The General
Another Day, Another Dollar
Former Colts quarterback struggles with gambling past
By Mike Wagner
January 8, 2007
Art Schlichter wandered outside the walls, in the shadows of a stadium where he once made the masses roar.
He went unrecognized, almost invisible to the thousands who swarmed the gates.
Hundreds of scarlet-clad fans wearing his old number brushed past the former quarterback. They honored Troy Smith, the current No. 10, not the one they have forgotten or use as a punch line.
On this chilly October day, Schlichter brought his mom, Mila, to watch the Buckeyes play Minnesota. It was the first Ohio State game he'd attended in 13 years.
Schlichter braced himself against the wind swirling around Ohio Stadium and the emotions that churned inside him. His dark eyes hid under a white baseball cap, but they couldn't conceal what sullied his return to the place where he once found glory.
"I've hurt a lot of people since I've been here," he said. "I'm more sorry than people will ever know."
Since leaving Ohio State 25 years ago, Schlichter has gone from All-American quarterback to one of America's best-known compulsive gamblers. Since 1994 he has served time in 44 prisons or jails, mainly for fraud and forgery - swindling people out of money or writing bad checks to feed his addiction to gambling on sports and horse races.
Those close to him estimate that Schlichter has flushed away at least $1 million gambling.
Schlichter, 46, was released early from an Indiana prison in June, then spent four months at a gambling treatment center in Baltimore. He recently moved back near Washington Court House, about 40 miles southwest of Columbus, to live with his mother in a home close to what once was their family farm.
But he remains locked up by a destructive past that he can't escape and a future filled with skepticism.
The addiction has damaged nearly all of his relationships. It divided his family, tested his closest friendship, tainted his legacy at Ohio State, ruined his marriage and separated him from his daughters most of their lives.
Schlichter said he last placed a bet Jan. 12, 2005. He lost $20 on a professional basketball game. He made the bet from prison.
"I don't want sympathy. I don't deserve sympathy," Schlichter said. "I just want a chance to make amends, especially with those I love most."
The question is not whether Schlichter wants redemption.
It's whether he's strong enough to earn it.
---
Playing for "Max"
The echo of a pre-game cheer drifted outside the stadium, where Schlichter walked in anonymity. The buzz of the crowd shouldn't faze Schlichter, once the golden boy who starred in jammed stadiums from coast to coast. But it penetrated his casual shell and exposed the farm boy who first saw his Camelot on a black-and-white television.
"I grew up taking care of sick hogs and doing chores on the farm," he said. "It was a big deal for me to come here, for my family when I came here, especially my dad."
The faces of the Schlichter family, young and old, pressed against the frosty windows as they watched the white El Camino with wooden side panels move slowly up the driveway.
Woody Hayes and his wife, Anne, were coming to Thanksgiving dinner. The coach was coming to get a new quarterback before his arch rival from Michigan could snatch him.
Ohio State's football leader would have to win over the Schlichter family's leader to get what he wanted.
John "Max" Schlichter, a Fayette County farmer, extended his giant hand to Hayes as he walked through the doorway. In that moment on Nov. 24, 1977, the deal likely was sealed.
"In the end it was my call, but my dad really liked Woody," Schlichter said.
"I know people had a lot of opinions about my dad. Some said he was a good guy with a big heart. Some said he was a big controlling bastard. He was a simple farmer who was strong and protective of his family. I know there are people who say my dad pushed me too hard, but he didn't push me into anything."
Max and Mila leased most of their 2,000 acres, which produced corn, soybeans and wheat. Art and his older brother, John, and sister, Dawn, all had chores.
But sports ruled in the Schlichter house. Max hung a net in the yard so Art could throw a football. He put up a basketball court in the barn so Art and John could play one-on-one.
"We didn't have a whole lot, but we had a good childhood," said John Schlichter, now a state representative. "But what happened later with Art took its toll on everyone, my dad included."
Off and on for years, Max gave his son thousands to pay off gambling debts. Schlichter also would use his father's credit card to generate money to gamble. "I caused my dad and my mom a lot of pain, too much pain," Schlichter said.
