DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Schlichter tries to rebuild a wasted life.

Updated: Feb. 3, 2007, 3:27 AM ET
Once the future of the Colts, Schlichter tries to rebuild a wasted lifeAssociated Press
National Football League News Wire

MIAMI -- Art Schlichter's career stats are memorable for all
the wrong reasons.

Ten years behind bars. Twenty some convictions. Forty-four
different prisons.

One life wasted.

"I served my time," Schlichter said. "I got an enormous
amount of time for what I did."

He was once the quarterback of the future for the Indianapolis
Colts, the Peyton Manning of his time. He was always the ultimate
con man, a smooth talker who could separate people from their money
faster than he could zip a football downfield.

Gambling was his addiction. Greed proved to be his downfall.

There was always one more score to make, one last bet to win
back. He stole from friends and family alike, and there wasn't a
credit card he didn't try to lift.

Twice he even conned his lawyer into smuggling a phone into
prison so he could place bets from his cell.

His wife left with their two young daughters, but the urge to
gamble was stronger than the urge to be a husband and father. He
had issues with his father, but was in prison when he committed
suicide.

"I don't know how to tell you how much pain we've had," his
mother said a few years ago.

He's a free man now, living with his mother in Indiana and
reporting to his probation officer on a regular basis.

He wants you to believe he has changed. Five months of therapy
have helped, and he says he understands now the roots of the demons
that drove him to swindle loved ones and strangers with an equal
lack of remorse.

The Super Bowl is Sunday and he doesn't have a bet down. Not
only that, he's organized a group to help compulsive gamblers like
himself.

You want to believe him, but then you wonder. Is it all another
act?

This is a guy, after all, who was once sent back to prison for
betting on the Super Bowl and going to the racetrack at the same
time he was getting treatment at the Compulsive Gambling Center in
Baltimore.

"I'm not a bad guy," Schlichter insisted on the phone the
other day. "I just made some bad decisions."

You want to believe he's a changed man. But try telling that to
the Indiana man living on military disability who lost $2,700 to
Schlichter in a scam involving phony Final Four tickets.

Try telling that to the former doctor who was conned out of
$145,000 after meeting Schlichter in a program for people with
addictive behavior. She thought she was going to get paid back, but
the checks Schlichter gave her had been stolen from his father.

Try telling that to hundreds of others who fell victim to the
handsome, personable former quarterback and his bagful of scams.

There are so many marks, so many stories, that even Schlichter
is weary of talking about them.

"Just look up the old stuff," he said. "It's all there."

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Schlichter was a star at
Ohio State, a dashing quarterback who finished fifth in the Heisman
voting his senior year before being selected by the then-Baltimore
Colts with the fourth pick of the 1982 draft.

He got a $350,000 signing bonus, but the racetrack beckoned and
there were games to bet. He made the mistake of chasing bad bets
with good money, and soon was so deep in debt with Baltimore
bookies that he was forced to confess to the NFL to avoid getting
hurt.

His bookie would later testify that Schlichter bet on almost
every NFL team but his own. The only reason he didn't, the bookie
said, was that the Colts were a lousy team at the time.

He had played in only 13 games by the time the NFL banned him
for good in 1987. That same year he lost $20,000 the week after the
players went on strike and was $800,000 in debt by the time the
strike ended.

"Gambling was like a high to me, just like drugs or alcohol are
to others," Schlichter said. "The rush of winning is part of it,
but it's also a distraction from pain or problems you're having in
your life."

Schlichter is 46 now. Had his life gone another way, he might be
at the Super Bowl schmoozing with old friends and being wined and
dined as an honored member of the Colts family.

Instead, he's just getting used to the idea of not living behind
bars after spending 10 of the last 12 years in various prisons. He
swears he finally gets it this time, and that he wants nothing more
out of life now than to help others who have the same addiction.

"There comes a point you either want to live or die and I
wanted to live," Schlichter said. "For me, one thing I couldn't
do was gamble. I had to learn to live with that idea in my head."

Schlichter was saying all this the other day as he was driving
to Indianapolis to watch his daughters play basketball. He seemed
earnest.

He knows he wasted his talent, understands he nearly wasted his
life.

"I'd be lying if I said I never thought about what might have
been," he said.

You want to believe him, want him to make something of the rest
of his life.

But then you remember that he's conned people before.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/wire?section=nfl&id=2752808

Wow, this guy makes Pete Rose seem like Mother Thereasa. Now this guy got what he deserved, he scammed people out of money....friends, family, and strangers alike. He doesn't get much sympathy from me. However, I do hope and pray that he, finally, changes his life around. After reading this story, I think Pete Rose should be directly inducted into the Hall of Fame. At least Pete didn't swindle people out of money with bogus scams.

I met Schlichter when he was with the Colts. Some friends had a friendly nickel/dime/quater "Poker Night," and one week, one of them brought Schlichter to the game. WOW... big time NFL QB, shows up at our friendly game.

Art didn't want to play poker, he wanted to shoot craps, and he wanted to go for more money than what I had to lose. Next week, he showed up with some "friends of his" and wanted to shoot craps again... After several more weeks of this, I dropped out of the game. No longer a "fun and friendly" game among friends.

This became part of a regular "floating crap game" in our area, and Art was the big name attraction. I played cards, and rolled dice for fun. Sometimes winning, but never losing more than I could afford. Some of my friends can't say that, and the glamour (at the time) of hanging out with Schlichter was part of their problem. Art was doing this every night of the week. Crap games, horse racing, Vegas, Atlantic City, bookies, bets going down all the time.

And people around here wonder why I have an adverse reaction when they claim to have "friends" on the team....

More than anything else... The comment is based on some of my experiences with "Big Name Pro Atheletes." Schlichter was obviously a bad experience. I knew the guy on a personal level, and he had a lot of problems. In addition to gambling, celebrity was a drug to him, as it was to many of his friends and fans. That celebrity allowed Schlichter to use people, people who under normal circumstances, he would not have been able to use.

In my opinion, Art didn't have any "friends." To have a friend, you have to be a friend. Gambling, Celebrity and Ego kept Schlichter from being a friend to anyone. All he had were fans.... which he used mercilessly for profit.... A profit he threw away by gambling.

I think Art's celebrity was as much a problem for him as his gambling was. Celebrity was his "enabler," that allowed the gambling to happen. When he was a Miami Trace farm boy, Art didn't have the money to gamble with. Later, at OSU, Schlichter learned to use his celebrity, and fan worship, to get money. He took those lessons to a higher level after he joined the NFL, and started losing his own money to gambling. So he conned fans and family out of savings, businesses, and property. That money, allowed him to continue gambling....

Does the fan and media worship of atheletes play a role in problems like Art's... I don't know.... but it's a question we all need to ask ourselves....