Harrison Mevis, Los Angeles Rams Rick Tocchet, Los Angeles Kings Don Gibson, USC football
The most interesting story for No. 92: Rich Dimler, USC football nose guard (1975 to 1978), Los Angeles Express defensive tackle (1983 to 1984) Southern California map pinpoints: Los Angeles, Glendale, Inglewood, Hawthorne, Torrance, Rancho Palos Verdes
Los Angeles Times, Sept. 8, 1978.
Raise a glass to Rick Dimler. With caution.
The fact he made it through 44 years of roughhousing, and once heralded by USC defensive line coach Marv Goux as “the toughest player I’ve seen in 22 years of coaching” while playing on four straight Trojan bowl victories, is worthy of a toast.
But then again, there was the time when his home town in New Jersey tried to throw a parade in his honor, and it didn’t end well.
Homecomings can be problematic if the honoree celebrates too early and too often.
In March of 1979, Dimler was living off the fame of finishing his four years of football at USC, capped off by a 12-1 season, co-captain of the defensive squad that was highly effective in a Rose Bowl win over Michigan, and giving the Trojans a national championship in the eyes of many voters of such polls.
At this point, Dimler was back visiting friends and family in Bayonne, New Jersey. The cityfolk were finalizing plans for what would be Rich Dimler Day — a parade in his honor, a key to the city, the red-carpet treatment. Beers hoisted and thrown back as he could now look forward to what the NFL might bring.
The party was set for April, but, again, Dimler put himself in a situation that had penalty flags flying all over the place.
On March 12, Bayonne police say they saw Dimler in a car racing another car right down Broadway through the city, and started chasing him at 2 a.m. Dimler, according to the authorities, ran three red lights trying to escape. The other car got away. Dimler was hauled in.
At that point, the 6-foot-6, 260-pound Dimler had a dim view on how this might be a teachable moment.
“I’ll have your jobs; I’ll have both your jobs!” Dimler was said to have screamed at the officers, pushing one of them away. He was eventually accused of striking a patrolman in the chest at police headquarters and deemed “unruly” while in the jail cell.
“He flunked his breathalyzer test in flying colors,” said Lt. Vincent Bonner said in newspaper accounts. The .22 result was well above the legal limit of .15.
As soon as Dimler was out on bail facing charges of assault and battery and creating a disturbance, reporters covering the incident discovered he had been arrested just a month earlier in Los Angeles on driving under the influence, but no charges were filed.
Those digging further into his legal history found a disturbing incident in 1973, the year before he left New Jersey to attend USC, when Dimler, then 17, was acquitted of a death by auto charge in juvenile court. He had been charged of hitting and killing a 10-year-old girl as she crossed the street, and he left the scene. All that happened at the time was getting put on probation.
Bayonne City Councilman Donald Ahern — who happened to be Dimler’s high school coach in the mid-’70s — was asked about how all this might tarnish te upcoming day in his honor.
“He’s a good kid with a good heart; I’d be the last guy to leave the ship for that kid,” said Ahern.
If Dimler needed another character witness, in November of ’78, USC coach John Robinson was telling the Los Angeles Times’ John Hall about how the season had been progressing with Dimler in command of the defense.
“If they ever draw up a blueprint for the ideal leader,” Robinson said, “that’s Dimler.”
Vlade Divac, Los Angeles Lakers Charles White: USC football Dusty Baker: Los Angeles Dodgers Tommy Davis: Los Angeles Dodgers James Harris: Los Angeles Rams Juju Watkins: USC women’s basketball Dwight Howard: Los Angeles Lakers Puca Nacua: Los Angeles Rams
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 12:
Gerrit Cole: UCLA baseball Denise Curry: UCLA women’s basketball Joe Namath: Los Angeles Rams Pat Riley: Los Angeles Lakers Randall Cunningham: Santa Barbara High football
The most interesting story for No. 12: Richard Nixon:Whittier College football offensive tackle (1930 to 1933), via Fullerton High and Whittier High Southern California map pinpoints: Yorba Linda, Fullerton, Whittier, San Clemente
Richard Nixon was having a viral Instagram moment in the spring of 2026. An alert to a story posted on LAMaterial.com warned: “Gen Z is Nixonmaxxing hard af.”
The Richard Nixon Foundation, a nonprofit that runs the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda jointly with the federal government and committed to “carrying the legacy and vision of President Richard Nixon into the 21st century,” had cranked out a steady stream of steamy viral content — sleek, sexy edits of archival footage, set to trendy music.
It looked more like promo material for a hip-hop artist than a once disgraced, long-deceased president. Gen Z-coded videos showed Nixon leading crowds of suited men to Biggie’s ‘Hypnotize,’ and delivering speeches in packed stadiums to ‘WE ON GO’ by the rapper BIA, wrote Tomo Chien. In the videos, Nixon projects what one commenter called “absolute aura.”