But Schlichter doesn't blame himself for his father's death. In 2002, Max was found dead in a Clintonville swimming pool. Authorities ruled it a suicide.
"My dad had remarried and was living a completely different life by then, one that few of us knew much about," Schlichter said. "My troubles were full-blown long before my dad's death."
Schlichter said he called and talked with his dad the night before he died. Max told Art he loved him, which he didn't often do over the phone.
The day his dad was buried, Schlichter sat alone in an Oklahoma City prison cell. He visited his dad's grave for the first time this past summer.
---
Covering for a friend
The football floated over a row of cars in the Ohio Stadium parking lot and was snatched just before it could dent the hood of a black Lexus. The two boys wearing varsity letter jackets debated whether it was a bad throw or a poorly run pattern that nearly ruined the parking lot tailgate about a half hour before kickoff.
Schlichter smirked at the boys and thought back to when he wore a letter jacket. "It's never the quarterback's fault," he said. "I have been telling my best friend that for years."
Their dusty pictures still hang next to each other outside the Miami Trace High School gymnasium. Schlichter is the chiseled, dark-haired magnetic wonder kid. Billy Hanners is the gangly, bushy-haired, awkward guy with dark-rimmed glasses.
The farm boys and best friends met in the fifth grade. A few years later, Schlichter, the golden-armed quarterback, and Hanners, his favorite wide receiver, would bake in the summer sun throwing pass after pass between the corn fields.
Together, they would never lose a high school football game.
On their last day of high school, when the student body sprinted for the front door, Schlichter and Hanners walked out back and sat on the ground near the football field.
The two tough guys held hands and cried.
"For two 18-year-old kids, it couldn't get any better than we had it back then," Hanners said. "We didn't want it to end."
Nearly every college in America wanted Schlichter, but most didn't want his buddy.
Recruiters from some big schools, such as Tennessee and Wisconsin, contacted Hanners about playing football, but mainly as a way to get his best friend onto campus. Hanners ended up at Murray State, where he played for a year before hurting his knee and leaving school to help his father run the family horse business.
Schlichter's gambling footprints are murky, but the first ones likely lead to a race track on Columbus' South Side.
When they were 18, Schlichter started going to Scioto Downs, the harness racing track, with the Hanners family.
The bets started small - $2, $5 or $10 a race - but steadily rose. The friends discovered they both had an appetite for gambling.
Hanners didn't realize how deep Schlichter had slipped into gambling until he flew to Baltimore to visit his friend in 1983. Schlichter had been the fourth pick overall in the 1982 NFL draft and was preparing to begin his second year in professional football for the Baltimore Colts.
"One of the first things Art did when I got there was pick up a bag full of money" from bookies, Hanners said.
Hanners soon found himself taking calls from Schlichter's bookies. Schlichter would put as much as $3,000 on an NBA basketball game and bet as many as a dozen games in a night. His bet of choice was often a parlay, which pays higher odds for picking three or more games correctly.
Hanners pleaded with his friend to stop, but the bets kept coming.
One night Schlichter won more than $135,000 betting on basketball, but he lost it all in three days. He suddenly owed the bookies close to $50,000. During one week, Schlichter lost $300,000.
For three straight weeks, Hanners met one of them at Port Columbus on Schlichter's behalf to hand over an envelope containing $10,000. Hanners didn't go to the airport to make the fourth payment, but the FBI did and arrested three bookies.
Schlichter had confessed his gambling problem to what he called an "adviser," who then contacted the FBI. Eventually Schlichter told the NFL about his involvement with the bookies and his gambling troubles.
The league suspended him. Schlichter and Hanners soon found themselves in the middle of a scandal that made headlines nationwide.
"I thought I was helping him get out of the situation. I was hoping we would get those guys paid off and be done with it," Hanners said. "I was trying to protect him from himself."
Schlichter's compulsive personality didn't take him into other addictions. He's consumed alcohol only a handful of times and has never been known to do drugs.
The gambling addiction and Schlichter's life in prison have tested their friendship, but no one has remained more loyal to his childhood friend than Hanners.
