Where Are They Now? Espn Video Of Tony Mandarich
April 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Press Releases
8 Minute Video from the Where Are They Now? Series.
ESPN.com Does A Feature On Tony Mandarich
April 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under Press Releases
How could he not be great in the NFL? How could Tony Mandarich possibly be a bust?
I saw what might have been in 1988. I was an 18-year-old freshman defensive end at Rutgers. At that point, the Rutgers football slogan was “On the Rise” because we were always mediocre in those days. Our first game that season was against Michigan State, the 15th-ranked team in the country and defending Rose Bowl champ. They had an All-America tackle — Tony Mandarich — who was humiliating players every week.
He was 6-foot-6, 320 pounds. He was huge. He was a mutant. He was all-natural? Impossible.
I was all-natural, tipping the scales at about 230 and having already lost about 10 precious pounds in training camp.
Not a great matchup. You can imagine how that would have turned out. But it never happened. I was redshirted and wasn’t going to see the field unless the seven or eight players in front of me were maimed.
And Mandarich, ultimately, was suspended. He sat out the first three games of the season after applying for the NFL draft.
During training camp, we studied Michigan State’s offensive line on film. Watching the Rose Bowl, we saw Mandarich pancaking Tim Ryan from USC on one play, driving him out of the film frame on the next. It wasn’t as if Ryan was terrible; the guy was a first-round pick of the Bears a year later.
Our reaction? Laughter. Not because Ryan was getting destroyed, but because we weren’t. That wasn’t going to be us because he wasn’t playing.
We watched more film, and it wasn’t only Ryan. We saw an All-America defensive end pinned to the ground by Mandarich, a linebacker from Wisconsin on skates 10 yards downfield, a defensive tackle from Ohio State curled up in the fetal position. The worst was the Iowa team captain who went for the trifecta: on skates for 10 yards, pinned to the ground and then curled up in the fetal position.
It didn’t stop there.
Mandarich punched an Ohio State player during the coin toss and told him he “was going to die today.” He drove a Northwestern player into the end zone, pancaked him and then told the player to “stay there.”
Sometimes he was blocking two players at a time. Who does that? It was a no-brainer that Mandarich was the most dominant college offensive lineman ever. Maybe not the best, but definitely the most dominant.
How could he not make it in the NFL?
The Unnatural
Well, for starters, he was cheating.
He was chemically enhanced to the nth degree. He was the Six Million Dollar Man of steroids.
“I was taking Winstrol V, equipoise, Anadrol 50s, testosterone, Anavar, Dianabol,” he told me dispassionately in an ESPN interview last month at the W Hotel, near his home in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Michigan State AthleticsMandarich says he started using steroids in 1984, and was able to beat NCAA testing at the Rose and Gator bowls.Twenty years after he was the second player taken in the 1989 NFL draft, Mandarich is 42 years old. He looks like a cross between Judas Priest’s Rob Halford and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. He’s still huge and looks as if he could still play. He told me he had been taking steroids since May 1984.
His older brother, John, who was playing at Kent State, turned Mandarich onto them. His usage escalated during his time at Michigan State. The rumors of steroids started to surface, but schools were not testing for steroids yet, and the NCAA tested only at bowl games. Mandarich kept beating the system. He cheated on the tests for the Rose and Gator bowls.
“I basically strapped something to my back a little — it was actually a little doggie toy,” Mandarich said in an interview that stretched longer than 2½ hours. “Hooked up a little hose to it … ran a tube underneath and put a piece of gum to cap the tube.”
As a player, his legend was growing. So was his ego.
“You’re not supposed to be as strong as I am. You’re not supposed to be as fast as I am. You’re not supposed to be as good as I am,” Mandarich said in the midst of his steroid haze in 1989.
He dropped out of Michigan State after the Gator Bowl and moved to Los Angeles. It was where he wanted to be — a big city with big-city media. He had big plans. He wanted to play football for six or seven years in the NFL, win Mr. Universe and then move on to the movies. He wanted to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was hanging out with Guns N’ Roses, and he had the tattoos to prove it.
