Todd Marinovich was once a promising young NFL quarterback out of USC. He was drafted in the first round by the then Los Angeles Raiders and was expected to become a superstar.
Unfortunately, substance abuse took over his life, and he never was able to let his potential greatness come to life. In recent years, Marinovich has been arrested under very embarrassing circumstances, which ended up being a positive in the end. Court-ordered rehab helped him turn his life around, and he’s now happily sober.
As he continues in his recovery, Marinovich is looking to make a comeback as a quarterback for the desert’s developmental football team the SoCal Coyotes after serving as an assistant coach last season.
“I can’t really take credit for anything,” he said to 30 or so assembled media, friends and family at Vue Grille and Bar in Indian Wells, per Shad Powers of The Desert Sun. “The only thing that I was given was the gift of desperation, which it takes to get started. And I am a work in progress. God works in ways that I never really saw until I moved to the desert. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I just knew I needed help and that I couldn’t do it alone. And this area out here has a beautiful recovery community, which I jumped into.
“When i made several attempts at recovery, I said ‘I’m going to go get treatment and then I’m going to go back to my life,’ and that never worked,” he said. “Now my recovery IS my life. I’ve meshed the two, so there’s no separation and really what I’ve found to be driving the illness that I suffered from was separation. I was separated from the source (points up), I was separated from you, and I was separated from me. And that’s no way to live.”
Marinovich told reporters he’s “super-stoked” for this new opportunity. This new stage in his life will officially begin at Shadow Hills High School on Aug. 10, which is when the team first starts its summer practices.
His comeback bid is happening because to Marinovich, football is “the greatest game on the planet and I’ve been away from it for so long, and I can’t think of anything more fun.”
We wish him nothing but the best as he pursues the game he loved as a young man, and clearly still has a passion to pursue.