The foundation more than doubled its Instagram following to 105,000 from 2025. A limited run of “Nixonmaxxing” hats quickly sold out.
“Alternative histories of Watergate are as old as the scandal itself,” Chien added. “Theorists across the political spectrum have long suggested, without solid evidence, that the infamous burglary was staged by the CIA in an effort to oust Nixon, or that the ensuing scandal was largely the work of vindictive deep state actors who wanted him out. But the Gen Z-focused content by the Nixon Foundation epitomizes a new strain of Watergate revisionism that began around the start of Donald Trump’s first presidency.”
In a New York Times Q&A headlined “Why Is MAGA Swooning Over Richard Nixon?” author Geoffrey Kabaservice, who wrote “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party,” framed it this way:
” ‘Nixonmaxxing,’ as I first read about it in The Wall Street Journal, really is a kind of vibe more than it is a genuine attempt to rehabilitate Nixon’s legacy … Nixon is an important figure for the Republican Party to think about as it gropes its way toward a post-Trump future. Nixon was a realist — détente was in many ways a recognition of the limits of American power — and at his best he understood that politics in a two-party system has to involve negotiation and compromise with people who disagree with you.”
T0 show how Nixon was a “complicated leader who thought and acted in ways we would consider both conservative and surprisingly progressive,” Kabaservice pointed out that Nixon did more than predecessor Lyndon B. Johnson to desegregate Southern schools and establish federal affirmative action programs. Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama acknowledged that their national health insurance proposals were built upon Nixon’s innovative 1974 health care proposal. Nixon’s administration created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970. He added the Consumer Product Safety Commission to the executive branch.
But … in his more vindictive moments, Nixon once explained to journalist David Frost in a post-presidential 1977 interview: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
To the point that vice president JD Vance downplayed Watergate as an “idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Kabaservice agreed only in that it would be a “12-hour news story” rather than a scandal bringing down an administration because it had “less to do with the courts than with the way that our political parties have become intensely partisan and polarized.”
Kabaservice summarized: “I confess to having a great deal of sympathy for Nixon just on a human level. Of all of our presidents, he may have been the most brilliant and the most tormented. … If anything, many conservatives have come to appreciate Nixon more in retrospect because of — not despite — his actions in the Watergate scandal. Trump’s Nixonian willingness to act ruthlessly against his Democratic and deep-state enemies is at the core of his appeal to many of his supporters: ‘He fights!’ “
So where did Nixon’s ruthless fight come from?
The Nixon Foundation might mine and remaster more files related to Richard Nixon, athlete.
Sports weren’t just a way to scratch his competitive itch. Wins, losses and Christian Dior neckties from Bloomingdales were something that framed his execution plans, somewhere in cliches between “it’s all in how you play the game” to “if you’re not cheating you’re not trying.”
In the political arena, Nixon’s disdain for being labeled a loser led to his ultimate downfall. Place the blame, or credit, to the sporting live he grew up around in Southern California.
Victories were unimpeachable in Richard Milhous Nixon’s view of life and legacy.
In losing the 1960 Presidential Election to John F. Kennedy, the scoreboard shows he came up short by a mere 0.17 points in the popular vote. Nixon only lost the 1962 California governor’s race by five points. Neither came with allegations of improprieties or fraud.
None of this would define him. Even after he declared to the media after that gubernatorial defeat that “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” he made a comeback of epic proportions.
Winning the 1968 presidential election allowed Nixon to go into victory formation. Four years later came a landslide re-election where won by nearly 18 million votes.
The 37th president, we dutifully note, once wore Nos. 12 and 23 for the Whittier College football team. Photos back it up. No AI involved.
Born on a lemon ranch in Yorba Linda in 1913, Richard was the name given to him by his parents in honor of Richard the Lionheart, the former King of England whose 10-year run as a fearless military leader cemented his legacy during the Third Crusade. Sure, he was eventually imprisoned by his enemies, paid a ransom, returned home, went back into another battle and retreated into exile. But he was also remembered as a lyric poet and a hero of troubadours.
Nixon was 12 years old when he was discouraged by doctors from playing sports because a spot was found on his lung, and the family had a history of tuberculosis — an older and younger brother died from it. It turned out to be just scar tissue from an early bout of pneumonia.
Nixon grew up at a time he would later refer to as being surrounded by “forgotten Americans, a “silent majority” of hard-working church folks just chasing a dream. Like him.
