Did Dolphins legend Dan Marino spark up before games?
That's what former NFL offensive lineman Kyle Turley claimed yesterday on the Dan LeBatard Show. Turley doesn't know for sure but said that stories of Marino sparking up before games is the stuff of common locker room lore.
Turley was on LeBatard's show promoting a Super Bowl party he's
hosting, and things turned to the illicit while he bragged about how he
drinks whiskey straight out of the bottle and smokes medical marijuana.
Turley claims he smoked during his career, though never before games,
but he heard that Marino did.
"I heard Dan Marino did, down there
in Miami. That's a rumor, but I don't know. You'd have to ask Danny.
All those old pictures of him and his old hair, I wouldn't pass it by
him."
Of course, it was Miami in the '80s, and everyone had big hair.
"It's
locker room talk," Turley said. "I've heard a few things. I was going
to do it one time in my prime, but definitely not when I wasn't in my
prime. It never happened. I was facing too many guys I needed to take
care of, so I wanted to be at my best. Not that I wouldn't have been at
my best. I've actually heard from guys that it actually slows things
down so you can see things a little better and that's where the whole
Marino thing came from. And I don't know if it's true or not, but it's
something I heard that that was something that he was able to get
relaxed before the games and not be too edgy and calm and collected and
be able to see things more clearly on the field."
Turley also claimed that some of his coaches drank shots of Jack and bumps of coke before games.
Whether the claims are true or not -- and Kyle Turley is a remarkably candid person -- they speak to the mentality of an NFL locker room. These are some of the most intense men in the world, under immense pressure, with money and access to anything a beating heart can imagine.