"Unless you have bet your rent check on a horse race or a ball game, which I have, you can't put yourself in his shoes," he said. "You do whatever it takes to make a bet or find money to cover a bet. I just want Art to find peace."
---
Gambling on stardom
A smattering of cackles and boos trailed the guy wearing the maize and blue block "M" hat as he strolled through the horde of Buckeye fans. This is the Minnesota game, a mere scrimmage for the fans awaiting the showdown with Michigan.
"That takes some guts," said Schlichter, flashing a wry smile.
Schlichter admits he was close to becoming a Wolverine, unsure he wanted to be part of Hayes' famed "three yards and a cloud of dust" offense.
"I'm a Buckeye, always will be," he said. "Woody was Ohio State, but my next coach was as big of a Buckeye as anyone."
Reporters crowded around the star quarterback in the steamy basketball locker room. During recruiting, Hayes had promised Schlichter he also could play for the OSU basketball team as a freshman. Schlichter's first love was basketball, in which he also starred at Miami Trace High School.
But Hayes was gone now, fired by the university after punching a Clemson linebacker in the 1978 Gator Bowl. The punch followed a game-clinching interception thrown by Schlichter.
The reporters told Schlichter that his replacement was some guy named Earle from Iowa State University.
Schlichter replied that he might leave Ohio State.
He stayed, had a brilliant sophomore football season and nearly won a national championship with Earle Bruce as coach. And no Buckeye quarterback has thrown for more yards than Schlichter did at Ohio State.
"Art was a loner," Bruce said. "Off the field, he made his life so secretive and unavailable. It was masked by his father and other things. On the field, Art and I never had any problems. He was a master, a leader. And his sophomore season, Ohio State never had a better quarterback."
The football field wasn't the only place where Bruce and Schlichter huddled. The Ohio State coach and his star were both regulars at the horse track. Both men say they never went together, but they occasionally would share a meal at the track or talk there about the races.
"I never took Art to the track. Let's make that clear once and for all," said Bruce, who has stuck by Schlichter and visited him in prison several times. "I didn't know Art had a problem with gambling back then."
Bruce might have been unaware, but many of Schlichter's teammates knew.
There were dozens of late-night poker games. Constant trips to Scioto Downs and Beulah Park. And regular bets on football, basketball, baseball and boxing.
"We bet on everything," said Bob Murphy, former Ohio State defensive back and one of Schlichter's closest friends on the team. "Art and I gambled together all the time. It was small amounts - $20 or $50, maybe $100 - whatever we had in our pockets."
Murphy, who lives in California, said his gambling with Schlichter included making small bets with bookies on college football games. "But we never bet on an Ohio State game," he said.
Murphy said Max Schlichter discovered that he and Art were making bets while Ohio State was preparing to play Penn State in the 1980 Fiesta Bowl. "Art said his dad cornered him in the basement back home and he confessed that we were gambling," Murphy said. "Art said his dad was looking for me at the Fiesta Bowl and wanted to have a little talk. He never did come see me, thank God."
Schlichter said he doesn't remember betting on college football games while playing for Ohio State.
---
Paying the price
The little girl with the wind-burned cheeks nearly tripped over her pink scarf while she ran toward the stadium gate and pulled her dad by the arm.
"I don't want to miss the band," she said. "Hurry up , Dad."
The scene is not lost on Schlichter, who has been away from his two daughters most of their lives.
They have never seen a game here, never seen this place, where their father's life once seemed pure.
"I hope they can come here someday," Schlichter said, his eyes moist. "I hope they want to come here with me."
Mitzi Schlichter thought it was an odd time for a knock on the door. It was evening, and she and her sister were caring for her two young daughters. Maybe a pizza delivery boy had the wrong address or a kid was selling cookies.
She opened it to find an FBI agent in the doorway.
Dozens of checks from her sister's closed bank account had been signed and cashed around Las Vegas. Schlichter admits to stealing the checks after they were mailed to his sister-in-law at his home.
