Dirty Little Secret?

Did You Know . . .

Tony Mandarich did steroids at Michigan State. Amazing. How'd we all miss that one? Michigan might have beaten MSU that year but for the steroids. We only lost 17-11.


I kind of felt sorry for Mandarich. Everyone knew he was juicing. He was the 6th pick in the draft. He had great expectations, and went to a team, Green Bay, where he could have been a hero. LA Times:

Mandarich: There are other factors that were involved that nobody knows about that were way more of an effect on why I had the huge downfall in Green Bay than steroids (such as) drug and alcohol abuse. I was injecting a drug called staydal ... and it was euphoric. I went from doing one injection on that one day, and a week later I was doing between 5 [to] 7 shots a day for the next three years.

Armen Keteyian: You went into Green Bay essentially a drug addict?

Mandarich: Mmm hmm, not the same, not the same person they drafted. I got to the point where it was a struggle to workout three or four times a week because the priority of getting high was above the priority of working out.

Instead, he was gone in 3 years, and had a lot of personal problems.



The real story here is not the revelation that he juiced. It's that it is now obvious MSU's "investigation" regarding the widespread steroid use on the "87 Spartan team was a fraud. It's long been rumored that a large portion of that team was juicing, and that George was complicit. Perles:

"Twenty years ago, we went through with an investigation because we suspected things," Perles said. "We checked it out and there wasn't a problem. There was nothing there.

"Obviously, now if he says this you've got to believe him. You've got to take him at his word. But how it slipped through the cracks at the Rose Bowl and with the NFL and him being the second draft pick, I don't know."

My, My, . . . . Maya Sakura

Tony and his wife are now photographers. They shoot models. And, boy, do they shoot models. I didn't attach the shot (or three) above for the heck of it. It's a Mandarich. So is this.




In my little corner of the world, Tony has gone a long way toward redeeming himself.