All the while, against the general rules of nature, Tony kept getting bigger, stronger and faster. He hosted his own combine at Michigan State that spring. The numbers were staggering:
Weight: 308 pounds
Bench press: 39 repetitions at 225 pounds
40-yard dash: 4.69 seconds.
The hype machine was at full throttle.
Sports Illustrated, memorably, put him on the cover, shirtless and massive. It called him “the best offensive line prospect ever.” It bragged of his insane 15,000-calorie diet and his love for Axl Rose.
I put that SI cover on my dorm wall. Every lineman — high school or college — probably did the same. He was what all of us aspired to be: huge, cut and nasty on the football field. He was supposed to change offensive linemen forever. He was the anti-Reggie White, the guy who was built to block men like White and maybe even dominate them.
As the 1989 draft approached, Mandarich was the highest-rated player on the board. Higher than Troy Aikman. Higher than Barry Sanders. Higher than Deion Sanders and Derrick Thomas. It was on. He had serious clout. Mandarich could call his own shot. Everyone had bought in. Almost everyone.
The Kansas City Chiefs were courting Mandarich because they had one of the top five picks in the draft. General manager Carl Peterson and coach Marty Schottenheimer took him out to dinner. They asked him whether he was on steroids, Mandarich says. Fair question. Mandarich said he had never failed a drug test. Not exactly what the coach wanted to hear.
According to Mandarich, Schottenheimer looked him square in the eye and said, “I think you’re lying.”
“If you think I am lying,” Mandarich said coolly, “then don’t draft me.”
His arrogance with NFL teams did not stop there.
“I had said even before the draft that I did not want to get drafted by the Packers,” Mandarich said. “I didn’t want to play in a small market. I called Green Bay a village. Some of the stuff I said, when I look back now, is just embarrassing.”
Saying it, he truly sounds embarrassed, maybe even disgusted.
Needless to say, the Packers took Mandarich second overall, after the Cowboys took Aikman. Some experts thought Dallas was crazy for not taking Mandarich.
The Packers weren’t planning to pay him the $1.1 million per year that he was demanding. So, Mandarich cranked up the hype again. He held out of Packers camp. Then he appeared on “Late Night with David Letterman.”
Mandarich: “I want to fight Tyson.”
Letterman: “Oh, geez … what kind of a guy does it take to sit here and say that?”
The Packers might lose Mandarich to boxing? They had to ante up. And they did.
A mythical monster
Green Bay had no idea what it was getting for its $4.4 million; Mandarich was the first offensive lineman to make seven figures a season.
Mandarich missed the entire training camp. He wasn’t ready to play in the NFL’s pass-first game. Michigan State threw the ball maybe 10 times a game in those days, and pass blocking was not Mandarich’s strong suit.
But something else was happening, and it wasn’t just steroids.
Mandarich had stopped taking steroids just before the combine for fear of getting caught by the NFL drug-testers. Those guys actually watch you fill the cup from point-blank range. No dog toys to save him there.
The bigger issue, according to Mandarich, was an addiction to painkillers. He was a junkie. By the time he arrived in Green Bay, he was hooked. As he ended his steroid usage, he started taking painkillers to get rid of the aches and pains from his intense weight training.
He wasn’t messing around, either. He was main-lining them. Straight into the vein. Six or seven times a day. Even during practice.
“I was getting really paranoid about people finding out, so what I would do with that bottle and a syringe, I would put it in my jock strap,” Mandarich said. “I’d say ‘Hey, I’ve got to go to the bathroom,’ lock myself in the bathroom, take a shot, and then come back out to practice and get ready for one-on-one pass drills with the defensive line, and I’m half in the bag.”
He did this every day. Stadol, Fiorinal #3, Valium, Percodan, Percocet, Vicodin. The shots eventually became pills because they were easier to come by, and sometimes the pills were replaced by booze.
