Tony Mandarich, 23 years sober, still can't escape 'incredible bust' moniker

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., — Tony Mandarich took eight pills with his coffee that cold spring morning.

They were potent painkillers, habit-forming. He'd learned the second part the hard way.

They were blue gel capsules. He never forgot that detail. Over the previous four days, the former Michigan State football star had taken roughly 10 of them a day, well below his normal dosage, which nearly reached triple digits during his heyday.

A family doctor prescribed them. He was happy to oblige when Mandarich told him he would soon be entering rehab.

It was 9 a.m. His biscuits and gravy had yet to make it to the table. His medicine, dissolving inside an empty stomach, was starting to do its job. His shakes were subsiding, the crippling stomach cramps fading. His mind was beginning to drift back into a familiar euphoric fog as he sank into a booth inside a mid-Michigan Big Boy restaurant.

It was the last time Mandarich used.

He had 60 pills stored safely inside an orange bottle in his pocket. And he did the unthinkable. He walked to the restroom, locked the door behind him and poured the contents into the toilet. A week before — heck, an hour before — it would’ve been Mandarich’s worst nightmare.

But it was time. His life was in ruins.

The capsules dissolved before his eyes.

Six years prior, in 1989, he was the No. 2 selection in the NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers and the highest paid offensive lineman in league history. He branded himself as a bad boy. His play backed up his preening, and the reputation he reveled in was built thrashing defensive linemen and linebackers during his five-year run in East Lansing.

“I had the world in the palm of my hands,” Mandarich said, shaking his head.

Then reality set in.

Mandarich was a liability in pass protection. At MSU, a run-heavy attack, he mowed down defensive fronts. In the NFL, he was exposed.

He started only 15 career games in Green Bay, all coming during the 1991 season. He had gone from a much-ballyhooed prospect to a career backup.

And there was a good reason, if you ask Mandarich.

"I wasn't sober one day in Green Bay,' he claims.

After a pitiful, drug-and-alcohol riddled four-year stint with the Packers, it was all over. He was released. No other teams were calling for his services.

The hype he once enjoyed turned into a punchline he didn’t think he deserved. He was 26 and out of football.

The worst, it turns out, was yet to come.

By 1993, the only time Mandarich left the couch was when he wanted to scam a pharmacy out of Vicodin, Percocet, OxyContin or the drug it all started with, Stadol, among others. He chased that initial high for years to no avail.

He grew tired of the life, and himself.

That day in 1995, after paying for his breakfast and saying goodbye to his longtime girlfriend, Amber, who was also headed to treatment, he reluctantly walked through the electric, sliding doors of a drug-rehab facility in Brighton.

He was defeated, a junkie. His dignity gone.

“I made the conscious decision to quit,” he said. “Life had become unmanageable. I felt like such a pathetic loser.”

The date was March 23, 1995. He hasn't touched a pill or an alcoholic drink since.

At home behind the lens

Rocked back in a black office chair inside his dimly lit office in suburban Phoenix, Mandarich, now 51, cracks open a slender, silver can. He leans forward and speaks into the recorder.

“That was a sugar-free Red Bull, not a beer, for the record.” He chuckled. “This might be worse than beer.”

Mandarich’s office is a storefront at the end of a strip mall on the trendy side of Scottsdale. It’s a prime location but still hidden from the world. The shades are drawn. 

It’s 72 degrees outside in mid-December. That’s one of the reasons Mandarich relocated here from his hometown of Oakville, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. The main attraction, however, is the stunning landscapes just outside these doors, a collision of red cliffs, Saguaro cactus and thin desert air.

It’s a photographer’s playground.

Mandarich left behind a six-figure career running his family golf course in Canada because he loves shooting photos in the Southwest. He didn’t know one person in the valley before he jumped in his car to make the 3,600-mile move 14 years ago. He still works off a green card.

It was a risky move, he admits, especially for a hobby.

“No, I wasn’t miserable, but I wasn’t happy,” he said. “This is what I am going to do. I hammered out $40,000 the first year here. I had a mortgage, but I was (expletive) happy."

MORE MSU FOOTBALL FEATURES FROM CODY TUCKER:
* He was once known for his off-the-field antics. Now MSU's Blake Ezor has turned the page
* How an MSU Rose Bowl champion overcame addiction, sexual abuse to spread a message of hope
* Finding Charles Rogers
* 'Boo Boo' Thompson killed a man. Now, the former MSU lineman is looking for forgiveness.
* Ryan Van Dyke, once a can't-miss prospect for Michigan State, is now its biggest 'what if'

Mandarich is still a colorful character with the language to match.

He is wearing a gray T-shirt with a green Spartan logo on it. His forearms are covered in faded tattoos and a week-old beard wraps around a confident smile.

