20 most hyped college football recruits of all-time
By Dustin Hull
2. Todd Marinovich
One of the saddest, yet intriguing sports stories of all-time is that of quarterback Todd Marinovich.
It can be argued that his hype started from birth. After all, being the son of a national champion at USC brings a fair deal of expectation. But that wasn’t what the hype really was about when Marinovich was growing up. It was that he had been born and bred to be an athlete and raised to do only that.
Marinovich loved the game, at least for a while, and the media certainly loved him and his story too. He’d be known as “America’s first test-tube athlete” by Sports Illustrated, among many other names that the nation would give him. But there came a point when even Marinovich’s hype became too dramatic for even what was really going on in his life. The media seemed to overblow the bad relationship with his father, the fact Marinovich was being forced to train for endless hours, and his growing disinterest in the game.
But the buildup for Marinovich going to USC was also fueled by the young quarterback breaking the high school record for passing yards and the fact all that training had formed one of the most NFL-ready players anyone had ever seen at such an age.
Marinovich would eventually be lured in by hard-core drugs and crushed by the incredible weight that was on his shoulders. Though he has been clean for some time, most people will remember him for being the surest of prospects that got burnt out on the sport.
Next: Ron Powlus