It took only moments for Mitzi to realize that the FBI didn't want her sister. It wanted her husband, Art, who in early 1994 had gone on a gambling spree with the checks and was likely in a casino when the FBI came looking for his sister-in-law.
"I decided then I wasn't going to let his addiction destroy my children," Mitzi said.
Mitzi, who married Schlichter in 1989, eventually took their daughters and moved back to Indiana with her parents.
Schlichter soon began a string of prison sentences that continued for the better part of the past 12 years.
When Schlichter first went to prison, he wasn't allowed to talk to his family for at least two months. Then came the moment that Mitzi hoped would finally propel her husband never to make another bet.
Schlichter's 4-year-old daughter begged her dad to come home. The phone was wet with tears as she repeatedly asked her dad why he would leave.
"To hear his daughter wailing for him, I thought that would be a life-changing experience," she said. "That's why I gave him another chance after he served 15 months or so in prison."
But Schlichter didn't stop gambling or stealing money to feed his addiction. Shortly after moving back in with his wife and daughters, he was arrested again, this time for stealing checks from his employers.
The Schlichters were divorced about two years later.
Mitzi met Schlichter when she was a 21-year-old student at Ball State in Muncie, Ind. Friends fixed them up on their first date. She knew Schlichter was an NFL quarterback and had some trouble with gambling. But she wasn't scared off by his addiction. They dated for five years and routinely attended treatment sessions or meetings together.
Those meetings did more to save Mitzi than her husband.
She learned never to combine her money with Schlichter's. They didn't have a checking account. There was a savings account only in Mitzi's name. She never had a joint credit card or signed off on any loans with her husband.
"We only paid for things in cash," she said. "I would go to the grocery store once a month and get 10 money orders to pay our bills. When we split, I had some tax issues to fix, but overall I came out of it financially better than most people."
The Schlichters' daughters were born four years apart, in 1990 and 1994. In between, the couple had a boy, Shane, who was stillborn at about eight months. "He was my son," Schlichter said.
Mitzi is now remarried and living in Indiana with their two daughters, 16 and 12. Since leaving prison last summer, Schlichter has been respectful of her current husband and is making a full-fledged attempt to re-enter his daughters' lives. Schlichter routinely drives to Indiana to see them.
"He is stepping into their world, and I am allowing the girls to decide how much," she said. "He loves them, and they love him."
---
Searching for redemption
A few rows from the mushy field, Schlichter stopped where the shadow met the sunshine in Ohio Stadium.
Moments before the start of the OSU-Minnesota game, an usher tapped his shoulder and told him to find his seat, somewhere near the 5 -yard line.
"This isn't the same place I played in," he said, casting his eyes down.
"And I'm not the same guy that used to play here. I haven't had much contact with anyone at Ohio State, and I'm not sure they want to have contact with me."
There is no photo remembering Schlichter in Ohio State's media guide or game-day programs.
No halftime ceremony honoring his storied career. No local endorsement deals or invitations to exclusive parties.
For years, his only contact with the so-called Buckeye Nation was from a prison radio or TV.
But three weeks after the Minnesota game, where Schlichter sat quietly in the stands with his mom, the door to a school that has shunned him cracked open.
The day before the Michigan game, at a benefit honoring Earle Bruce, Schlichter was invited to join other former players on the sidelines the next day.
Troy Smith, wearing Schlichter's old number, was making his final warm-up throws moments before kickoff when Schlichter walked over to greet the Buckeye quarterback.
Smith hesitated at first, maybe because he didn't know who Schlichter was, maybe because he knew exactly who Schlichter was.
But Smith extended his hand to Schlichter and flashed his Heisman grin.
Coach Jim Tressel was next to shake Schlichter's hand.
"Welcome back, Arthur," Tressel said.
The day was surreal, overwhelming.
But his reality is far from the fleeting glamour of the Buckeyes sideline. It's checking in with a probation officer. Continuing to attend 12-step meetings for addicts. Trying to find a way into his daughters' lives.
For now he is jobless, relying on help from family and friends. Schlichter is in the process of establishing a foundation to educate people about the dangers of compulsive gambling.
But his demons remain.
