into the dining room table. He also threw his female neighbor over a fence.

When Todd didn't perform like Marv wanted him to, he repeatedly hit him in the face during the car ride home. Todd never told his mom or sister about this, likely out of fear that they would stand up for him and be punished by Marv.

Todd looked at his circumstances and thought my mom can’t stop him. The guy at the gym can’t stop him. Nobody can stop him. Wait, the only person who can stop him is me.

The thing he thought would fix it was him performing better in sports, the one thing his dad loved in this world. So, from a young age, he wasn’t playing for the love, or even for pure motivation, like buying his parents a house. He was doing it to try to tame his beast of a father, who was terrorizing the family and calling it love.

Todd’s Highschool DAZE

By the time he hit high school, everybody wanted a piece of “The Test Tube Quarterback.” But, the interviewers unknowingly put Todd in a dangerous position. When asked about his father's choices for his life, Todd couldn't speak for himself; he had to appease Marv. Here’s a quote from Todd when asked about this time period years later.

"I was in fear," he says. "Am I going to tell the truth to a writer and go home and deal with Marv? That's a f------ no-brainer."

So he lied and said,

• he and his dad were partners

• that he loved being pushed towards his goals in this way

• that he stuck to the diet even when his dad wasn't around

• and that he was growing up in the perfect environment.

None of this was true, but I think Todd wanted it to be.

The truth was that Todd did want to play football, but his dad’s crazy training methods took the joy out of it completely. Todd did love his father and, like most boys, wanted to spend time with him, but as a father and son, instead of as a heartless dictator and his slave.

During these high school years, Todd's training only intensified. His dad called in a specialist to teach him how to visualize plays and quicken his reaction time. In one exercise, he bounced a ball wearing distortion glasses while he solved math problems out loud. He never got a day off; he worked out every day, including Christmas, Birthdays, Sunday through Saturday.

Even as a young kid, he was hopelessly overtrained both physically and mentally; his mind and body needed a break.

But after a grueling training session, he had a basketball game one night. And Marv didn’t feel he put forth 100% effort. So that night, after training and playing a full game and after not having a day off since the last time his mom ran away with him… Marv decided the answer was to beat his body and his mind down even further; that would do the trick. He made Todd run alongside the car all the way home, a full 8 miles away.

When Todd finally got home, he broke down into tears. Until his dying day, his father said he had zero regrets.

When most high school kids fall into drugs and alcohol. They do it to fit in with the supposed cool crowd. For Todd, it was for the same reason a grown man with kids and a mortgage does it. He was mentally and physically exhausted and needed an escape.

Todd started drinking and smoking marijuana at post-game parties. Then, he started doing it with a group of friends every day before school.

Having some ability to relax actually helped him on the field. Also, his mom finally divorced his dad, which surprisingly made things a little better for Todd. After the divorce, Marv lightened up a lot as he himself started dating again. This left a little less time for obsession with Todd, leaving more time for Todd to live his own life. During that time, Todd set a national career passing record in high school football for passing yards in a career.

Nobody threw for 6k yards in a career until 1968. By 1977, someone threw for 8k yards for the very first time. Ten years later, Todd became the first quarterback to pass for over 9k yards, falling less than 100 yards short of eclipsing 10k.

College DAZE/ Todd’s Freedom

While this time period offered a brief reprieve. It didn't fix all the damage done throughout Todd’s life. So, by the time he made it to college, his recreational drug and alcohol use was growing by the day.

I don't believe marijuana or alcohol are inherently bad; they can be used to enhance an already healthy life. But when used as a crutch to fill a hole in an unhealthy life, that’s when people generally get themselves into trouble.

If my theory is correct, that’s why Todd struggled as he did. While others indulge in these things aren’t tripped up at all.

Marv's plan was never to create a happy human being. Maybe he believed that being a great athlete alone would make his kid a happy and functioning adult. Maybe he didn't care about that side of it at all, but regardless, the results are the results.

But as far as athletic prowess is concerned, Marv's plan did work in the short term, as Todd received scholarship offers from every major college.

He attended USC, where he enjoyed more freedom than he’d ever known. The problem was, he filled that time with the one escape he learned in high school.

