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Marinovich (not dead yet) SI article


Beau Vine

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This is literally one of the saddest articles I've ever read. Todd comes clean to the fact that his dad was a piece of shit, and his life was a lie.  

https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/01/11/todd-marinovich-dad-marv-quarterback-drugs-rehab

 

Excerpt:

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Todd remembers the sound of teeth falling on the floor. He was in sixth grade, playing one-on-one basketball against an 11th-grader at a community center in Huntington Beach, Calif. The older kid was banging pretty hard.

"You're not going to let him get away with it!" Marv barked.

"Get away with what?" the other kid said.

Marv ordered them to stop playing and start fighting. Todd was not shocked. He had been boxing, against his wishes, since elementary school; Marv enjoyed putting kids in the ring with his son.

This time Todd got in a few jabs. A crowd started watching. A bystander stepped in with a racquetball racket to break it up, but Marv did not believe in breaking up fights. He believed in winning them.

"You better back the f--- up!" Marv yelled.

The guy said, "What are you going to do, old man?"

So Marv knocked his teeth out.

Todd remembers, out of the corner of his eye, seeing those teeth flying, "like a cartoon," and he remembers the sound of them falling, and he remembers Marv grabbing him and running to their Volkswagen together and speeding away, and ... God, car rides were excruciating. If somebody cut them off, Marv would scream, and Todd would pray the other driver did not pull over, because Marv might beat the crap out of the guy. Give Marv the finger and Marv would break it.

Marv could get into a fistfight anywhere. Marv beat up people at Todd's football, basketball and baseball games. Marv threw a female neighbor over a fence. Marv once picked up his wife, Trudi, Todd's mom, and threw her across a room onto a dining room table.

Perfect environment? Heading back from games and practices, with Marv driving and Todd riding shotgun, Marv would hit his son's face repeatedly—with an open hand, so he did not injure his own knuckles. The next morning, when Trudi climbed in the driver's seat, she could barely see through the windshield because it was covered with Marv's dried spit.

"A raging beast," Todd now says of his father, but he didn't dare say it then. He never told his mother or his sister that Marv hit him. Instead, he surveyed his childhood home, the fury of his father and the worries of his mother and the emotional abandonment of his sister, and Todd convinced himself, before he even turned 10: The only one who can fix this is me. I just have to play better.

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On a positive note, I've always loved what Todd did for his "rookie with a big contract has to treat the team" event.  BBQ from a mobile outfit, followed by a 20 dancer strip show.

https://deadspin.com/5215145/the-epic-todd-marinovich-story-you-should-read-immediately

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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.

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Edited by J.R. Juniors Junior Jr.
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  On 1/12/2019 at 1:58 AM, J.R. Juniors Junior Jr. said:

On a positive note, I've always loved what Todd did for his "rookie with a big contract has to treat the team" event.  BBQ from a mobile outfit, followed by a 20 dancer strip show.

https://deadspin.com/5215145/the-epic-todd-marinovich-story-you-should-read-immediately

 

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Sounds like my Bar Mitzvah

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Or perhaps Marv is not all that bad no different than a hundred other helicopter dads and Todd is just a junkie with an excuse around every corner.

Fuck Todd Marionvich he had every opportunity in the world to get his shit together.  His life failures are 100% his responsibility.  He sure never complained before when he was getting paid fuck that douch! 

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  On 1/12/2019 at 4:32 AM, ApocalyseTexas said:

Or perhaps Marv is not all that bad no different than a hundred other helicopter dads and Todd is just a junkie with an excuse around every corner.

Fuck Todd Marionvich he had every opportunity in the world to get his shit together.  His life failures are 100% his responsibility.  He sure never complained before when he was getting paid fuck that douch! 

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It's good to know that you take 100% responsibility for your failures.

Well done.

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  On 1/12/2019 at 4:32 AM, ApocalyseTexas said:

Or perhaps Marv is not all that bad no different than a hundred other helicopter dads and Todd is just a junkie with an excuse around every corner.