His 120-pound, brown Newfoundland, Medo, sleeps in a large black cage in the corner of the studio. The name is Croatian for “bear.” Mandarich still loves Guns ‘n’ Roses. Their songs were his go-to tunes at the Powerhouse Gym in East Lansing when he was in college. That, he said, will never change.

Each wall in his large studio office features one of his photos. He loves the purity of photography, but excels in the creative editing process, bringing photos to life by adding different backgrounds and setting extreme scenes.

One of his favorite pieces is a shirtless, weathered man with a bushy white goatee. The finished product shows the man standing on a rocky beach with a stormy ocean scene in the background. In reality, the man is a local welder and a friend. He was sitting on a trunk inside Mandarich's studio with a fan blowing his long white hair when the photo was shot. The rest was done in Photoshop.

Mandarich likes to call it photography on steroids.

Coverboy curse

From the distance of three decades, the photo of Mandarich that graced the cover of Sports Illustrated in the spring of 1989 looks like a caricature of his brash arrogance. Shirtless, muscle-bound and wearing a black ballcap backward, Mandarich snarls as he glares into the lens. The cover line reads, “The incredible bulk.”

He was 22 then. The magazine cover was his chance to gloat to the entire country, he said. He thought it would vault his stock in the upcoming NFL Draft. The national magazine claimed he was “the best offensive line prospect ever.”

It worked to his advantage. He received the money and the fame.

But that cover dredges up different emotions for Mandarich now.

He failed in Green Bay. He was such a mess, he claims he practiced with a loaded syringe of painkillers in his jock strap. His poor performance revealed cracks in the facade. It also gave Mandarich a moniker he likely will never shake.

In November of 1992, Sports Illustrated put the nail in his professional football coffin with a cover entitled “The NFL’s incredible bust.”

It didn’t help that Future Hall of Famers Barry Sanders, Derrick Thomas and Deion Sanders were drafted after him.

Alan Veingrad was the Packers’ starting right tackle when Mandarich was drafted. He was so sure that the 6-foot-6, 315-pound genetic freak from MSU was going to replace him on the line, he said he stayed in a hotel during the entire 1989 campaign in fear that he would be released.

Veingrad said the hype surrounding Mandarich grabbed the attention of the entire locker room. So did his lack of production.

“I kind of scratched my head, as well as my other teammates, around Tony’s career,” Veingrad said. “I couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew something was going on, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.”

Veingrad, who still calls Mandarich his “claim to fame,” learned many years later, after reading Mandarich’s biography, “My Dirty Little Secrets — Steroids, Alcohol & God,” just how dire the times were for his former teammate.

“It all came to light,” Veingrad said. “I wasn’t shocked to read that book. I was thrilled when I read it, and even more thrilled that he cleaned himself up and went on to resurrect himself with the Colts.”

That infamous Sports Illustrated cover serves as a humble reminder for Mandarich. Surprisingly, it has little to do with becoming a bust or what his NFL career was supposed to be.

Instead, it piqued his interest in a hobby he always wanted to pursue.

It's the reason he sequesters himself inside this photo studio for another day of trial and error.

The day of that photo shoot, Mandarich became fascinated with the exposure and natural lighting of the photo itself. When he looks at that photo of himself, he doesn’t think about a summer in Los Angeles he spent lifting weights with professional bodybuilders on Venice Beach. His mind goes to the angle and what he would do differently.

Not much, he says.

“I don’t know if it could be better,” he says with a grin.

NFL scouts and sportswriters used to say the same thing about him.

State of steroids

Jack Ebling covered the Spartans for the Lansing State Journal from 1978 to 2003. He witnessed all but one of Mandarich's collegiate games.

Ebling recalled the first time he laid eyes on Mandarich, a lanky, 6-foot-5, 255-pound player without a position and the least-heralded recruit in the 1984 class. Former MSU assistant Nick Saban brought Mandarich to East Lansing. He was a project. He redshirted his first season. Ebling thought he would eventually play tight end.

A few short years later, he would develop into the greatest run blocker in Big Ten history.

“He is one of my favorite athletes of all-time,” said Ebling, who frequently has Mandarich as a guest on his local radio show. “I thought he was always fun to be around. He never dodged (the media), in fact, he sought us out. He was popular with his teammates, and he performed. He played big in big games.”

One of those MSU teammates was running back Blake Ezor.

Ezor, who played for the Spartans from 1986 to 1989, amassed 2,450 yards rushing behind Mandarich and the Spartans’ offensive line, including a career-high 1,496 yards and 11 touchdowns in 1988.

The first time he met Mandarich, it was the last day of freshman two-a-days and the upperclassmen had come to watch a much-anticipated race to see who the fastest player on the team was. In the end, that honor belonged to Ezor. The big offensive tackle took notice.

“He grabbed me and hoisted me up,” Ezor laughed. “We were close.”

Ezor said Mandarich took him under his wing and even invited him to become his lifting partner. The two would hit local gyms instead of using the school’s weight room.

