A highly touted college football prospect with the Ohio State Buckeyes, Schlichter's professional career was cut short by a gambling addiction that resulted in him facing legal trouble for nearly four decades.
Selected fourth overall in the 1982 NFL draft by the Colts, Schlichter appeared in only thirteen games with six starts due to his gambling problems.
He 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.
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.
He 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.
[3][1] Schlichter was a four-year starter at the Ohio State University (OSU), the last starting quarterback for legendary Buckeyes coach Woody Hayes.
[1][2] 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 Schlichter was at OSU.
Expected to be the starter, Schlichter lost the job to Mike Pagel, the Colts' fourth-round pick in that year, when he appeared at practice out of shape and in a distracted state of mind.
[10] The league suspended him indefinitely, but Commissioner Pete Rozelle reduced the suspension to thirteen months after Schlichter agreed to seek treatment for his gambling addiction.
[14] Rozelle let it be known that he would not approve any NFL contract for Schlichter that season, costing him valuable work when the National Football League Players Association went on strike that year.
[20] In 2021, The Athletic named Schlichter the worst #4 pick since the merger, noting that the Colts selected him with McMahon and future Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen on the board.
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.
[14] Schlichter played for the Detroit Drive of the Arena Football League (AFL) in 1990 and 1991, where he was named MVP in the former en route to winning ArenaBowl IV.
Ahead the 1992 season, Schlichter was traded to the expansion Cincinnati Rockers, with league officials believing his popularity in Ohio would generate interest for the franchise.
Although he said he intended instead to focus on his radio career and curing his gambling addiction,[14][23] evidence later came to light that Schlichter was forced to retire rather than face being banned from the league for betting on AFL games.
[24] In 1994, 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.
[14] Schlichter ran up massive gambling debts while playing for the Detroit Drive, although general manager Gary Vitto helped pay some of them off.
[14] Vitto and owner Mike Ilitch tried their best to help Schlichter, keeping him on a budget and requiring him to attend meetings with therapists and Gamblers Anonymous.
[14] Soon afterward, in October, Schlichter was charged with fraud for passing $175,000 in bad checks at Las Vegas casinos, many of which he'd stolen from Kutner.
He was released on probation in 1999 after serving thirteen months[14] and returned home to Bloomingburg, where he told friends that he still had connections to get prime tickets for OSU football games.
[14] During that time, he also had his public defender, Linda Wagoner, smuggle a cell phone into the Marion County, Indiana, jail so he could place bets.
In late 2009, Schlichter and his mother appeared in television ads opposing a statewide ballot issue legalizing casinos in select cities of Ohio.
[29] It subsequently emerged that Schlichter had conned thousands of dollars under the pretense of buying prime seats at OSU football games.
Schlichter admitted to using the money he obtained from the ticket scam to either gamble, pay back previous debts, or buy personal items.
She 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.
According to The Indianapolis Star, he continued to gamble while in prison, having women place bets for him and running a Super Bowl ticket scheme.
However, Franklin County Common Pleas judge Chris Brown took a dim view of the request, saying that Schlichter was "past the point of rehabilitation" and had not shown that he would "conduct (himself appropriately)" if released.
[38] A few months later, on February 2, 2024, an Ohio Highway Patrol officer found Schlichter on a street in Columbus, standing beside his disabled vehicle.
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 (CTE), a degenerative disease caused by repeated blows to the head which has been found to be common among football players.