Flirting with the Third Rail

Looking back, my train wreck didn’t happen all at once. There were plenty of signs that I ignored, one derailed moment at a time.

I didn’t end up in a warehouse after just one bender. Although the universe offered warnings, not even the humiliation of an arrest altered my trajectory. I watched the 1990 American Football Conference (AFC) championship game between the bars of a holding cell.

No fucking joke. How did I get there? I asked the same question many times that day.

After a disastrous sideline fight with University of Southern California (USC) coach Larry Smith at the Sun Bowl my sophomore year, I needed to hang up my Trojan helmet. It was time to go for the pros. I wasn’t quite ready to leave college football and my teammates. But ESPN caught the nasty exchange with my dogmatic coach, and any subpar lip reader could see me announce, “I’m outta here.” Those three words set the gears in motion. By that evening, SportsCenter had aired the love spat, and it hit the wire, spreading verbal vomit.

A month later, I blew off steam with buddies in Newport Beach, California. It was the perfect antidote to lingering tension from the bowl game. We barhopped through the daytime party scene and continued deep into the night. At 4 am, the fun meter was stuck on high with the volume to match. I was so close to home—a mere twenty yards from my family’s clapboard beach house. Yet I was a million miles away, lost in my stupor, when snared by the boys in blue.

Were we out of control? Nah. Loud as hell? Most definitely.

At 4:15 am, our substance-induced confidence turned us into walking megaphones, practically beckoning the police to our location. The beat cops rolled up fast. I didn’t have time to hide the goods—the gram of cocaine burning a hole in my left pocket. It was a bona fide code red, cracking the party atmosphere with the force of a sledgehammer.

To find out what happened next, check out Marinovich at https://www.marinovichbook.com.