It's been done in athletic sports as well as intellectual ones. Todd Marinovich (q.v. https://youtu.be/W0-JZcHkGDQ, a good video I found recently on this poor guy whom I've known about for a while now) got the "child prodigy" treatment. His father, Marv Marinovich, had been a pro football player—this is American football mind you not proper football—and this dude decided he'd cook up the perfect training regimen and make it his specialty, and he put his son Todd through it from childhood.
The kid flourished briefly at USC, which seems to be a place where a lot of kids flourish briefly as star quarterbacks only to falter in professional football. Matt Leinart and Mark Sanchez are two other USC stars who seemed perfectly poised to leap from college greatness to professional success and then botched it, but the example of Todd Marinovich is surely the most upsetting such story. His childhood had been warped and abusive and it turned him into a catastrophically bad adult.
It's a mood (though I never endured anything like Todd Marinovich's "robo-quarterback" treatment.)
Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen
npub1q6…ce8pe
2026-05-08 22:38:52 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…mxzt
Author Public Key
npub1q6cyztlxxsw7rs70vje2rp4nn8t2ysptxsnpd72xsahwj002662s2ce8peSeen on
wss://relay.momostr.pinkPublished at
2026-05-08 22:38:52 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "17baa718ff607201ec611da9b10343630030d9191379162944ec8c2638371936",
"pubkey": "06b0412fe6341de1c3cf64b2a186b399d6a2402b342616f946876ee93dead695",
"created_at": 1778279932,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://seattle.pink/@mxchara/116541353679040237",
"web"
],
[
"p",
"06b0412fe6341de1c3cf64b2a186b399d6a2402b342616f946876ee93dead695"
],
[
"e",
"e6ca72fd0b58a91f199c5349bef85e2fafce824072795db1432cb56a5663e3cd",
"",
"root",
"06b0412fe6341de1c3cf64b2a186b399d6a2402b342616f946876ee93dead695"
],
[
"e",
"c11661799fe7b9e253cfc7ab38cafe3790facc2e964fbf5c47dff082410b54f3",
"",
"reply",
"06b0412fe6341de1c3cf64b2a186b399d6a2402b342616f946876ee93dead695"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://seattle.pink/ap/users/115855847980876292/statuses/116541353679040237",
"activitypub"
],
[
"L",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"l",
"pink.momostr.activitypub:https://seattle.pink/ap/users/115855847980876292/statuses/116541353679040237",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"-"
]
],
"content": "It's been done in athletic sports as well as intellectual ones. Todd Marinovich (q.v. https://youtu.be/W0-JZcHkGDQ, a good video I found recently on this poor guy whom I've known about for a while now) got the \"child prodigy\" treatment. His father, Marv Marinovich, had been a pro football player—this is American football mind you not proper football—and this dude decided he'd cook up the perfect training regimen and make it his specialty, and he put his son Todd through it from childhood.\n\nThe kid flourished briefly at USC, which seems to be a place where a lot of kids flourish briefly as star quarterbacks only to falter in professional football. Matt Leinart and Mark Sanchez are two other USC stars who seemed perfectly poised to leap from college greatness to professional success and then botched it, but the example of Todd Marinovich is surely the most upsetting such story. His childhood had been warped and abusive and it turned him into a catastrophically bad adult.\n\nIt's a mood (though I never endured anything like Todd Marinovich's \"robo-quarterback\" treatment.)",
"sig": "392e739c36aa1c95edf45293008e1391c3ff474b65f455bad70c347cc24f20ac0ac9e40117880f771c735d98166b840024a9f4163d98c9c4219eb9b1695fddcc"
}