Pic of the Day 04.24.09

With the NFL Draft just a day away, I thought it fitting to post a picture of one of the game's greatest busts.

Don't worry if you don't know who this is. NFL draft busts tend to fade into oblivion -- their names become etched in cautionary tales about the fleetingness of football stardom, while their faces slowly languish from the public psyche with each passing season.

Such is the case with the man above, Todd Marinovich. Groomed from birth by his father to be an NFL quarterback, scouts once fawned over Todd as the left-handed second-coming of John Elway. As a child, he was never allowed to eat junk food and on his 4th birthday his dad made him run 4 miles by the beach, which little Todd completed in 32 minutes (pretty sure I couldn't do that now).

After leading USC to the Rose Bowl as a freshman, Marinovich "struggled" with drugs his sophomore year. After an arrest for cocaine and marijuana possession, he ended his college career and entered the 1991 NFL draft. Drafted 24th overall by the then Los Angeles Raiders, Todd became a starter in his rookie year and played in one postseason game. Just before the start of the 1993 season, he was released by the Raiders for failing his third drug test. It's likely that Todd is high on something (weed, LSD, ecstasy) in the above photo -- that's not a joke, Marinovich has openly admitted that he was almost always high during Raiders games.

After a few failed comeback attempts, Todd's name would only make it's way into the news via the police blotter -- arrests for marijuana cultivation, heroin possession, and possession of meth being the highlights in his strange and terrible saga.

Recently, a couple of YW affiliates (you know who you are, Balls and Schwartz) put me onto an Esquire article about the fallen phenom. I implore you to read it: http://www.esquire.com/features/the-game/todd-marinovich-0509