In college, he'd have one year to chill and get a break from all of the pressure he’d been under his whole life. Then, in year 2, as a redshirt freshman, he could lock in on ball and be ready to start as a redshirt sophomore. But as fate would have it, the starting quarterback got hurt in spring practice, and the redshirt freshman (Todd) had to start on opening day of his 2nd season.

His dad still came to every practice, watching like a hawk circling its prey. Todd couldn't smoke enough to completely block him out.

Todd was a notoriously slow starter, as he felt disconnected from the game he played. But he would snap into robo-quarterback form immediately after taking his first hit.

He had some great moments in college, including during his freshman season. Where he led USC on a 91-yard game-winning drive. He completed 11 passes on that drive, including the touchdown to finish it off. Then he completed the 2-point conversion to finalize the comeback win. He went off that game.

While he had his moments, his college career was just ok.

In two years, he threw for 4600 yards, 28 touchdowns, and 21 interceptions. Marv engineered all his physical traits but completely neglected his mental and emotional development into a man. So, his personal issues never truly allowed him to play up to his physical potential. You can’t just feed the body protein all day; you also have to feed the soul and spirit of a man.

Drug Issues Escalate

Todd’s marijuana and alcohol use had unsurprisingly graduated to cocaine by his 3rd year of college.

He yelled at his coach on national TV, taking out the anger he felt towards his father on any other authority figure. He was broken in a way that he couldn't express to Marv, but he couldn't stop himself from expressing it to any other authority figures.

While Todd did have more freedom in college than he had before, the only way he knew how to enjoy that freedom was through drug and alcohol use. That is, until his coach called him into his office and asked a question nobody had ever truly asked him.

"Todd," Smith said in his office, "what do you want to do?"

They were discussing academics.

"I want to do art," Todd said.

"Then why don't you do art?" Smith asked.

Todd became a fine arts major and loved it. For the first time in his life, he enjoyed school.

His artistic preferences are pretty fascinating and further illustrate (no pun intended) human beings’ need for some level of balance.

He didn't enjoy creating photo realism. Why? Because his whole life, he’d been forced to do things in one way. There was only the “right way”, with no room for experimentation, exploration, or creativity.

For Todd, the whole point of painting was to actually create, not to mimic perfect form like he‘d always been coached. He loved paintings that bursted with color and contrast, ones that seemed spontaneous in nature, not carefully planned out. He preferred the paintings that looked like they just flowed out, a representation of the soul, an expression of self. Something that wasn’t made just to please someone else, something real that didn’t concern itself with how others perceived it.

His love for art would stay with him for the rest of his life. The same couldn't be said about the game he was bred to play.

NFL (No Freedom League)

Despite a shaky career and serious character issues, Todd was ultimately selected in the first round of the 1991 NFL draft.

Brett Farve was drafted 33rd overall, but Todd was drafted 24th overall.

Unsurprisingly, Todd was not satisfied by the selection, the realization of Marv's dreams, in the least bit. But everyone around him couldn't stop telling him how lucky he was.

People often do this because they believe there's no way that things they deeply desire should not satisfy you, as if you're the same person. It's probably one of the most annoying things that human beings do. They can always quantify what you have but can’t recognize their own gifts and blessings. So they judge you for not being appreciative while they fail to appreciate the good things in their own lives.

"They say in our society, If you reach this, you'll be happy," Todd says. "I was miserable but couldn't tell you why. Everything around me is falling apart. I have a bank account, millions of dollars, and that's not making it better. What the f--- is wrong with me?"

True fulfillment comes from the pursuits of the heart. It’s a gift from God that gives us purpose and motivation in this life. The majority of people don’t believe this is true; they think any pursuit that brings you riches is the way you should go.

While that pursuit is typically easier in a sense, as it will more often align with the goals and beliefs of the world around you, it’s often pursued for approval from the world itself. But man is an imperfect being, so why dedicate your life to appeasing imperfection?

Pursuing something real changes your relationship with time. You go from spending many hours riding the clock, killing time, to appreciating every second, allowing time to live peacefully with you. I believe this should be the ultimate pursuit.

When Todd got his $2.5 million dollars for signing with the Raiders. He spent most of it killing time, through his ever-increasing drug use.

