Art Schlichter played one Canadian Football League season with the Ottawa Rough Riders and three Arena Football League seasons with the Detroit Drive and Cincinnati Rockers.
86 Facts About Art Schlichter
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Art Schlichter found greater success in the AFL, where he was named Most Valuable Player and led the Drive to victory in ArenaBowl IV in 1990 but retired two years later amid allegations of betting on games.
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Art Schlichter continued to face legal problems after the end of his football career, including serving a ten-year prison sentence on gambling-related theft and public indecency charges between 2011 and 2021.
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Art Schlichter was born in Bloomingburg, Ohio, on April 25,1960.
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Art Schlichter played basketball and football at Miami Trace High School, where he showed enormous promise as a quarterback and never lost a game in thirty starts; his record was only blemished by one tie.
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Art Schlichter quickly became a regular, and Scioto Downs remained his favorite track over the years.
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Art Schlichter threw the interception that led to Hayes' assault on Clemson linebacker Charlie Bauman in the 1978 Gator Bowl, an act that led to the coach's firing the next day.
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At the time, Art Schlichter was OSU's all-time leader in total offense.
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In 1981, sportswriter Ritter Collett published a biography of Art Schlichter entitled Straight Arrow.
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Art Schlichter turned his attention from horses to sports betting by his junior year at OSU; by the end of that year he had lost thousands of dollars gambling on college and professional sports.
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On several occasions he was seen at Scioto Downs with Hayes' successor as head coach, Earle Bruce, a fact which helped cover up early problems emerging while Art Schlichter was at OSU.
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Art Schlichter was picked fourth in the 1982 NFL draft by the Colts franchise, then based in Baltimore, Maryland.
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Art Schlichter's gambling continued unabated, to the point that he blew his entire $350,000 signing bonus by midseason.
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Art Schlichter's gambling spiraled out of control during the 1982 NFL strike, when he lost $20,000 betting on college football.
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Years later, Art Schlichter said his massive losses stemmed from desperate efforts to make good his previous losses.
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Between the winter of 1982 and the spring of 1983, Art Schlichter lost $489,000 betting on basketball games.
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Art Schlichter sought help from the NFL, as he feared the bookies would force him to throw games in return for not telling the Colts about his activities.
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The league suspended him indefinitely, but Commissioner Pete Rozelle reduced the suspension to thirteen months after Art Schlichter agreed to seek treatment for his gambling addiction.
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Art 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.
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Art Schlichter was reinstated for the 1984 season but later admitted that he'd gambled during his suspension.
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Art Schlichter was released five games into the 1985 season, in part because the Colts heard rumors that he was gambling again.
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The NFL wanted Art Schlichter to take a polygraph test, but Colts coach Rod Dowhower had already seen enough and pushed the Colts front office to release him.
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Art Schlichter signed as a free agent with the Buffalo Bills in the spring of 1986.
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Art Schlichter sat out the 1986 season after no other team expressed interest.
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In January 1987, Art Schlichter was arrested in New York City for his involvement in a multimillion-dollar sports betting operation.
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Art Schlichter made another bid for reinstatement in 1988 but was turned down.
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In parts of three seasons, Schlichter played only thirteen games, primarily in backup or "mop-up" roles.
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Art Schlichter threw 202 passes and completed 91 of them.
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Art Schlichter amassed a quarterback rating of only 42.6 and is considered one of the biggest draft busts in NFL history.
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Art Schlichter said years later that he was distracted for much of his NFL career.
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Art Schlichter went through a messy break-up with his girlfriend before his rookie season with the Colts, and the ensuing depression led him to gamble more.
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Art Schlichter believed the accolades he received after his sophomore year at OSU diminished his drive, and the pressure of living up to that praise led him to gamble as an outlet.
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Art Schlichter was named the starter out of camp and saw his first meaningful game action in three years.
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Art Schlichter played for the Detroit Drive of the Arena Football League in 1990 and 1991, where he was named MVP in the former en route to winning ArenaBowl IV.
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Ahead the 1992 season, Art Schlichter was traded to the expansion Cincinnati Rockers, with league officials believing his popularity in Ohio would generate interest for the franchise.
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Art Schlichter had been a communications major at OSU and had done some radio work in his high school and college days.
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In 1994, Art Schlichter moved to KVEG in Las Vegas, Nevada, but was fired after a few months for stealing checks from station owner Jerry Kutner in order to support his addiction.
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Art Schlichter often stole and conned money from friends and strangers when he ran low on funds to support his gambling.
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Art Schlichter passed bad checks, as casinos still accepted personal checks when he started gambling.
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Art Schlichter wrote that he would write a check to the casino and use the money to gamble, believing he would win enough money to pay the casino back and keep the profit, but he almost always lost.
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Between 1987 and 1992, Art Schlichter was arrested three times in Ohio for passing a total of $50,000 in bad checks but received probation or suspended sentences each time.