Mandarich created a monster built on lies. It was all torn down in a few months. He was the bust to end all busts. He never got on the field for the last year of his contract, 1992, and Mike Holmgren’s new Green Bay regime elected to not re-sign him.
“I spent four years in Green Bay and never [had] a sober day,” Mandarich said. “Every day I was ever in Green Bay I was not sober.”
Mandarich went to his home in Traverse City, Mich., and became a full-time junkie — and hid. His full-time job was to find ways to get more drugs by conning another doctor or faking another illness.
More lies.
Things got worse. Mandarich’s older brother, John, was dying of cancer. John was his hero, having played for Kent State and then the Edmonton Eskimos in the Canadian Football League. On the day John died in 1993, his little brother was in his truck, driving 400 miles to Green Bay from Traverse City to get more painkillers.
At that point, the drugs were more important to him than anything.
This was the time that Mandarich was supposed be in the prime of his career, taking on Reggie White and Bruce Smith on his way to the Hall of Fame, with yearly visits to Hawaii along the way. Instead, he was chasing down painkillers to get by until the next day. He was down to 260 pounds, pale, and looking nothing like the shirtless guy who was on the cover of SI.
“Fifty, 60, 70 painkillers a day,” Mandarich said. “I would just drink more because it’s easier to get alcohol. A lot of self-loathing … absolutely hated myself. I hated everything about me.”
He could never live up to that monster he created.
Courtesy of Mandarich MediaTony Mandarich, now 42, says he doesn’t regret the mistakes he made because they “forced me to make corrections — it was either make corrections or die for me.”Making it right
Rock bottom. He was there.
In March 1995, Mandarich checked himself into the Brighton Hospital Chemical Dependency and Mental Health Treatment Center in Brighton, Mich. Twelve steps. Time to pay the price for all those lies.
“How in the world do you make amends for the disaster you created in the NFL?” he said, sounding contrite. “And that you had wronged the fans, you had wronged the Packers, you embarrassed the sport. How do you right that wrong?”
Mandarich’s way was to try to come back to the NFL, but this time do it right. Clean. Sober. No outrageous comments. Be happy to be there.
Miraculously, Mandarich made it back to the NFL in 1996, playing for the Indianapolis Colts. He was huge once again, weighing in at around 320. But this time, he says, it was natural. No juice. For three more years, he was good, not great — not pinning guys on their backs, not keeping stats of pancakes and guys he drove off the screen.
But he says he was clean. And Mandarich insists he has remained clean since.
Today he keeps a low profile in Arizona, with his wife and business partner, Char. They run an Internet marketing company and do photography and video work. In their home, there are few mementos from his football days. In one small room, his Michigan State Rose Bowl jersey and his Colts jersey hang on the wall.
Nothing from his years with the Packers. No other trophies. A few years ago, Mandarich took all the trophies he had from Michigan State and burned them.
“Got tired of them sitting in boxes,” he explained.
That might have been as symbolic as anything he did. Clearly, that time in his life is well behind him.
He is promoting a new book, “My Dirty Little Secrets,” published by Modern History Press. He said he wants to speak to NFL players about the dangers of steroid abuse and painkillers, another step in the 12-step circle of making amends.
He has become — sincerely, it seems — reflective.
“I don’t regret any of the pills I took, or I don’t regret the steroids I took,” he said. “I don’t regret the whiskey I drank, and I don’t regret the mistakes I made, because all of those things coupled together tore me down and made me forced me to look at myself and forced me to make corrections — it was either make corrections or die for me.”
There is one eye-catching remnant of his chemically enhanced life. The infamous Sports Illustrated cover, the one that proclaimed him “The Incredible Bulk.” He has a blown-up version in his garage.
It hangs just above a garbage can.
Kory Kozak is a producer for ESPN.