Todd was spiraling. His dad had called in experts to fine-tune his football skills, but he had never even taught him the basic fundamentals of being an adult man; that was the fatal flaw.

Todd described it, saying, “I think I missed Human Being 101”.

Todd tried to get sober on several occasions but failed time and time again. His first fiance could get down with some of the usage, but she left him on his birthday when he pulled out a crack pipe.

It's not unreasonable to think that a little cake and ice cream (the regular kind with sugar and all of the normal ingredients) during his childhood birthdays might have gone a long way. Now, as an adult, he was chasing that childhood feeling that he never got to experience as Robo QB. But now, simple cake and ice cream wasn’t enough; he needed hardcore drugs, or at least that’s what he believed.

With each stage of his football career, his drug use increased and got more and more hardcore. He constantly failed drug tests during his NFL days and was arrested for cocaine possession on multiple occasions. By 1994, only a few years after being drafted, Todd was done with the NFL. There was still interest in him from teams, but he wasn't interested in them.

He wanted to finally live his life completely on his own terms.

Let Freedom Sting

But after a couple of years of traveling around the world and getting high, he most likely began to run short on funds. At that time, he attempted to join the CFL, but after the time off, he tore his knee up on the first day of camp.

An injury like this is horrible for anybody, but it’s especially bad for someone with a drug problem. During his recovery, one of his high school friends introduced him to a new fix.

Todd, meet heroin.

Todd introduced himself and got to know the new fix well as he continued to fall down the dark hole of despair.

For the next several years, he tried to come back to football in an attempt to support his drug habit. It was all he knew, so he kept going back like a person who clings to an abusive relationship.

Over the next 10 years, he was arrested for drugs again and again, but when his son Barron was born in 2009, Todd wanted more than anything to get sober for him.

Still, he failed, and just one year later, his friend who’d introduced him to heroin died of a heroin overdose. Making matters worse, the friend had achieved sobriety and been sober for years at that point. But he relapsed and overdosed and passed away, never fully escaping the clutches of the terrible drug.

This broke Todd down because he felt he was trapped, and even if he did attain sobriety, but the monster would pursue him until it finally caught up, even if it was a decade later.

By now, Todd had a daughter as well, and he wanted deeply to be a better dad than Marv was to him, but he didn’t know how. He wanted more than ever to try to get clean, but it wasn't getting any easier. Still, he kept fighting.

He felt that maybe addressing things with his dad might help him heal some of his childhood trauma. If he could clean those closets, then maybe, just maybe, he could fill the holes in his heart with something other than drugs.

But when he brought it up to Marv, who was succumbing to Alzheimer's, Marv broke down in tears and said he couldn't remember. So now Todd was the only person on the planet who was there for all of it and didn't have the luxury of having it purged out of his head.

In 2016, he got arrested again after being found naked with drugs in a neighbor’s backyard after trying to break in through a sliding glass door. The fight with sobriety continued round after round. Todd felt like a 6th grader fighting an 11th grader once again.

As a man in his late 40s, Todd was trying to make a living as an artist. With art, he experiences freedom to create what he feels. Despite that, he struggles to make money for himself for an interesting collection of reasons.

For one, it's hard to make a living as an artist, but also because his “perfect environment” as a child broke him so deeply, he can hardly bring himself to sell paintings, even when they are requested by would-be customers.

When he does commissioned work, he struggles because it stirs up old feelings and anxieties about having to please somebody else. It saps the creative freedom away from the art and, in a way, turns it into a coach standing over him, spitting out instructions on how it should be done.

I think that's pretty relatable for a lot of creatives. When you HAVE to make something to please others, it impedes freedom of expression. But you have to learn to find a balance with it if you want to make a living. Hopefully, your childhood offered enough balance that you can figure out how to find balance in your adult life.

Todd's upbringing was supposed to make him good at football. But the failure to realize that the Robo Quarterback was just human made the experiment ultimately fail. He was unable to perform on the football field due to his lack of mental and emotional development.

At the same time, he couldn’t perform when he was off the field, so his strenuous childhood produced zero fruit.

His life is in disarray as he is 55 years old, divorced with 2 kids, and he and his ex-wife both struggle with addiction.