And no one, not even Schlichter, knows whether he ever will truly come back.
Source
By Mike Wagner
January 8, 2007
Art Schlichter wandered outside the walls, in the shadows of a stadium where he once made the masses roar.
He went unrecognized, almost invisible to the thousands who swarmed the gates.
Hundreds of scarlet-clad fans wearing his old number brushed past the former quarterback. They honored Troy Smith, the current No. 10, not the one they have forgotten or use as a punch line.
On this chilly October day, Schlichter brought his mom, Mila, to watch the Buckeyes play Minnesota. It was the first Ohio State game he'd attended in 13 years.
Schlichter braced himself against the wind swirling around Ohio Stadium and the emotions that churned inside him. His dark eyes hid under a white baseball cap, but they couldn't conceal what sullied his return to the place where he once found glory.
"I've hurt a lot of people since I've been here," he said. "I'm more sorry than people will ever know."
Since leaving Ohio State 25 years ago, Schlichter has gone from All-American quarterback to one of America's best-known compulsive gamblers. Since 1994 he has served time in 44 prisons or jails, mainly for fraud and forgery - swindling people out of money or writing bad checks to feed his addiction to gambling on sports and horse races.
Those close to him estimate that Schlichter has flushed away at least $1 million gambling.
Schlichter, 46, was released early from an Indiana prison in June, then spent four months at a gambling treatment center in Baltimore. He recently moved back near Washington Court House, about 40 miles southwest of Columbus, to live with his mother in a home close to what once was their family farm.
But he remains locked up by a destructive past that he can't escape and a future filled with skepticism.
The addiction has damaged nearly all of his relationships. It divided his family, tested his closest friendship, tainted his legacy at Ohio State, ruined his marriage and separated him from his daughters most of their lives.
Schlichter said he last placed a bet Jan. 12, 2005. He lost $20 on a professional basketball game. He made the bet from prison.
"I don't want sympathy. I don't deserve sympathy," Schlichter said. "I just want a chance to make amends, especially with those I love most."
The question is not whether Schlichter wants redemption.
It's whether he's strong enough to earn it.
---
Playing for "Max"
The echo of a pre-game cheer drifted outside the stadium, where Schlichter walked in anonymity. The buzz of the crowd shouldn't faze Schlichter, once the golden boy who starred in jammed stadiums from coast to coast. But it penetrated his casual shell and exposed the farm boy who first saw his Camelot on a black-and-white television.
"I grew up taking care of sick hogs and doing chores on the farm," he said. "It was a big deal for me to come here, for my family when I came here, especially my dad."
The faces of the Schlichter family, young and old, pressed against the frosty windows as they watched the white El Camino with wooden side panels move slowly up the driveway.
Woody Hayes and his wife, Anne, were coming to Thanksgiving dinner. The coach was coming to get a new quarterback before his arch rival from Michigan could snatch him.
Ohio State's football leader would have to win over the Schlichter family's leader to get what he wanted.
John "Max" Schlichter, a Fayette County farmer, extended his giant hand to Hayes as he walked through the doorway. In that moment on Nov. 24, 1977, the deal likely was sealed.
"In the end it was my call, but my dad really liked Woody," Schlichter said.
"I know people had a lot of opinions about my dad. Some said he was a good guy with a big heart. Some said he was a big controlling bastard. He was a simple farmer who was strong and protective of his family. I know there are people who say my dad pushed me too hard, but he didn't push me into anything."
Max and Mila leased most of their 2,000 acres, which produced corn, soybeans and wheat. Art and his older brother, John, and sister, Dawn, all had chores.
But sports ruled in the Schlichter house. Max hung a net in the yard so Art could throw a football. He put up a basketball court in the barn so Art and John could play one-on-one.
"We didn't have a whole lot, but we had a good childhood," said John Schlichter, now a state representative. "But what happened later with Art took its toll on everyone, my dad included."
Off and on for years, Max gave his son thousands to pay off gambling debts. Schlichter also would use his father's credit card to generate money to gamble. "I caused my dad and my mom a lot of pain, too much pain," Schlichter said.