To learn more about what Tony Mandarich is doing now please go to Internet Marketing Company
Patrick Gavin Interviews Tony Mandarich
April 13, 2009 by admin
Filed under Tony Mandarich
The NFL, Drug Abuse, Redemption, and SEO – The Tony Mandarich Story
When researching a potential SEO related domain purchase recently I found the owner of the domain to be Tony Mandarich. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that yes it was the former top NFL lineman prospect, and #2 overall draft pick in the 1989 NFL draft. After more research I found that Tony is now running an internet marketing company in Scottsdale, Arizona. How many SEO’s played in the NFL or were on the front cover of Sports Illustrated not once but twice? Tony recently released a book discussing his life story which is one of steroids, drug and alcohol addiction which caused a shortened NFL career, and ultimately recovery (he is now 15 years sober) and running a successful internet marketing business. Here is my interview with Tony:
How long have you been doing Internet marketing and how did you get into the industry?
I personally have been doing Internet marketing for five years, and my partner has over 11 years of experience. It all started with our webmaster ticking me off… he seemed to feel that he ‘owned’ our photography business website and wouldn’t allow us access to the back end of the site. So my wife and I started from scratch, learning the web design and SEO business. That was five years ago. I had an above-average understanding of how the Internet worked, for someone who wasn’t doing it full time. Once I committed to learning it and applying it to our own business of photography and videography, within 6 months we were ranked on the first page of Google for the key phrases we were going after. The one crucial piece of literature that helped me immensely in SEO was Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book”. I applied his principles and – Voila – it worked!
What lessons from your football career have helped you in your business career?
There’s a direct relationship that I carry from my former football career to my current Internet career, work ethic being number one. Working smart and being able to take a step back and reevaluate every few months is crucial. And did I mention work ethic?! To be the best, you need to be the first to arrive and the last to leave. You have to be willing to do things other people aren’t willing to do (in an ethical manner, of course) to strive for success for your client.
Your Mandarich.com website lists: PPC management, SEO, site design, Social Media Management, and other services. Does your company specialize more in one of these services than others and where do you see the growth in the Internet marketing space coming from?
We do offer several services and many of our clients choose multiple services due to how we effectively combine them; however, our main specialty is definitely SEO. We follow the trends very closely in SEO but even more importantly we have successfully predicted many of the changes in the industry before they happen. This has allowed us to be more effective for our clients, and also to get ahead of the curve. The big growth is going to be in mobile devices….but cnet could have told you that!
Internet marketing and SEO in particular still today has a lot of misinformation being published and circulated. How does your team keep up on the latest news, trends and formulate your strategy for your clients and does anyone from your team participate in the “SEO community”?
We have tested strategies on over 6000 websites, and through trial and error we have formulated several techniques that work. Just as importantly, we have learned things that don’t work, saving us time and efforts on other projects. Over the years we have worked with several leading researchers and that’s how we met our business partner and SEO specialist, James St John.
I don’t know of many former professional athletes who are in the “Internet marketing” space. Have you been able to use this to your advantage in helping clients that are in sports related niches?
Being able to connect with your clients is incredibly important, so attracting athletes as clients is a natural fit, as we have an already-established bond due to our sports backgrounds.
Disclaimer: I am based in Iowa City, IA and am a big Iowa Hawkeye fan. I see you are based in Arizona now, is Michigan State still your team?
Absolutely! I’m a die-hard Spartan and I bleed green. Our basketball team almost won the National Championship last week – we just ran into a tough North Carolina team.
Your book, My Dirty Little Secrets, Steroids, Alcohol & God: The Tony Mandarich Story, was just recently released. Is there a message in the book that transcends sports that you can share with other Internet marketers?
As an Internet marketer, if you have never in your life been confronted with adversity, then don’t buy the book, because you won’t be able to relate! I’ve found, however, that most people have encountered significant adversity at some point, and I think that they may find a powerful message in the book, about how to overcome. The book is 51% about life and 49% about football; it’s about the ups and downs in life, and how I handled them and how I continue to handle them. One of the main things I’ve learned is that you get what you want in life by helping other people get what they want in life.