Fuck Todd Marionvich he had every opportunity in the world to get his shit together.  His life failures are 100% his responsibility.  He sure never complained before when he was getting paid fuck that douch! 

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Be sure to wipe the spittle off your windows tomorrow morning.  

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  On 1/12/2019 at 4:32 AM, ApocalyseTexas said:

Or perhaps Marv is not all that bad no different than a hundred other helicopter dads and Todd is just a junkie with an excuse around every corner.

Fuck Todd Marionvich he had every opportunity in the world to get his shit together.  His life failures are 100% his responsibility.  He sure never complained before when he was getting paid fuck that douch! 

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Hey yer a dick aren't you ?  No need to reply, it was rhetorical.

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  On 1/12/2019 at 1:54 PM, TwiceHorn said:

Marv is/was a near complete psychopath that no child should have to endure.  He broke Todd pretty well.

But, at some point, Todd does have to take responsibility for his own recovery and that he has yet to do.

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Well yeah, but its easy to say that when you didn't have to live thru the ordeal. I have a friend who was molested as a kid and his parents did nothing to help him.  He has 3 other brothers who are wildly wildly successful.  He has lived a life of failure at every turn.  It's because of his childhood trauma, and he should get on with his life by now, but again easy to say when you didn't live thru the experience.

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  On 1/12/2019 at 4:32 AM, ApocalyseTexas said:

Or perhaps Marv is not all that bad no different than a hundred other helicopter dads and Todd is just a junkie with an excuse around every corner.

Fuck Todd Marionvich he had every opportunity in the world to get his shit together.  His life failures are 100% his responsibility.  He sure never complained before when he was getting paid fuck that douch! 

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I guess if you don't believe in the psychology around child abuse, that's a reasonable position. 

Of course, science doesn't require you to "believe in" anything; all the data is there. 

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  On 1/12/2019 at 4:32 AM, ApocalyseTexas said:
Or perhaps Marv is not all that bad no different than a hundred other helicopter dads and Todd is just a junkie with an excuse around every corner.
Fuck Todd Marionvich he had every opportunity in the world to get his shit together.  His life failures are 100% his responsibility.  He sure never complained before when he was getting paid fuck that douch! 
Or perhaps you should read the story.
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  On 1/12/2019 at 1:58 PM, Onboard 2.0 said:

Well yeah, but its easy to say that when you didn't have to live thru the ordeal. I have a friend who was molested as a kid and his parents did nothing to help him.  He has 3 other brothers who are wildly wildly successful.  He has lived a life of failure at every turn.  It's because of his childhood trauma, and he should get on with his life by now, but again easy to say when you didn't live thru the experience.

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Not attempting to minimize Todd's trauma in any way.  Just stating that recovery is, ultimately, his responsibility. 

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I've seen some Helicopter Dads  (and Moms for that matter) who were real dicks when my kids played sports on the youth and high school levels.  Some made their kids miserable to the point they were happy as heck and showed it when their last game was done with their senior years in high school and most of these kids were baseball players where at least in these parts, the Helicopter Parents are a dime a dozen.  They were glad it was over and it's only after the kids graduated and they opened up that some of them hated it going back years.  Only confirmed what I observed going back to those youth league days and reading body language and watching the parents and how fanatical they were about it.  Sad thing many of these parents could of paid for several years of college, but were sucked into the modern day racket called select leagues. 

But Marv fricken takes the cake.  That SOB should of spent some time in San Quentin. 

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  On 1/12/2019 at 2:14 PM, TwiceHorn said:

Not attempting to minimize Todd's trauma in any way.  Just stating that recovery is, ultimately, his responsibility. 

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No I agree. We've all said he needs to get past it (the event was 45 years ago) At some point  you have to own it. I just make the comment it's easy to say that when you didn't Live thru the trauma .

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That article is 100% exploitation. SI was the biggest cheerleader for the Marinovich experiment in the 80s and early 90s and now (cross posting) they're snapping the corpse's bones and sucking out that sweet sweet marrow. 

