INDIO, Calif. — Halfway through a two-hour practice that began in searing 104-degree heat, the football players formed a sweaty circle in the outfield of a high school baseball park marked with the faintest of yard lines. Arms were raised and hands touched in a standard ritual of team unity.

“One, two, three, family!” came the chant that included No. 12, a weathered man of 48 years, who first joined in such choruses as a young boy.

In the decades since, Todd Marinovich has demonstrated more sides than a hexagon as he drifted in and out of the public eye: high school phenom, object of national fascination in college at Southern California, N.F.L. failure, surfing/skateboarding dude, drug addict, artist, counterculture figure. Most of all, perhaps, Marinovich is held up as a cautionary tale, widely depicted as a victim of his father’s attempt to engineer a star athlete with intense physical training.

Now, the old quarterback is experiencing a midlife crisis in the lower rungs of football that is as intriguing as it is desperate.