If you want to learn more about Tony Mandarich you can visit his personal website or his company’s internet marketing site.
Juanita Watson Interviews Tony Mandarich
March 17, 2009 by admin
Filed under Tony Mandarich
This is an interview with Juanita Watson & Tony Mandarich. The interview is about 40 minutes long. I added a slideshow that changes every minute.
Fox Sports Interview With Tony Mandarich
March 16, 2009 by admin
Filed under Tony Mandarich
Below is a link to the video of the interview:
Tony Mandarich Tells All On Fox Sports
Superior Book Promotions Reviews Tony Mandarich Book
March 15, 2009 by admin
Filed under Tony Mandarich
March 14, 2009
My Dirty Little Secrets—Steroids, Alcohol & God: The Tony Mandarich Story
Tony Mandarich and Sharon Shaw Elrod
Modern History Press (2009)
ISBN: 9781932690781
Whether you are a football fan, someone concerned about addictions, or you just like a good
success story, Tony Mandarich’s newly published memoir “My Dirty Little Secrets—Steroids,
Alcohol & God” is a rewarding and eye-opening reading experience.
In 1989, after an incredible football career playing for Michigan State, Tony Mandarich was the
number two draft pick for the NFL and chosen by the Green Bay Packers. Who could forget the
picture of him on Sports Illustrated that spring, showing his incredible muscular build at 6’6”
and 315 pounds, and the declaration that he was “The Best Offensive Line Prospect Ever”? It
looked like Tony might become the greatest NFL player ever. Tony was on top of the world!
But Tony had some dirty little secrets. For years he had been using steroids to increase his
performance. He also had an addiction to alcohol and painkillers. He hid those secrets well, but
in his memoir he now tells his complete story honestly, with all his mistakes and regrets laid bare
for readers, not merely for sensation to sell books, but to show how he turned his life around and
to give hope to others suffering from addictions.
While the media made insinuations about his steroid use during his career, and Tony admits to it,
drugs and alcohol were what really caused his world to fall apart. His memoir depicts the
extremes a person will take to hide and continue his addiction. Tony details how he cheated on
drug tests so he could play in the Rose Bowl and other games, as well as how he tricked
pharmacies and charmed doctors to write him out prescriptions for extra pills. At times, he even
drove eight hundred miles round trip in a single day just to get pills so he could avoid withdrawal
symptoms. Tony admits he was not sober a single day he played for the Green Bay Packers. The
high expectations for his NFL career were more than he could handle. Then once his football
career ended, he wasted the next three years doing nothing but living off his savings from his
football days to feed his drug and alcohol addiction.
After watching his brother die, possibly from steroid use, and realizing how his addictions were
destroying his family, Tony made a decision to turn his life around. He checked himself into a
treatment center and never looked back, refusing to be in the majority of alcoholics who return to
drinking. For years, Tony and his brother’s relationship had been strained. Even though he was
with his brother when he died, Tony continued to feel guilt and shame about their relationship.
One of the most tremendous moments in his memoir is the spiritual journey a friend led him
upon, using a Native American tradition of meditation, where he was able to talk to his brother
again; he realized his brother was his spiritual guide and would be there to help him everyday
going forward. This heart-wrenching cathartic experience was a major turning point in Tony’s
life and speaks to the importance of the addict healing emotional wounds along with becoming
drug free.
The final section of the book reads like a celebration. Tony’s story would have been triumphant
enough by simply describing how he overcame his addiction. But Tony went a step farther by
returning to the NFL to play for the Indianapolis Colts. Without steroids, drugs, or alcohol, his
performance was better than ever. He was the strongest player on the team, but he was also
humble this time, looking to be a team player rather than a superstar. He stated at the time:
“Benching 545 coming out of college didn’t help me pass-block…That’s the way I look at it. I
just want to help this team.” Similarly, his memoir is not all about Tony Mandarich. It’s about
how a person can right past wrongs and overcome addiction. It’s about one addict coming
forward to tell his story, to raise awareness about addictions and how a 12-step program like
Alcoholics Anonymous and trusting in God can turn a life around. It’s about Tony wanting to
help others who have fallen to recover their lives and self-esteem. At the end of the book Tony
states, “If this story has helped one of you to recognize that you need help, it was worth all the
media controversy.” Tony Mandarich succeeded in his dreams of being an NFL player, but more
importantly, “My Dirty Little Secrets” reveals that he has succeeded in being an incredible
human being!