He made the JV football at Fullerton High, and claimed he and future Baseball Hall of Famer Arky Vaughn played Pee Wee Football together. When Vaughn was posthumously voted into Cooperstown in 1985, Nixon informed his daughter that while he was just a backup tackle on the Fullerton JV team, Vaughn was the star halfback, someone who was “fast, hard-nosed and even then a real professional.”
When Nixon transferred closer to home to attend Whittier High at the start of his junior year, the best he could do was attach himself as a student manager for the athletic teams. He wrote in an autobiography that he ran for class president there there was a sting in losing to a classmate who was “an athlete and personality boy.”
At the start of the Great Depression in 1930, Nixon wanted to go to Harvard or Yale, but stayed closer to home and pursued a history degree at Whittier College. The NCAA Division III private school east of Los Angeles was founded in 1887 and took its nickname, the Fighting Poets, from Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier.
Nixon’s more celebrated victories would come on the Whittier debate squad, but he could also show there was more to his grit that could be shown on football, baseball basketball and track teams, all of which he at least tried out with.
Bob Waterfield: UCLA football; Los Angeles Rams Steve Yeager: Los Angeles Dodgers Lamar Odom: Los Angeles Clippers; Los Angeles Lakers Matt Barkley: USC football Don Rogers: UCLA football
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 7:
Todd Marinovich: Mater Dei High football, Capistrano Valley High football Mark Harmon: UCLA football Jay Schroeder: UCLA football Kemer Brett: El Segundo High baseball George Brett: El Segundo High baseball Andrew Shue: Los Angeles Galaxy
The most interesting story for No. 7: Todd Marinovich, Santa Ana Mater Dei High School and Capistrano Valley High football quarterback (1985 to 1989), USC football quarterback (1988 to 1990), Los Angeles Raiders quarterback (1991 to 1992), Los Angeles Avengers quarterback (2000 to 2001) Southern California map pinpoints: Mission Viejo, Santa Ana, Los Angeles (Coliseum, Staples Center), Newport Beach, Irvine, Indio
Proceed with caution if Todd Marinovich is your poster boy for youth sports’ ultimate “cautionary tale.” It’s old news at this point.
Going back to his time as a high school quarterback in Orange County and setting California state high school passing records, Marinovich would end up finding more extreme highs and lows playing at USC, then the NFL’s Los Angeles Raiders, a return to L.A. for a time with an Arena League team to support a drug habit, and eventually landing on a Palm Springs football field near the age of 50 still trying to find himself.
But the national narrative starting with him as “Robo Quarterback” or “Bred to be a Superstar” seems too simplistic all this time later.
A tale as old as time, this needs a refresh.
In a 2019 piece for the Chicago Tribune, Rick Telander cozied up to the “cautionary tale” reference dissecting Team Marinovich and all that happened in the public eye:
Todd Marinovich at Capistrano Valley High School in 1987. (George Rose/Getty Images)
“You’ll recall that Todd was the young man manipulated from birth (actually pre-birth) by his father to be the best, purist, greatest quarterback the world had ever seen. Marv had played football at USC, and he wanted, for reasons buried deep within his own inadequacies, to create a boy who would have the sporting genetics for quarterbacking and be trained incessantly, focused unfailingly and driven like a sled dog toward the apex of the country’s most popular game.”
Telander had just read something in Sports Illustrated by Michael Rosenberg titled “Learning To Be Human Again.” As if Marinovich was in some reverse metamorphic process. Rosenberg made a purposeful revisit to the 1988 Sports Illustrated spread Doug Looney laid out titled “Bred to be a Superstar” that magnified the whole social science shebang and led to judgement of the Marinovich Parental Method as a doomed-to-fail methology.
Before that piece, California magazine had dropped the headline “Robo QB: The Making of the Perfect Athlete.” A People magazine profile in 1987 followed.
That was the fragile framework created for Todd Marinovich, no matter where he went from there. The poor kid, readers could easily conclude. Talented, kind-hearted, fun-loving, well mannered. Able bodied.
Call Child Protective Services.
We seem to have the idea that one who is abused and manipulated as a kid is set up to abuse himself later in life and continue a genetic pattern of human frailty. Unless that person figures things out with help, counseling and avoiding some sort of tragic ending.
But Todd Marinovich can explain better how it happened with him as a willing participant, trying to navigate the life of a high school kid in full media spotlight, and how it really turned out.
Todd Marinovich as a Mater Dei High School quarterback in 1986 in San Juan Capistrano. (Paul Harris/Getty Images)
That Todd Marinovich was born on the Fourth of July in 1969 may have added to the storyline that started with him on a All-American pathway.
He played a lot of sports, perhaps exceeding most in basketball, but football would be the real test. First were the years at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, a football factory that had produced Heisman Trophy winners before and after Marinovich’s brief appearance there. That was followed by a surprise transfer to Capistrano Valley in Mission Viejo.
