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Todd Marinovich, Football’s Cautionary Tale, Is Playing Again at 48

INDIO, Ca. — Halfway through a two-hour practice that began in searing 104-degree heat, the football players formed a sweaty circle in the outfield of a high school baseball park marked with the faintest of yard lines. Arms were raised and hands touched in a standard ritual of team unity.

“One, two, three, family!” came the chant that included No. 12, a weathered man of 48 years, who first joined in such choruses as a young boy.

In the decades since, Todd Marinovich has demonstrated more sides than a hexagon as he drifted in and out of the public eye: high school phenom, object of national fascination in college at Southern California, N.