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. author of The Marquette Trilogy
Dan Patrick Interview With Tony Mandarich
March 11, 2009 by admin
Filed under Press Releases
Dan Patrick interviews Tony Mandarich. They talk about his book “My Dirty Little Secrets“ It hits the stores March 23rd. You can order the book on Tony’s website NOW !
Here is the link to the Dan Patrick & Tony Mandarich Interview
Some Old Tony Mandarich Video
Found this old video of Tony Mandarich. Its short but there are a few clips of Tony before practice at MSU, running a 4.65 forty yard dash in the combine & a clip of him in a game vs the Iowa Hawkeyes.
Sports Illustrated Article on Tony Mandarich
March 7, 2009 by admin
Filed under Tony Mandarich
Tony Mandarich and I are in a crowded weight room in Scottsdale, Ariz., barbells clanging, people grunting, mirrors reflecting. You’ll excuse me if I feel severe déjà vu. Two decades ago, in the spring of 1989, we were in a gym like this one—same sounds, same vibes—doing essentially the same thing: He was lifting, I was watching and writing and occasionally doing a little lifting of my own. That first time was at the Powerhouse Gym in East Lansing, near the Michigan State campus. Mandarich was a ripped 6′6″, 315-pound senior All-America offensive tackle, the only college player ever to be named to John Madden’s All-Madden team.
I was benching a gentleman’s 175; he was benching 540. He would soon be the second pick of the 1989 NFL draft, taken by the Green Bay Packers just after the Dallas Cowboys chose Troy Aikman, but before Barry Sanders went to the Detroit Lions, Derrick Thomas to the Kansas City Chiefs and Deion Sanders to the Atlanta Falcons. Those four are, or will be, in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Mandarich is attempting to emerge from the hall of shame.
“Why can’t I do what Arnold did?” he asked me back in the day, do-rag on his head, Appetite for Destruction by Guns n’ Roses blasting from his car speakers. “Bodybuilding. Movies. All of it. I want to be Cyborg III.”
Now, having agreed to meet me again, two decades later, he says quietly, “Unbelievable the way time has gone by.” He pauses. “I’m sorry, Rick. The phrase I was wrong was not in my vocabulary back then. But I was wrong. I conned you. I lied to you about not using steroids. I was a jackass. I don’t want to be like that anymore.”
What had come out of our session in 1989 was my April 24 cover story for Sports Illustrated entitled The Incredible Bulk, with SI’s editors declaring Mandarich the best offensive line prospect ever. In Gregory Heisler’s cover shot, Mandarich posed bare-chested against the setting sun, a sun that was, in retrospect, going down symbolically on an age of innocence.
Mandarich, a chemical monster with 22-inch biceps, was not only taking steroids but also injecting other workout freaks around the gym, who called him the Doctor. He lifted weights almost nonstop, recovering swiftly from workouts because of the juice, and he developed ingenious if not comical ways to beat the amateurish college drug tests he was obliged to take.
Mandarich’s NFL career would be a dud; he played three seasons for the Packers and, after a four-year layoff, three seasons with the Indianapolis Colts, starting a total of 63 games. Along the way he did two things: He quit using steroids because he feared getting caught by the NFL’s testing, and he flowered into an alcoholic and a painkiller junkie. The renunciation of steroids cost him his beef. The addictions cost him his dignity.