But Schlichter doesn't blame himself for his father's death. In 2002, Max was found dead in a Clintonville swimming pool. Authorities ruled it a suicide.
"My dad had remarried and was living a completely different life by then, one that few of us knew much about," Schlichter said. "My troubles were full-blown long before my dad's death."
Schlichter said he called and talked with his dad the night before he died. Max told Art he loved him, which he didn't often do over the phone.
The day his dad was buried, Schlichter sat alone in an Oklahoma City prison cell. He visited his dad's grave for the first time this past summer.
---
Covering for a friend
The football floated over a row of cars in the Ohio Stadium parking lot and was snatched just before it could dent the hood of a black Lexus. The two boys wearing varsity letter jackets debated whether it was a bad throw or a poorly run pattern that nearly ruined the parking lot tailgate about a half hour before kickoff.
Schlichter smirked at the boys and thought back to when he wore a letter jacket. "It's never the quarterback's fault," he said. "I have been telling my best friend that for years."
Their dusty pictures still hang next to each other outside the Miami Trace High School gymnasium. Schlichter is the chiseled, dark-haired magnetic wonder kid. Billy Hanners is the gangly, bushy-haired, awkward guy with dark-rimmed glasses.
The farm boys and best friends met in the fifth grade. A few years later, Schlichter, the golden-armed quarterback, and Hanners, his favorite wide receiver, would bake in the summer sun throwing pass after pass between the corn fields.
Together, they would never lose a high school football game.
On their last day of high school, when the student body sprinted for the front door, Schlichter and Hanners walked out back and sat on the ground near the football field.
The two tough guys held hands and cried.
"For two 18-year-old kids, it couldn't get any better than we had it back then," Hanners said. "We didn't want it to end."
Nearly every college in America wanted Schlichter, but most didn't want his buddy.
Recruiters from some big schools, such as Tennessee and Wisconsin, contacted Hanners about playing football, but mainly as a way to get his best friend onto campus. Hanners ended up at Murray State, where he played for a year before hurting his knee and leaving school to help his father run the family horse business.
Schlichter's gambling footprints are murky, but the first ones likely lead to a race track on Columbus' South Side.
When they were 18, Schlichter started going to Scioto Downs, the harness racing track, with the Hanners family.
The bets started small - $2, $5 or $10 a race - but steadily rose. The friends discovered they both had an appetite for gambling.
Hanners didn't realize how deep Schlichter had slipped into gambling until he flew to Baltimore to visit his friend in 1983. Schlichter had been the fourth pick overall in the 1982 NFL draft and was preparing to begin his second year in professional football for the Baltimore Colts.
"One of the first things Art did when I got there was pick up a bag full of money" from bookies, Hanners said.
Hanners soon found himself taking calls from Schlichter's bookies. Schlichter would put as much as $3,000 on an NBA basketball game and bet as many as a dozen games in a night. His bet of choice was often a parlay, which pays higher odds for picking three or more games correctly.
Hanners pleaded with his friend to stop, but the bets kept coming.
One night Schlichter won more than $135,000 betting on basketball, but he lost it all in three days. He suddenly owed the bookies close to $50,000. During one week, Schlichter lost $300,000.
For three straight weeks, Hanners met one of them at Port Columbus on Schlichter's behalf to hand over an envelope containing $10,000. Hanners didn't go to the airport to make the fourth payment, but the FBI did and arrested three bookies.
Schlichter had confessed his gambling problem to what he called an "adviser," who then contacted the FBI. Eventually Schlichter told the NFL about his involvement with the bookies and his gambling troubles.
The league suspended him. Schlichter and Hanners soon found themselves in the middle of a scandal that made headlines nationwide.
"I thought I was helping him get out of the situation. I was hoping we would get those guys paid off and be done with it," Hanners said. "I was trying to protect him from himself."
Schlichter's compulsive personality didn't take him into other addictions. He's consumed alcohol only a handful of times and has never been known to do drugs.
The gambling addiction and Schlichter's life in prison have tested their friendship, but no one has remained more loyal to his childhood friend than Hanners.