It doesn't do anything to help Marinovich get sober to keep giving him a platform and making him the star of his own reality show, either. But this article gets those sweet sweet Gen X 'Member Berry clicks. 'Member... 'member Robo QB?

It blames everything on the reputedly* whackjob dad, too, so it probably gets those even sweeter Millennial clicks. As long as Todd keeps trying to poison Marv by drinking the hemlock himself, he's going to stay sick.

* I say reputedly because while I thought Marv Marinovich was likely a sadist from the time I first heard of Todd Marinovich, it stretches my credulity to read about recovered memories and the testimonies of two people who are clearly hurting. There's a lot of hearsay that's difficult to take at face value even if you think, as I do, Marv was basically a psycho. 

Edited by SwanderedTalent
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  On 1/12/2019 at 3:14 PM, SwanderedTalent said:

That article is 100% exploitation. SI was the biggest cheerleader for the Marinovich experiment in the 80s and early 90s and now (cross posting) they're snapping the corpse's bones and sucking out that sweet sweet marrow. 

It doesn't do anything to help Marinovich get sober to keep giving him a platform and making him the star of his own reality show, either. But this article gets those sweet sweet Gen X 'Member Berry clicks. 'Member... 'member Robo QB?

It blames everything on the reputedly* whackjob dad, too, so it probably gets those even sweeter Millennial clicks. As long as Todd keeps trying to poison Marv by drinking the hemlock himself, he's going to stay sick.

* I say reputedly because while I thought Marv Marinovich was likely a sadist from the time I first heard of Todd Marinovich, it stretches my credulity to read about recovered memories and the testimonies of two people who are clearly hurting. There's a lot of hearsay that's difficult to take at face value even if you think, as I do, Marv was basically a psycho. 

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So maybe I a little surly on the blame everyone else for your problems theory.

This post says it much better. 

 

Yeah I did read the article watched the 30for30 all the other little stories about poor victim Todd and I can’t wait to read more stories in a few years when he needs more money.

There are facts we know and those facts undisputed revolve around his own drug problem and the lives, his included he destroyed based on his drug use. 

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  On 1/12/2019 at 4:17 PM, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Every other year when this article comes out, I look at the pics of him at USC and think ‘that’s the test tube QB?’

kid doesn’t look like he ever set foot in a weight room.

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That's the somewhat ironic thing. Marv played college football himself, his wife was a varsity college athlete, her brother started at QB for USC for a couple of years. Genetically, Todd Marinovich wasn't exactly a long shot to play college football, even at a scholarship level, even for a national championship caliber program. 

I'm still trying to figure out how Marv stretched Todd's hamstrings as an infant. We've only had the one kid but she was and is Silly Putty in terms of flexibility. Aren't all babies like that? 

 

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  On 1/12/2019 at 3:14 PM, SwanderedTalent said:

That article is 100% exploitation. SI was the biggest cheerleader for the Marinovich experiment in the 80s and early 90s and now (cross posting) they're snapping the corpse's bones and sucking out that sweet sweet marrow. 

It doesn't do anything to help Marinovich get sober to keep giving him a platform and making him the star of his own reality show, either. But this article gets those sweet sweet Gen X 'Member Berry clicks. 'Member... 'member Robo QB?

It blames everything on the reputedly* whackjob dad, too, so it probably gets those even sweeter Millennial clicks. As long as Todd keeps trying to poison Marv by drinking the hemlock himself, he's going to stay sick.

* I say reputedly because while I thought Marv Marinovich was likely a sadist from the time I first heard of Todd Marinovich, it stretches my credulity to read about recovered memories and the testimonies of two people who are clearly hurting. There's a lot of hearsay that's difficult to take at face value even if you think, as I do, Marv was basically a psycho. 

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I read it completely different, the point was that he was finally trying to look at his life and work through his demons. A lot of those demons originated with his dad which everyone knows, but up until recently he had not gone through the process to resolve those internally. A lot originated within himself though which he is also working through.

It’s kind of weird though that they keep coming up. There are a lot of QB’s who fell apart but this one stays in the news. 

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