Now clean, sober and juiceless, he tells the whole story in a new book, My Dirty Little Secrets—Steroids, Alcohol & God: The Tony Mandarich Story, to be released this month by Modern History Press. “At the age of 42 I have developed a conscience,” he writes.
That’s nice. But he lied to me. Lied to everybody. He gamed the system to his advantage. I knew he was using steroids (he now admits he also used human growth hormone), but all I could do was hint at my suspicions. I used the word drugs in the first sentence of that story, even if only referring to the large quantities of caffeine Mandarich downed before lifting. I called him “the man from tomorrow” and an “offensive-tackle creature.”
He had never flunked a drug test, I heard over and over. He was defended by his parents; his older brother, John, now deceased but then a nosetackle for the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League; the Michigan State head coach, George Perles; the Spartans’ strength coach, Dave Henry; several teammates; and by his agent, Vern Sharbaugh.
“I got the steroids just by word of mouth,” Mandarich says. “Put the word out in a gym, and it’s like talking to a concierge, somebody will say, ‘Here you go.’ It was that easy.”
AS MANDARICH prepared for the draft, his lifting partner was fellow Michigan State student Rob (Buck) Smith, a fired-up, 5′4″ ball of muscles. Now it’s Wendy Keimer, a bodybuilder with long blonde hair, a dark tan and triceps to die for. Today they are working on arms, and as Keimer yells at Mandarich to keep pumping, he sighs, “I’m too old for this.”
But he isn’t. As he’ll admit after doing close-grip rack benches with 315 pounds, “I feel comfortable in the gym environment.” And why not? Even now, when Mandarich can’t come close to his career-best 585-pound bench press, the comfort of lifting remains.
Mandarich didn’t start on his junior varsity team in Oakville, Ont., even though he was 6′3″ and 220 pounds. Once when he was 13, his mother, Donna, a tall, stout woman, body-slammed him for insubordination. “I don’t know if she or Reggie White manhandled me worse,” Mandarich says with a chuckle. It was his beloved brother who got him on steroids after Tony moved in with him for a year while John was a senior at Kent (Ohio) State and Tony was a high school senior.
By 22 Tony ran like a deer, blocked like a truck and preened like a rooster. “I had tunnel vision,” he says. “I wanted to be a new kind of offensive lineman, go first in the draft, make millions. Your SI story did it. I saw 50 copies displayed across the top shelf at the airport—me and my steroid-fueled muscles. That fed my arrogance. I thought, You’re doing things right!”
Right before the ‘89 draft, Mandarich moved to Southern California to train. When he complained one day about how sore he was, a trainer, whom Mandarich refused to identify, said he had something to help. “Roll up your sleeve,” Mandarich recalls him saying. “I thought, No big deal. A shot on your upper arm. But he grabbed my wrist. I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He was going to shoot this stuff into my vein, like a drug addict. He said, ‘Trust me.’”
That first shot was the prescription narcotic Stadol. In 15 seconds Mandarich was flooded with pleasure and peace. “That first one is the best one,” he says. “That’s the one you chase.”
And chase it he did, downing pain pills like candy during his years in Green Bay, conning at least 10 doctors in four states into writing him prescriptions for painkillers, even hiding syringes in his jockstrap and taking bathroom breaks during practice to shoot up. There is a lump in the crook of his left arm, a bulge in the large blue vein between biceps and forearm. “That’s where I shot,” he says.
His lowest point may have come when his brother was near death from cancer in the winter of 1993. Tony drove off on a 16-hour round-trip to pick up pills for himself that he’d persuaded a doctor to prescribe. When he got back, John was dead. “Painkillers were more important to me than holding my brother’s hand as he died,” Tony says.
The addictions ruined his first marriage and left him depressed. He was emotionally arrested, he tries to explain, and needed to grow up. Rehab and Alcoholics Anonymous finally got him straight. Fourteen years later he hopes his book will help others, even as it helps him wipe his own slate clean and show that there is hope even for “a bust, a loudmouth, a no-good liar at the very bottom, like me.”
