Art Schlichter Art Schlichter had the world wrapped
around his finger, but bad habits and vices ruined what could have been a promising NFL career.
The former NFL quarterback was released from prison in June of 2021 after serving 10
years in an Ohio state prison. Overall, Schlichter served a combined 20 years
behind bars instead of on the field. Where did it all go wrong for the former first-round pick?
Ohio State 14 years before Art would
find himself sitting alone in a prison cell, he was beginning his college career as the starting
quarterback for the Ohio State Buckeyes, one of the greatest football programs in the country.
Schlichter developed as an elite quarterback in high school, never losing a single game
in 30 starts. At the same time, Schlichter also started visiting Scioto Downs,
a local horse racing track. Most high school boys fall in love with sports or
girls. But Schlichter, by contrast, fell in love with gambling.
Schlichter often found himself outside Columbus, Ohio, casting bets at Scioto. On one occasion,
Schlichter and his friends from school pooled their money together and bet on
their first race. The young gamblers were lucky that day and picked the right horses,
inadvertently giving young Schlicter a taste for what winning feels like. Winning money
must have felt better than winning football games.
Years later, while quarterbacking the Buckeyes,
young Schlichter still found time to attend cart-horse races,
this time with legitimate professional gamblers and one of his coaches on a few occasions.
At the time, no one seemed to be concerned with Schlichter's
gambling--they were too busy watching him win games and padding the stat sheets.
Art's talent was so impressive he finished one of his four seasons at Ohio State, ranking
5th in Heisman voting, known by college sports fans as the MVP of NCAA football.
NFL Several NFL teams were interested in Schlichter's
skills. In the 1982 draft, Schlichter was picked fourth overall by the then-Baltimore Colts. In the
fourth round, they drafted another quarterback, Mike Pagel, who ultimately won the starting job
over Schlicter. However, the Colts still saw Achlicter as their franchise quarterback.
The future looked bright for Schlichter--as long as he could pay off his gambling debts.
Instead of using his $350,000 signing bonus to pay his debts,
Schlichter blew the 6-figure check betting on college football games. By the spring of 1983,
Schlichter had lost $489,000 betting on basketball games alone. Overall, Schlichter owed $700,000 to
bookies, a far cry from the mere thousands he owed before earning one year's worth of his NFL salary.
The bookies, who were not too pleased with the quarterback's inability to pay them,
told Art they would inform the NFL, who had a strict no-gambling policy,
of his sports betting habits if the money did not end up in their hands soon.
Exposed To save himself,
Schlichter did what the bookies were threatening: he exposed himself. In 1983,
Schlichter provided testimony to the FBI and agreed to work with them to
take down the bookies, who were running an illegal sports betting enterprise.
In 1983, the FBI released papers detailing the sting operation,
along with the vital role Schlichter played in incriminating his bookie buddies in Baltimore.
The FBI papers document how the agency instructed Schlichter to explain how,
when, and where he would pay them back in a series of monitored phone calls to bookies.
To handle the logistics, he gave one of the bookies a contact, who,
of course, turned out to be an FBI agent pretending to be Schlichter's friend. Schlichter's
so-called friend was tasked with negotiating a debt settlement between the two parties.
Schlichter, or the FBI agent, agreed to pay off the massive debt in three installments.
The first installment would be a briefcase containing $65,000, which would be given
to them at Port Columbus International Airport, along with a pair of handcuffs.
Thanks to the FBI, Schlichter's sports betting scandal became less embarrassing for him.
Though he was still indefinitely suspended by the NFL for violating their no gambling policy,
Schlichter's punishment was softened to 13 months instead of forever,
in part because he promised the league he would get help for his addiction. His cooperation with
the FBI certainly helped Schlichter look somewhat remorseful. However, the act wouldn't last long.
Old Habits The addiction
treatment Schlichter promised he would participate in during his 13-month suspension
didn't work because the quarterback never stopped gambling. Though Schlichter had bet
on other sports besides football, the mere rumor led the Baltimore Colts to
release their former future quarterback only 5 games into the 1985 season.
Still considered a promising young talent, Schlichter was picked up by the Buffalo Bills.
However, the Bills decided to go with another young star named Jim Kelly as their starting
quarterback, leaving Schichtler out to dry in the free agency market.
First Arrest While out of work and to
kill some time, Schlichter began betting through an illegal sports betting enterprise, which,
when investigated by authorities, implicated the jobless quarterback, resulting in his arrest.
And on top of the defaming arrest, whenever Schlichter did get a chance to play,
he typically squandered the opportunity. As the 4th overall pick in the 1982 NFL Draft,
Schlichter only played 13 games. He threw 91 complete passes on 202
attempts in those games, only throwing three touchdowns while tossing eleven interceptions.
He had a below-average quarterback rating of 42.6. By NFL standards,
these were third-string quarterback stats, far below the expectations for a high draft pick.
CFL Five
years after his rookie season, In 1987, Schlichter took his talents
to the Canadian Football League. He also took his gambling habits along with him.
Schlichter found it easy to land a starting job on the Ottawa Rough Riders in 1988,
where the bar for talent was set much lower than in the NFL. However,
before Schlichter could get a chance, he suffered a rib injury and the Rough Riders released him.
After recovering from the injury in 1990, Schlichter signed on to play
for the Detroit Drive, an Arena Football League team. Detroit Drive general manager
Gary Vitto saw potential in Art despite all the trouble he caused off the field.
Though Vitto had to pay off some of Schlichter's gambling debts,
he rode the young quarterback to an arena bowl championship in 1990.