He's tried multiple comebacks into his 40s but has never found the peace or fulfillment he was looking for. If football without his dad standing over his shoulder still can’t produce fulfillment, then what can?

Todd’s Breakthrough

Finally, in his 50s, Todd has a breakthrough. Often, a man needs the right woman to help heal old wounds. While the wrong woman will cause those old wounds to reopen, the right one will tend to them as long as you are willing to tend to them as well.

Ali Smith, the daughter of Todd's college coach Larry Smith, was dealing with drug and alcohol issues of her own. She was serving time for violating probation back when her father passed away.

She eventually got clean and connected with Todd. He finally met somebody who knew exactly what he was going through. He still continued to go through the cycle of sobriety and relapse for quite a while, but finally had a breakthrough in 2018.

Ali set Todd up with a good rehab center, and Todd was good with it as he was ready to get clean. But when they tell him the program is 60 to 90 days, he flips out, screaming that’s too long to be away from his kids.

Todd starts a fight and demands that she take him to the airport. He says every hurtful thing he can think of to say. She takes him and drops him off, but his flight gets delayed, the worst thing in Todd's mind but, in reality, the best.

It gives him time to think about his kids. And to compare a few months away from them VS a lifetime of never being fully there.

He thinks about Ali and all she‘s done for him and finally texts “I’m sorry” as he knows he messed up.

Later, as he’s still waiting on his flight. He calls her and breaks down about how alone he’s always felt. How he’s always been scared, he admits his own inadequacies, then gets to the crux of it all, he says “I need help.”

The wrong girl will continue to fight and argue in this case, but the right girl will understand that you're trying to improve. Ali drives back to the airport and picks up Todd. As soon as he gets in the car, he begins to sob uncontrollably.

She gets him into therapy and he uncovers facts that he’d forgotten about his childhood.

Things below the surface that he didn't realize were there. He pulls up by the root, examines, and discards.

He finally stopped placing all of the blame on himself and realized that his childhood had led him into a life of addiction.

He recalls stories of his dad humiliating him and breaking him down more like a racehorse than an actual son. He recalled having a bad game and his dad ripping the name off the back of his jersey, saying, "You don't deserve ever to wear this name on your back."

He did this in front of Todd's friends and made him feel that all the work he’d done was for nothing. It made him feel like outside of performing up to Marv's standards, he was worthless and that he had no intrinsic value.

He never heard an I love you or even felt the phenomenon other than if he had a flawless game on the field. He questions how a father could make his son feel like that every day and then blame the son for his fall into addiction.

There's no way to be completely healed after one good session, but he feels a weight lifted that he never felt before.

He says. "I can't describe it, but I can paint it."

So he releases those emotions through his paint brush.

He gets a strange feeling of gratitude for his last relapse as it led him here to a place he’d never been. He hopes to remain there for the rest of his days, but there’s no doubt gonna be a struggle as the Robo QB is only a man.

If you're raising a kid, you're going to make some mistakes. Each kid is a unique person with different needs. As a parent, you're more of an artist than a scientist; you shape and mold a young human based on the materials at your disposal, meaning what you have to offer and the canvas that you’re working with.

The best advice I could take away from a story like this, without trying to be overly specific, is to always lead with actual love for the kid to achieve their own purpose as opposed to trying to use them to achieve yours.

That’s closer to slavery than it is to love; it’s selfish, egotistical, and lacks true compassion.

In the long run, you’re hurting the kid far more than you’re helping. Which you could see if you weren’t so blinded by your own ambitions.

There are plenty of athletes who get hard coaching from their fathers but seem well-adjusted emotionally and mentally. I believe this is because the father leads with love first. No matter how much the outside world condemns them, their sons seem to have a genuine love and respect for them.

So, if you're going to be a hardcore sports parent, I would study those dads and contrast them with Marv Marinovich.

And if you're going to be a parent who doesn't push your kid in any specific direction, be sure to teach them a wide range of lessons that can be applied across the board.

Every kid is not destined to be a world-class athlete or rich and famous by the time they turn 17. Listen to your kid, and listen to your heart. If you quiet the noise around you and the voice of your own ego, all of a sudden, the instructions become clear.

Lead with love. Work at it and take the job of parenting seriously. I believe that if we do these things, our kids will develop as they should.