Mandarich’s second wife, Charlavan, who dated him for two years at Michigan State, and with whom he shares four children (two from his first marriage, two from hers), says she has seen great change in Mandarich during their five-year marriage; he has become humble and calm and spiritual. They work extremely hard and close together at their web-design and Internet marketing business. Char almost mists up describing her husband—”a brilliant, gentle, white light, a beautiful light,” she says.
BUT CHARACTER reversal doesn’t undo collateral damage. I wrote so many steroid stories in the 1980s that his fraud is like salt in a wound. Through the SI cover story Mandarich indirectly abetted the growth of the steroid culture among young athletes, and his chemically induced strength and rage helped him humiliate many clean players he competed against.
“There’s damage done,” agrees Jim Irsay, the Colts’ owner and a big fan of the Mandarich who played fairly well for Indianapolis. “But his story is one of the great stories of redemption. There was a massive price he paid. But it shows that everyone is salvageable. For you, well, everyone should remember that when you forgive, you become free.”
Fine. But I’m still angry. I’m angry at George Perles too. Were there 15 steroid users on his bowl teams at Michigan State, as Mandarich alleges in his book? “Tony was a great player, a great kid, a great leader,” Perles, a member of the school’s board of trustees, says when I reach him. “I wouldn’t know about steroids.”
In 1989 Perles claimed Mandarich was strong because he ate so much and worked so hard. The former coach likewise is clueless about the drug tests Mandarich and his mates passed with ease. “The NCAA did all the testing,” Perles says. “They’re the ones you should talk to.”
Better to hear Mandarich describe it: “[For] the Rose Bowl in 1988, we were tested two weeks before on campus, and then we heard there was going to be a second test [in Pasadena]. I’d already gotten back on Anadrol-50, a steroid which makes you significantly stronger within a day or two, and now I’m freaking. I’m in this large 24-hour store, about midnight, brainstorming, thinking how am I going to beat this test?
“In the pet area I see this rubber doggy squeaker toy. I get that, then I go to another area and get a small hose, and in the medical area I get some flesh-colored tape. I’m like the Unabomber getting supplies. Back home I rip the squeakers out of the toy, tape the hose into one end and experiment by filling the thing with water. At the Rose Bowl I taped the toy to my back, ran the hose between my butt cheeks, taped the end to my penis, and covered the hose tip with bubble gum. I had gotten some clean urine from somebody else. The tester stood behind me, couldn’t see anything, and when I removed the gum everything worked fine.”
At the Gator Bowl the following year Mandarich customized a squeezable glue bottle to replace the doggy toy. “A quarter twist of the cap, no leak, no moving parts—it was almost too easy,” he says.
But that’s all over now. At least for Mandarich. The steroid world keeps expanding, with testers lagging behind the cheats. I show him the SI article I wrote in 1988 with South Carolina football player Tommy Chaikin, in which Chaikin detailed his own steroid abuse. “I can relate to the mind racing,” he says. “I can relate to the anxiety attacks. I can’t relate to the near-suicidal part. I was much more homicidal than suicidal.” He stops. “Really, Rick, I am sorry.”
I have finished with my gentleman’s 175 at Mountainside Fitness, same as two decades ago, and Mandarich has finished his iron work. When we join Char and her 14–year-old daughter, Ani, at a budget Chinese restaurant, I see that this modern family works well, that Tony is a sweet, self-deprecating guy. I ask Ani what she thinks of the big galoot in the sweat-stained Michigan State T-shirt and backwards cap. She says that she’ll never abuse substances after hearing her stepfather’s stories. That’s good. It’s a start for those of us who remember.
To see what Tony’s doing now visit his Arizona SEO Company website.
Phil Bolsta Interviews Tony Mandarich (part #2)
March 6, 2009 by admin
Filed under Tony Mandarich
This is part #2 of the video interview.
Phil Bolsta is author of “Sixty Seconds: One Moment Changes Everything” . He updates his inspirational blog daily.