"Unless you have bet your rent check on a horse race or a ball game, which I have, you can't put yourself in his shoes," he said. "You do whatever it takes to make a bet or find money to cover a bet. I just want Art to find peace."
---
Gambling on stardom
A smattering of cackles and boos trailed the guy wearing the maize and blue block "M" hat as he strolled through the horde of Buckeye fans. This is the Minnesota game, a mere scrimmage for the fans awaiting the showdown with Michigan.
"That takes some guts," said Schlichter, flashing a wry smile.
Schlichter admits he was close to becoming a Wolverine, unsure he wanted to be part of Hayes' famed "three yards and a cloud of dust" offense.
"I'm a Buckeye, always will be," he said. "Woody was Ohio State, but my next coach was as big of a Buckeye as anyone."
Reporters crowded around the star quarterback in the steamy basketball locker room. During recruiting, Hayes had promised Schlichter he also could play for the OSU basketball team as a freshman. Schlichter's first love was basketball, in which he also starred at Miami Trace High School.
But Hayes was gone now, fired by the university after punching a Clemson linebacker in the 1978 Gator Bowl. The punch followed a game-clinching interception thrown by Schlichter.
The reporters told Schlichter that his replacement was some guy named Earle from Iowa State University.
Schlichter replied that he might leave Ohio State.
He stayed, had a brilliant sophomore football season and nearly won a national championship with Earle Bruce as coach. And no Buckeye quarterback has thrown for more yards than Schlichter did at Ohio State.
"Art was a loner," Bruce said. "Off the field, he made his life so secretive and unavailable. It was masked by his father and other things. On the field, Art and I never had any problems. He was a master, a leader. And his sophomore season, Ohio State never had a better quarterback."
The football field wasn't the only place where Bruce and Schlichter huddled. The Ohio State coach and his star were both regulars at the horse track. Both men say they never went together, but they occasionally would share a meal at the track or talk there about the races.
"I never took Art to the track. Let's make that clear once and for all," said Bruce, who has stuck by Schlichter and visited him in prison several times. "I didn't know Art had a problem with gambling back then."
Bruce might have been unaware, but many of Schlichter's teammates knew.
There were dozens of late-night poker games. Constant trips to Scioto Downs and Beulah Park. And regular bets on football, basketball, baseball and boxing.
"We bet on everything," said Bob Murphy, former Ohio State defensive back and one of Schlichter's closest friends on the team. "Art and I gambled together all the time. It was small amounts - $20 or $50, maybe $100 - whatever we had in our pockets."
Murphy, who lives in California, said his gambling with Schlichter included making small bets with bookies on college football games. "But we never bet on an Ohio State game," he said.
Murphy said Max Schlichter discovered that he and Art were making bets while Ohio State was preparing to play Penn State in the 1980 Fiesta Bowl. "Art said his dad cornered him in the basement back home and he confessed that we were gambling," Murphy said. "Art said his dad was looking for me at the Fiesta Bowl and wanted to have a little talk. He never did come see me, thank God."
Schlichter said he doesn't remember betting on college football games while playing for Ohio State.
---
Paying the price
The little girl with the wind-burned cheeks nearly tripped over her pink scarf while she ran toward the stadium gate and pulled her dad by the arm.
"I don't want to miss the band," she said. "Hurry up , Dad."
The scene is not lost on Schlichter, who has been away from his two daughters most of their lives.
They have never seen a game here, never seen this place, where their father's life once seemed pure.
"I hope they can come here someday," Schlichter said, his eyes moist. "I hope they want to come here with me."
Mitzi Schlichter thought it was an odd time for a knock on the door. It was evening, and she and her sister were caring for her two young daughters. Maybe a pizza delivery boy had the wrong address or a kid was selling cookies.
She opened it to find an FBI agent in the doorway.
Dozens of checks from her sister's closed bank account had been signed and cashed around Las Vegas. Schlichter admits to stealing the checks after they were mailed to his sister-in-law at his home.
It took only moments for Mitzi to realize that the FBI didn't want her sister. It wanted her husband, Art, who in early 1994 had gone on a gambling spree with the checks and was likely in a casino when the FBI came looking for his sister-in-law.
