Art Schlichter

Early life

A native of Bloomingburg, Ohio, Schlichter was a star at Miami Trace High School; he never lost a game as a starter. His gambling habit began in high school with a visit to Scioto Downs, a harness racing track near Columbus. He and several friends pooled their resources to bet on a race at Scioto Downs, and won. He quickly became a regular, and remained his favorite track over the years.

Schlichter was a four-year starter at Ohio State University. He was the last starting quarterback for legendary Buckeyes coach Woody Hayes. In fact, Schlichter threw the interception that lost the game and led to Hayes' assault on Clemson linebacker Charlie Bauman in the 1978 Gator Bowl—an act that led to his firing the next day. Schlichter finished in the top six of Heisman Trophy balloting during his last three years—fourth as a sophomore, sixth as a junior and fifth as a senior. In his sophomore year, 1979, he led the Buckeyes to an undefeated regular season. They had a chance to win at least a share of the national championship in the Rose Bowl, but lost to USC by a single point.

In four years as a Buckeye, Schlichter tallied 7,547 passing yards and 50 touchdown passes, with 46 interceptions. He also rushed for 1,303 yards and 35 touchdowns. At the time, he was Ohio State's all-time leader in total offense.

During his college career, he was frequently spotted at Scioto Downs with a big-time Ohio gambler. Although the Columbus and OSU police departments became suspicious, the athletic department felt it lacked enough evidence to go to the NCAA about the matter. By his junior year, he had lost several thousand dollars gambling on college and professional sports. On several occasions he was seen at the track with Hayes' successor as head coach, Earle Bruce, a fact which helped cover up early problems emerging while Schlichter was at Ohio State.

Professional career

Schlichter was picked fourth in the 1982 NFL Draft (in the same class that included Jim McMahon of Brigham Young University and Marcus Allen of the University of Southern California) by the Baltimore Colts (who moved to Indianapolis two years later). Expected to be the starter, he lost the job to Mike Pagel, the Colts' fourth-round pick in that year. However, he was expected to be the Colts' quarterback of the future.

His gambling continued unabated; he blew his entire $350,000 signing bonus by midseason. His gambling spiraled out of control during the 1982 NFL strike; he lost $20,000 betting on college football. By the end of the strike, he had at least $700,000 in gambling debts. Years later, he said his massive losses stemmed from desperate efforts to make good his previous losses. After losing $20,000 in the first week of the strike, he doubled up the next week and lost again--starting a cycle that would continue for over a year.

In the winter of 1982 and the spring of 1983, Schlichter lost $489,000 betting on basketball games, and his bookies threatened to expose him if he did not pay up (the NFL forbids its players from engaging in any kind of gambling activity, legal or otherwise). Schlichter went to the FBI in March 1983, and his testimony helped get the bookies arrested on federal charges. He also sought the help of the NFL because he feared the bookies would force him to throw games in return for not telling the Colts about his activities. The league suspended him indefinitely. Schlichter was the first NFL player to be suspended for gambling since Alex Karras and Paul Hornung were suspended in 1963 for betting on NFL games.

He was reinstated for the 1984 season, but later admitted that he'd gambled during his suspension (though not on football). He was released five games into the 1985 season in part because the Colts heard he was gambling again. He never played another meaningful down in the NFL. He signed as a free agent with the Buffalo Bills in the spring of 1986. However, his NFL career was effectively killed when the United States Football League collapsed. Jim Kelly, the Bills' 1983 first-round pick, held out in the USFL and signed with the Bills when the USFL lost its antitrust lawsuit. The Bills had intended all along for Kelly to be their quarterback of the future. With Kelly now firmly in the Bills fold, Schlichter's services were no longer necessary. He sat out the 1986 season after no other team expressed interest.

In January 1987, Schlichter was arrested in New York City for his involvement in a multimillion-dollar sports betting operation. He pleaded guilty to illegal gambling in April, and Commissioner Pete Rozelle refused to permit him to sign with another team. He made another bid for reinstatement in 1988, but was turned down. That same year, he filed for bankruptcy to shield himself from creditors.

In parts of three seasons, Schlichter played only 13 games, primarily in backup or "mop-up" roles. He made only six starts, losing them all. He threw 202 passes and completed 91 of them. He threw three touchdown passes and 11 interceptions. He amassed a quarterback rating of only 42.6, and is considered one of the biggest draft busts in NFL history.

Schlichter briefly signed a contract with the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League. He briefly saw his first meaningful game action in three years, but was released midway through the season.

He played for the Arena Football League for the Detroit Drive in 1990 and 1991, leading them to a third consecutive league title in 1990 as the league's MVP. He signed with the Cincinnati Rockers in 1992, but was arrested that July for passing a bad check. He admitted suffering a relapse, but the Rockers were willing to stand by him. They worked out a deal with Schlichter in which they put most of his paycheck into an account to pay his gambling debts, except for $300 which they gave to his wife, Mitzi. However, he announced he would not return to the team in 1993, intending instead to focus on curing his gambling addiction.

He hosted a radio sports talk show in Cincinnati during the early 1990s, and appeared on The Phil Donahue Show, talking about his addiction.

Extent of addiction

Over the years, Schlichter has, by his own count, committed more than 20 felonies. He gambled away much of his NFL, Arena League and radio salaries. Whenever he ran low on money to support his gambling, he stole and conned it from friends and strangers, and frequently passed bad checks. In a 2007 interview for ESPN's Outside the Lines, he estimated that he'd stolen $1.5 million over the years, if not more.

Between 1987 and 1992, Schlichter was arrested three times in Ohio for passing a total of $50,000 in bad checks. In part because he was still remembered for his stardom at OSU, he received probation or suspended sentences each time. However, his gambling continued unabated.

