Who were the last four USC QBs drafted in the first round?¨Ü Mark Sanchez, Matt Leinart, Carson Palmer, and… Todd Marinovich: The Man Who Never Was.¨Ü Sorry for the cheesy intro, but I finally finished reading the Esquire article and it’s unbelievable.¨Ü The man formerly known as Robo QB (This excerpt is from a 1988 SI article about him):
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 activites grew easier when Todd learned to walk.
And there’s some of that in the Esquire article, but there’s a few more servings of crazy:
At the conclusion of Raider training camp that summer, as tradition dictated, the first draft pick threw a party. Todd had gone twenty-fourth in the first round and signed a three-year, $2.25 million deal, including a $1 million signing bonus. He rented a ranch and hired a company that did barbecue on a huge grill on a flatbed truck. He turned the barn into a stadium with hay-bale seating. He hired strippers, ten white and ten black. The grand finale: three porn stars with double-headed dildos. “They say in the history of the Raiders, it was the best rookie party ever,” Todd says.
Of course, there’s a little bit of football, including this dialogue with his coach during the UCLA game:
Now Todd and his receivers reached the sideline. “What do you want to do?” Coach Smith asked his quarterback.
Todd’s face flushed to hot pink. “You’re asking me what I want to do? Why start now?”
Todd turned to his receivers standing behind him. They believed in him. They’d seen his magic. His last-minute comeback against Washington State the previous season is still remembered as “the Drive”: A textbook ninety-one-yard march downfield ÇƒÓ with eleven crucial completions, including a touchdown pass and a two-point conversion ÇƒÓ it prompted a call from former President Ronald Reagan.
Todd turned back to his coach. “This is what we’re gonna do,” he told Smith, yelling over the crowd. “You’re gonna stay the fuck over here while we go win this game.”
And they did.¨Ü Here’s a link to the printable version with all of it on one page.¨Ü (Via Deadspin)