УСАЦИ
Former Los Angeles Chargers and Ohio offensive Shane Olivea has died at the age of 40, Chargers said Thursday. The team did not announce the cause of Olivia’s death.
Olivea played for Ohio from 2000-2003 and helped the Buckeyes lead to the national championship in 2002. The Chargers took Olivia to the seventh round of the 2004 NFL Draft and he continued to run all but seven of the team’s regular season games. the next four years.
In 2006, Chargers legend Ladeian Tomlinson set an NFL record with 28 quick touchdowns, with Olivea starting each game with the right grip.
After Olive’s fourth season in San Diego, however, he went into rehab to deal with the opioid addiction he developed during his new year. Olivia told Columbus Dispatch that he had taken 125 pills of Vicodin a day in the midst of his addiction, enough to allow his doctors to call him alive as a “walking miracle.”
“There’s not a day in the NFL that I haven’t taken a pill after a rookie year,” Olivea said.
The Chargers cut off Olivia while he was in rehab and he never played another NFL game. Olivea eventually played for two teams in the now defunct United States Football League.
But while Olvia was unable to rebuild her NFL career, he found sobriety. Olivia stayed clean for several years after a 89-day stay at the Betty Ford Center in California, and in 2015 he re-enrolled in Ohio to complete his degree.
In 2016, after eight years of sobriety, then 35-year-old Olivea graduated with a degree in sports industry.
“I looked at him three times,” Olivia said of her degree in Ohio. “I never thought I would ever see a college diploma in my name.