"I decided then I wasn't going to let his addiction destroy my children," Mitzi said.
Mitzi, who married Schlichter in 1989, eventually took their daughters and moved back to Indiana with her parents.
Schlichter soon began a string of prison sentences that continued for the better part of the past 12 years.
When Schlichter first went to prison, he wasn't allowed to talk to his family for at least two months. Then came the moment that Mitzi hoped would finally propel her husband never to make another bet.
Schlichter's 4-year-old daughter begged her dad to come home. The phone was wet with tears as she repeatedly asked her dad why he would leave.
"To hear his daughter wailing for him, I thought that would be a life-changing experience," she said. "That's why I gave him another chance after he served 15 months or so in prison."
But Schlichter didn't stop gambling or stealing money to feed his addiction. Shortly after moving back in with his wife and daughters, he was arrested again, this time for stealing checks from his employers.
The Schlichters were divorced about two years later.
Mitzi met Schlichter when she was a 21-year-old student at Ball State in Muncie, Ind. Friends fixed them up on their first date. She knew Schlichter was an NFL quarterback and had some trouble with gambling. But she wasn't scared off by his addiction. They dated for five years and routinely attended treatment sessions or meetings together.
Those meetings did more to save Mitzi than her husband.
She learned never to combine her money with Schlichter's. They didn't have a checking account. There was a savings account only in Mitzi's name. She never had a joint credit card or signed off on any loans with her husband.
"We only paid for things in cash," she said. "I would go to the grocery store once a month and get 10 money orders to pay our bills. When we split, I had some tax issues to fix, but overall I came out of it financially better than most people."
The Schlichters' daughters were born four years apart, in 1990 and 1994. In between, the couple had a boy, Shane, who was stillborn at about eight months. "He was my son," Schlichter said.
Mitzi is now remarried and living in Indiana with their two daughters, 16 and 12. Since leaving prison last summer, Schlichter has been respectful of her current husband and is making a full-fledged attempt to re-enter his daughters' lives. Schlichter routinely drives to Indiana to see them.
"He is stepping into their world, and I am allowing the girls to decide how much," she said. "He loves them, and they love him."
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Searching for redemption
A few rows from the mushy field, Schlichter stopped where the shadow met the sunshine in Ohio Stadium.
Moments before the start of the OSU-Minnesota game, an usher tapped his shoulder and told him to find his seat, somewhere near the 5 -yard line.
"This isn't the same place I played in," he said, casting his eyes down.
"And I'm not the same guy that used to play here. I haven't had much contact with anyone at Ohio State, and I'm not sure they want to have contact with me."
There is no photo remembering Schlichter in Ohio State's media guide or game-day programs.
No halftime ceremony honoring his storied career. No local endorsement deals or invitations to exclusive parties.
For years, his only contact with the so-called Buckeye Nation was from a prison radio or TV.
But three weeks after the Minnesota game, where Schlichter sat quietly in the stands with his mom, the door to a school that has shunned him cracked open.
The day before the Michigan game, at a benefit honoring Earle Bruce, Schlichter was invited to join other former players on the sidelines the next day.
Troy Smith, wearing Schlichter's old number, was making his final warm-up throws moments before kickoff when Schlichter walked over to greet the Buckeye quarterback.
Smith hesitated at first, maybe because he didn't know who Schlichter was, maybe because he knew exactly who Schlichter was.
But Smith extended his hand to Schlichter and flashed his Heisman grin.
Coach Jim Tressel was next to shake Schlichter's hand.
"Welcome back, Arthur," Tressel said.
The day was surreal, overwhelming.
But his reality is far from the fleeting glamour of the Buckeyes sideline. It's checking in with a probation officer. Continuing to attend 12-step meetings for addicts. Trying to find a way into his daughters' lives.
For now he is jobless, relying on help from family and friends. Schlichter is in the process of establishing a foundation to educate people about the dangers of compulsive gambling.
But his demons remain.
And no one, not even Schlichter, knows whether he ever will truly come back.
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