On the surface, it seemed that Schlichter was doing very well. He was attending Gambler
Anonymous meetings as a stipulation of his contract with the Drive. With a championship
under his belt, things seemed to be looking up for the Drive and their new franchise quarterback.
However, contrary to what was happening on the surface,
Schlichter's addiction was only getting worse.
Retirement While Art was playing in Detroit,
his gambling had gotten so bad he had to leave town. Fortunately, another AFL team,
the Cincinnati Rocker, picked him up. They assumed bringing in a beloved son of Ohio
would draw in crowds. Schlichter lived up to the hype and led the Rockers to the playoffs. However,
before he could play for another Arena Bowl, Schlicter retired out of nowhere.
Schlichter told the media that his reasoning for retiring so early was so he could focus
on his radio career instead. For several years, Schlichter had been featured on several different
radio shows, where he was known to spill the beans on his gambling and fraud stories for
his listeners. But something still didn't feel right about his surprise retirement.
Three years earlier, in 1989, Schlichter got married.
https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2020/08/06/art-schlichter-ex-colts-qb-remains-jail-after-ticket-scheme/2580251001/
For Schlichter, the marriage to his new wife Mitzi was supposed to be a new start
in a new city. He supposedly would have finally gotten the help he needed. The
only problem was the city happened to be Las Vegas. Schlichter promised Mitzi and
her family that he would change this time. As you can imagine… he didn't.
While Art was winning AFL championships, making promises to his wife, and growing his radio
career, the former Buckeye could also be found visiting casinos, where he would routinely gamble
away his paychecks. Schlichter loved playing his games but never seemed to win any of them.
So he could continue gambling, Schlichter began writing bad checks to casinos,
assuming that he would win and pay them back later.
These bad checks kept stacking up until they reached around $50,000. Of course,
Schlichter could not avoid getting caught for these blatant crimes, and between 1987 and 1992,
he was arrested three separate times for trying to pass bad checks in casinos.
However, the bad checks and arrests were nothing compared to Schlichter's sports betting, which
involved the league Art played for: the AFL. When a Las Vegas Oddsmaker connected the dots one day,
he contacted AFL Commissioner Joe O'hara to inform him of this startling discovery.
As it so happens, placing bets within your own league is a serious crime. In Schlichter's case,
betting on his own games creates a conflict of interest for him as a player. A similar scandal,
known as the black sox scandal, destroyed the integrity of the 1919 World Series when
the White Sox threw the series after getting paid off by a gambling syndicate who bet against them.
When the AFL found out that Schlichter was betting on league games, they ordered the
Rockers to release and ban him from the league. To save face, Schlichter was allowed to retire.
Viva Las Vegas In the immediate
years after his retirement, Schlichter's addiction hit a severe low point. His marriage with Mitzi,
which began with the brilliant choice to move to Vegas, crumbled under uncontrolled gambling.
When Schlichter ran out of radio show money, he stole money from his wife
and friends. At one point, Schlichter even pawned
Mitzi's wedding ring so he could gamble. During his second ill-fated move to Vegas,
Schlichter was fired from his radio show hosting job for stealing checks from the station's owner,
Jerry Kutner. Schlichter stole from his listeners as well by tricking callers into giving him money.
And yes, Mitzi agreed to move to Las Vegas with Art a second time in 1994,
five years after their first move to Sin City. The second move officially ended
when Mitzi left Vegas with their two daughters and fled to Indiana.
Before Schlichter could convince his wife to give him another chance, he was charged
with fraudulently passing $175,000 in bad checks. Most of the checks were passed at Treasure Island
Casino in Las Vegas, with the vast majority stolen from his old boss Jerry Kutner and Mitzi's sister.
Schlichter was sentenced to 5 years in prison after pleading guilty. The initial
$175,000 turned into $500,000 in stolen money as investigators dug deeper into Schlichter's life.
Schlichter's time in jail and prison began in 1995 and did not end until
2006. The lowest point of those 11 years, according to Schlichter, was when he got
thrown into solitary confinement for gambling in prison, an activity he did quite often.
Fake Tickets However,
once Schlichter got out in 2006, the former quarterback turned over a new leaf. In 2009,
he founded a non-profit organization called Gambling Prevention Awareness to educate people,
mainly NFL and college football players, about the potential consequences of compulsive gambling.
He also began hosting a new radio show and rekindled his relationship with an old friend
who had lost her family in a plane crash.
Underneath the nonprofits, new jobs, and renewed friendships, prison proved highly ineffective
in rehabilitating Art. In reality, Schlichter never stopped gambling.
To fund his gambling and other debts, Schlichter began claiming
to friends that he could get discounted tickets to Ohio State football games.
All they had to do was give him the money, and he would buy them on their behalf,
except he never did. Given Schlichter's background with Ohio State, the claim seemed plausible.
Schlichter's scheme fizzled out in 2011. Schlichter claimed he had access to Super
Bowl tickets in a last-ditch effort to keep the scam going. However, his efforts failed,
and the scheme finally collapsed, resulting in Schlichter turning himself in for fraud.
Schlichter's public defender requested medical examinations on Art during his subsequent trial,
resulting in a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and dementia caused by several
head injuries sustained during his 20 years playing football.
His public defender speculated that Schlichter's head injuries contributed to his compulsive
behavior and poor decision-making, perhaps explaining why Schlichter is the way he is.
Nevertheless, the court sentenced Schlichter to 10 years in prison
and ordered him to pay back his victims the $2.2 million he stole.
Schlichter Today Now that Schlichter is free,
it remains to be seen what he will do next. If he wants to,
according to the terms of his release, he can legally gamble. Which is interesting since
Schlichter has already been caught illegally gambling in prison for the past 10 years.
Click to watch one of these next videos!