“We would go work out there because it was showing off in the public,” he said.

Ezor said Mandarich was notorious for his humor on and off the field. He recalled times in the huddle that he would ask where the parties were going to be that night, and once told Ezor that he wanted to throw him into the student section after a touchdown so he could crowd surf.

Mandarich also had his intense side.

“My goal was to (expletive) up Andre Rison’s Achilles by taking a defensive player downfield so far that I would block him into Rison. I’d tell him, ‘Watch your heels ‘cause this guy is going to be laying on them.' There were times I would. He’d see me out of the corner of his eye, and he would laugh.”

Rumors started to circulate during the 1986 season that Mandarich’s enhanced, 22-inch muscles might not be a product of hard work, but steroids. He vehemently denied the accusations until his book was published in 2009, the 20th anniversary of when he was drafted.

In Mandarich’s book, he talked about beating a drug test before the Rose Bowl in 1987. He said he used clean urine and taped a rubber hose and a squeaky toy for a dog down his back, capping it off with a piece of bubble gum.

It worked.

Ezor remembers that well.

“Tony was so strong and fast,” Ezor said. “Steroids can get you there, but you still have to have ability. He had ability. He didn’t just shoot himself with a shot and become huge and fast. You have to work for that. He had better routine than our weight coach.”

Ebling called Mandarich’s steroid use “the worst kept secret at MSU.”

But the lying ate at Mandarich.

“Fans would say stuff like, (expletive) people who think you are on steroids,” Mandarich recalled. “if you are going to call a spade a spade — and I’ll be the first to call myself a spade — lying all those years at MSU gives you guilt and shame. The next day, I stuck a needle in my ass.

“I just beat the system.”

The comeback

When Mandarich was an 11-year-old altar boy in Canada, he wrote a note to himself.

“I’m going to play in the NFL.”

Eleven days into rehab in 1995, surrounded by other addicts, he made a mental note.

“I am never using again.”

“There was about 40 of us standing outside,” he said. “It was cold out, and we were all using tobacco. We were sharing stories among ourselves. No matter who they were — politicians, everyone — the pain was the same. The shame, guilt and remorse. My eyes were burning from the cigarette smoke, and I just sat up on the edge of my bed and was laughing. I mean, I was actually laughing. It was the first time in 10 years. I hadn’t laughed without a needle in my arm or a beer.

“I thought, there are other sick (expletives) out there like me.”

Holly Mandarich is Tony’s oldest daughter. She is 27 and a graphic designer in Vail, Colorado.

She was too young to remember the broken man or the player who didn’t live up to the billing. Occasionally someone will put two and two together when they hear her last name. She has heard the stories. She said her dad is very transparent, even with her.

“It’s weird, because I understand the trials, tribulations in life, but hearing about it just makes me realize how much of just another human being he is,” Holly said. “His problems and the things were heightened because of media and his following. Really, it’s just another human struggling.”

Mandarich gives motivational speeches at local schools and to local churches and men’s groups. He has a cautionary tale. His goal is to lay out the facts and hope people don’t make the same mistakes he did.

He talks about his immigrant parents who fled communist Yugoslavia with one suitcase in search of a better life that led them to Canada.

He talks about his older brother, John, who played football at Kent State and became Tony's legal guardian so he could play high school football in the U.S. In 1993, John died of skin cancer. Tony wasn’t there. He was picking up painkillers. And when he did spend time with his brother in the hospital, the gravity of the situation didn't stick. Instead, jealousy came over Mandarich — his brother was receiving unlimited morphine.It wasn't fair, at the time.

That’s why the word “bust” doesn’t mean all that much to him. He lost himself. He forgot where he came from.

Mandarich got a second chance in 1996. The Indianapolis Colts took a flier on him. There, he produced for three seasons.

“The biggest difference between Indy and Green Bay is I went to Indy and I shut up and I worked hard,” Mandarich said.

That lesson wasn't lost on his daughter.

“One thing that has stuck with me is, I can have anything if I try hard enough," Holly Mandarich said. "That applies in every situation, whether it’s getting sober or trying to get a degree.”

Ebling compares Mandarich’s journey to the movie "The Shawshank Redemption." He had to fight, break out and crawl through miles of waste to get where he is today.

“It’s tremendous,” he said. “Eventually, he saw the light.”

At one point in Mandarich’s life, he thought he would die drunk, high and alone. He came to terms with that reality. Numerous attempts to quit faltered. His will was broken.

Then, he made a decision.

“A nurse said to me, I want you to know that your best thinking got you here,” Mandarich recalled. “...She’s right. All of my grand plans have failed. They said, 'We have the answers if you listen,' and it hit me like a Louisville slugger. It made me take a step back. I didn’t have the answers.

“I am so lucky I’m alive.”

Contact Cody Tucker at (517) 377-1070 or cjtucker@lsj.com and follow him on Twitter @CodyTucker_LSJ.