The switch to Capo Valley by his father Marv would be one of things listed on his parents’ separation filing in the courts. Todd has no say in it. He would live with his dad an an in-law quarters at the house of head coach Dick Enright, likely a CIF violation.
While wearing No. 7, Marinovich went up against rival quarterback Bret Johnson in 1987 when ESPN televised its first-ever high school game, between Capo Valley and El Toro.
Sidney Wicks, UCLA basketball Bob Welch, Los Angeles Dodgers Cody Bellinger, Los Angeles Dodgers Jean-Sebastien Giguere, Anaheim Mighty Ducks Christian Okoye, Azusa Pacific College football
The not-so-obvious choices for No. 35:
Tank Younger, Los Angeles Rams Loy Vaught, Los Angeles Clippers Rudy LaRusso, Los Angeles Lakers Ron Settles, Long Beach State football Mark Eaton, UCLA basketball
The most interesting story for No. 35: Petros Papadakis, USC football tailback (1996 to 2000) via San Pedro High and Peninsula High of Palos Verdes Southern California map pinpoints: San Pedro, Palos Verdes, Hollywood, Los Angeles (Coliseum, Sports Arena)
Oct. 15, 1998: On USC’s third play from scrimmage in the first quarter, Trojans junior tailback Petros Papadakis finishes off a 65-yard touchdown run against Cal at the Coliseum (top, and below). Papadakis had 13 carries for 158 yards in his greatest statistical performance of his USC career in a 32-31 Week 6 loss. (Photos by Jon Soohoo/USC)
Any sort of perfunctory profile of Petros Papadakis becomes the proverbial Sisyphean pursuit. Hopefully we don’t have to Greek-splain too much here.
Sisyphus, the first king of Ephyra, found his eternal fate in Hades rolling a huge boulder endlessly up a hill, only to see it come back down at him. Every time he made progress and got on a roll, it reversed on him like a Looney Tunes cartoon. The whole thing seemed so Kafkaesque that French philosopher Albert Camus, writing “The Myth of Sisyphus” in 1942, elevated him to some absurd hero status in Greek mythology.
Something that Papadakis might find relatable.
When Papadakis gets on his own a roll, cutting it up on KLAC-AM (570)’s afternoon sports-talk drive-time “Petros and Money Show,” there is far less sports and much more drive to just being a voice for “la raza.” It’s a focus on a feeling of being in “la ciudad” with Papadakis, as familiar as he is bombastic, just the person in the passenger seat making observational conversation to it real.
He is part of USC football legacy, a linage of Cardinal and Gold athletes whose performance has been documented in Los Angeles’ grand Coliseum. Papadakis’ work ethic formed at his family’s famously iconic San Pedro Taverna, as he went from dishwasher to waiter to spending all his earnings for the night back on his guests to make sure they went home happy.
Maybe Papadakis became an accidental broadcaster, but it’s a career that likely defines him as much if not more than anything else. Once a Trojan workhorse in the USC backfield, he is the sometimes-hoarse former Trojan on the dashboard radio. A Red Bull in a china shop of hot topics. The connoisseurs of SoCal sports who enjoy conquering as much as consuming any kind of history lesson are better for it.
Fox Sports’ Petros Papadakis, left, with USC head football coach Lane Kiffin in 2011.
Back to the profile: Papadakis has provided quips along the way to make his story even more cohesive:
Ndamukong Suh, Los Angeles Rams Greg Townsend, Los Angeles Raiders
The most interesting story for No. 93:
Ndamukong Suh, Los Angeles Rams nose tackle (2018) Southern California map pinpoints: Inglewood (SoFi Stadium)
For all the unnecessary roughness during a 13-year NFL career — the down-low, scandalized way he treated opposing players — Ndamukong Suh never got sued.
Maybe the league’s witness protection program wasn’t all that great. Or, maybe because, deep down, he was really a super nice guy whose actions off the field spoke louder than his red-flag existence on the gridiron of employment?
In nearly 200 regular season games, including three Super Bowls, another handful of playoff appearances, five times added to a Pro Bowl squad, and a handful of exhibition games where rules still applied, the 6-foot-4, 313-pound Suh leveraged his abilities to earn about $163 million in salary. That included $14 million that the Los Angeles Rams gave him to join their organization in 2018, a strategic move to free up the often double-teamed All Pro defensive end Aaron Donald.
Now subtract more than $400,000 for all the fines and lost pay checks Suh incurred.
“Some may say (his penalty payments were) a bargain to pay in light of what he had earned — all the intimidation that came from his reputation,” USA Today columnist Mike Freeman wrote when Suh, in a rather poignant social media post, announced in July of 2025 he was officially retired from the NFL at age 38.
