Dubbed as the best NFL offensive line prospect ever and was featured in a cover story in the Sports Illustrated Magazine’s April 1989 issue where he denied using steroids or any performance enhancing drugs, Tony Mandarich finally comes clean only after 20 years later, now at age 42. In the 1989 cover piece written by Rick Telander and titled “The Big Enchilada,” Mandarich scoffed at his critics and people who accused him of using steroids. He passed off such accusations as pure jealousy on the part of his detractors. He claimed that people would love for him to be on steroids, a guy who was six-six and 320 pounds big; that they would love for him to get arrested, caught driving 120 miles an hour, drunk, and with steroids in his glove compartment.

Mandarich’s telling a lie is one of the biggest busts in the NFL draft history. Mandarich, with his bulging biceps and Pinocchio tattoos, won a big-money contract by cheating the system with his use of illegal steroids. Back then, he was so ripped and was a physical freak that it was hard not to get suspicious that he was loading his body with performance-enhancing drugs. But he staunchly denied, almost on a daily basis, any steroid use previous or current, and always pointed out that he never failed a drug test.

In the Sports Illustrated March 2009 issue, Mandarich spoke to Telander once again and revisited his past. Mandarich just released a memoir, “My Dirty Little Secrets — Steroids, Alcohol & God: The Tony Mandarich Story,” and the book is due out this month. In the 2009 Sports Illustrated interview, Mandarich has had a change of heart and is more apologetic and open about what he has done in the past. Telander relates that the steroid world keeps on expanding and the drug tests are lagging behind new designer steroids. He showed Mandarich a Sports Illustrated 1988 article on South Carolina football player Tommy Chaikin, where Chaikin opened up about his own steroid abuse. Mandarich said that he can relate to the mind racing and the anxiety attacks but that he cannot relate to the near-suicidal part. He said that he was more homicidal than suicidal. He also tells Telander that he was really sorry.

In the interview, Mandarich details his steroid abuse and said that it was steroids that ruined his first marriage. Mandarich has remarried since then and now has a brood of four. He also runs a marketing business together with his wife.

While he may no longer be able to redeem his reputation as a football player, Mandarich has sought redemption by trying to be a better man, albeit one step at a time, since the end of his football career. He calls himself a “no-good liar” and a bust.” With his book, he hopes that he will be able to help others.

Even if he seeks forgiveness from the public, however, a lot of Packer fans still contest the organization’s putting Mandarich’s second overall in 1989, ahead of Derrick Thomas, Barry Sanders, and Deion Sanders.

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