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Art Schlichter moved to Las Vegas in 1989 after marrying longtime girlfriend Mitzi Shinaver.
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Art Schlichter ran up massive gambling debts while playing for the Detroit Drive, although general manager Gary Vitto helped pay some of them off.
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Vitto and owner Mike Ilitch tried their best to help Art Schlichter, keeping him on a budget and requiring him to attend meetings with therapists and Gamblers Anonymous.
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However, Art Schlichter was allowed to save face by publicly announcing his retirement.
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Art Schlichter pawned off Mitzi's wedding ring to get money to gamble, only to later discover it had been sold when he tried to get it back.
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Art Schlichter frequently stayed up late tracking scores; Mitzi often found him vomiting the next morning from what he claimed was the flu but was actually nerves.
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Mitzi claims that, in order to protect herself and her children, she never allowed Art Schlichter to have a checkbook.
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Art Schlichter lost it all, and when it was apparent he couldn't pay it back, the bank reported him to the FBI.
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In January 1995, Art Schlichter was sentenced to two years in prison.
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Prosecutors later discovered Art Schlichter had passed $500,000 in bad checks in Indiana, Nevada and his native Ohio.
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Art Schlichter was released in April 1996 after serving sixteen months, only to be arrested that fall for stealing checks from his employer and using them to get $8,500 to gamble.
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Art Schlichter was released on probation in 1999 after serving thirteen months and returned home to Bloomingburg, where he told friends that he still had connections to get prime tickets for OSU football games.
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Art Schlichter told others that if they fronted him the money to buy the tickets, he would share the profits, but instead used the money to gamble.
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Between 1995 and 2006, Art Schlichter served the equivalent of ten years in forty-four different county jails and federal prisons.
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Art Schlichter later said that he hit rock bottom in 2004 after he was caught gambling in prison and placed in solitary confinement.
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Art Schlichter was originally supposed to spend four months there, but was released after 100 days for good behavior.
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Art Schlichter was released from prison on June 16,2006, and resided with his mother in Washington Court House, Ohio.
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Art Schlichter founded a non-profit organization, Gambling Prevention Awareness, to educate others about the perils of problem gambling, including college and NFL players.
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Art Schlichter wrote an autobiography, Busted, with sportswriter Jeff Snook.
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Around the same time, Art Schlichter visited a church in Westerville, Ohio, to speak about his addiction.
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On February 9,2011, reports emerged that Art Schlichter was under investigation for fraud.
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Art Schlichter was charged with a first-degree felony in connection with the theft of more than $1 million on February 14,2011.
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Prosecutors later said that Art Schlichter resumed his gambling almost as soon as he had left prison in 2006.
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Corby recalled that in that year, Art Schlichter had suggested that he had connections to get OSU basketball tickets.
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Corby almost went along but thought better of it after his wife noticed it was very similar to a scheme Art Schlichter described in his autobiography.
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However, when that scheme collapsed, Art Schlichter turned himself in on February 9,2011.
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Art Schlichter subsequently admitted that he "probably" used part of the money to gamble.
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On September 15,2011, Art Schlichter pleaded guilty to state charges of theft and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity.
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Art Schlichter was sentenced to ten years in state prison.
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Art Schlichter admitted to using the money he obtained from the ticket scam to either gamble, pay back previous debts, or buy personal items.
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Art Schlichter admitted to falsifying his 2008 tax return and hiding almost $38,500 in income from the US government.
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Art Schlichter was ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution, forcing her to auction off nearly everything she owned and give up her house.
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Art Schlichter wrote that Schlichter likely set his sights on her soon after they met.
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Art Schlichter believes that in hindsight, she missed a number of red flags about Schlichter's story; while he talked a lot about the impact his addiction had on him, he never mentioned his wife and children.
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Art Schlichter was incarcerated at FCI Williamsburg in Salters, South Carolina, and later spent time at FCI Florence in Florence, Colorado.
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Art Schlichter was released from federal prison on August 18,2020, and transferred to Ohio state custody to serve the remainder of his sentence.
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Art Schlichter's lawyers had attempted to get the remainder of his sentence waived for health reasons.
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However, Franklin County Common Pleas judge Chris Brown took a dim view of the request, saying that Art Schlichter was "past the point of rehabilitation" and had not shown that he would "conduct " if released.
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However, Brown said, Art Schlichter had "demonstrated over and over" that he could not be trusted.
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Art Schlichter was paroled on June 14,2021; his second day of eligibility.
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On June 6,2022, Art Schlichter was found unresponsive by police at the Hampton Inn in Hilliard, Ohio.
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Police, who were responding to a report of an overdose, used Narcan to resuscitate Art Schlichter and took him to a hospital.
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Art Schlichter pleaded guilty and was charged with cocaine possession on October 11, being sentenced to one year of probation on September 13,2023.
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Art Schlichter was searched and handed over a pair of glass pipes.
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Art Schlichter was arrested and charged with cocaine possession, as well as possessing drug paraphernalia.