The habit took a considerable toll on his marriage. While Mitzi tried to protect herself and their two kids (for instance, never letting Art have a checkbook), she finally left him in 1994 after FBI agents raided their home in Las Vegas in search of money he'd stolen. According to her, Schlichter gambled it away.

Soon afterward, he was arrested for passing $175,000 in bad checks at Las Vegas casinos. He was sentenced to two years in a Nevada prison. Prosecutors later discovered Schlichter had passed $500,000 in bad checks in Indiana, Nevada, and his native Ohio.

Between 1995 and 2006, he served the equivalent of 10 years in 44 various prisons and jails across the Midwest. His various legal problems, including fraud cases and forgery, among others, were often well-publicized. For example, he was so consumed by his habit that he had his public defender smuggle a cell phone into prison so he could place bets.

During a brief release in 1999, Schlichter returned home to Bloomingburg, where he told friends that he still had connections to get prime tickets for Buckeye football games. He told others that if they fronted him the money to buy the tickets, he would share the profits. As it turned out, it was a scheme to get more money to gamble. He ultimately stole $500,000 from a dozen individuals--including his own father--before he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

He later said that he hit rock bottom in 2004, after he was caught gambling in prison. He was placed in solitary confinement for four months.

He was released from prison on June 16, 2006 and resided with his mother in Washington Court House, Ohio. By one estimate, he owed half a million dollars in restitution.

Schlichter founded a non-profit organization, Gambling Prevention Awareness, to educate others about the perils of compulsive gambling, including college and NFL players. He told ESPN that he started gambling because the pressure of being Ohio State's starting quarterback was too much on him, and he wanted to be just a regular guy. In much of Ohio outside of Cleveland and Cincinnati, the Buckeyes' starting quarterback is a major celebrity.

In 2007, Schlichter was listed as the #7 all-time draft bust on the NFL Network's Top 10 Draft Busts episode. In an updated list aired on April 16, 2010, Schlichter was moved to the #4 draft bust of all time, and in a video listing the top 10 quarterback draft busts of all time, Schlichter was listed #3, behind #2 JaMarcus Russell and #1 Ryan Leaf.

In late 2009, Schlichter and his mother appeared in TV ads opposing an Ohio casino statewide ballot issue. He also wrote an autobiography, Busted, with sportswriter Jeff Snook. Also in 2009, he began working at Columbus radio station WTVN, joining longtime host John Corby on Wednesdays.

2011 arrest

Around the same time, Schlichter reunited with Anita Vatko Barney, a Columbus heiress and the widow of the former CEO of Wendy's. Her son, Alan Vatko, had been gravely injured in a 1981 plane crash that killed his father and three others; Barney believed that Alan's recovery was due in large part to Schlichter visiting his bedside. Over the next two-plus years, Schlichter conned over a million dollars out of Barney, often using threats of violence against her or her son to do so.

On February 9, 2011, reports emerged that Schlichter was under investigation for fraud. It subsequently emerged that Schlichter had conned thousands of dollars under the pretense of buying prime seats at Ohio State football games. Schlichter was charged with a first-degree felony in connection with the theft of more than $1 million on February 14, 2011.

Prosecutors later said that Schlichter started gambling again almost as soon as he left prison. They discovered he'd visited gambling dens in Nevada, West Virginia, Indiana, and casino riverboats along the Ohio River. He relaunched his ticket-buying scheme as early as 2009. Corby recalled that in that year, Schlichter suggested that he had connections to get Buckeye basketball tickets. Corby almost went along, but thought better of it after his wife noticed it was very similar to a scheme Schlichter described in his book. As it turned out, Schlichter got tickets from ticket brokers across central Ohio, often paying four times face value. As the scheme went along, he forced Barney to solicit her wealthy friends for money and help him buy tickets.

In a desperate attempt to stem the tide, Schlichter promised to get tickets for Super Bowl XLV. However, when that scheme collapsed, Schlichter turned himself in on February 9, 2011. He subsequently admitted that he "probably" used part of the money to gamble.

On September 15, 2011, Schlichter pleaded guilty to wire fraud, bank fraud, and filing a false tax return as part of his ticket scam. He was sentenced to 10 years in state prison. While under house arrest awaiting assignment to a state prison, Schlichter tested positive for cocaine while serving a house arrest sentence on federal charges resulting from the same case (and while still on probation from his Indiana sentence) on January 19, 2012. As a result of the positive drug test, Schlicter was sentenced to 10 years, 7 months in federal prison (up from an original 8 years, 4 months sentence originally agreed to on the fraud case) to be served concurrently with the Ohio sentence, plus $2.2 million in restitution; the Indiana probation was canceled with the federal sentence. Barney admitted her role in the scheme, and was sentenced to three years' probation. She was also ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution, forcing her to auction off nearly all she owned and give up her house.

Doctors have diagnosed Schlichter with Parkinson's disease and dementia--the side effects of numerous concussions (at least 15 and as many as 17, depending on the source) suffered over 20 years of football at the junior high, high school, college and professional levels. His public defender in the 2011 case, Steven Nolder, said that Schlichter has been diagnosed with "deficits" in his frontal lobes, which have been linked to depression, impulsivity and impaired judgment. According to Snook, doctors believe that Schlichter has chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease caused by repeated blows to the head. Protective equipment, including helmets, was inferior in Schlichter's time.

Schlichter, Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate number 30044-048, is currently serving his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Williamsburg in Salters, South Carolina. His earliest possible release date is October 4, 2020.

Schlichter was mentioned in the Prison Break episode "By the Skin and the Teeth" and is the subject of Season 11, Episode 14 of American Greed titled "Art Schlichter, All American Fraud."