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QB Art Schlichter (sad)

Down And Out With Art Schlichter, Football God Turned Con Man

swojphcopbo2mqunn3a7.png


Originally published as “The Long, Slow Fall of a Gridiron God” in the December, 1988 issue of GQ, this profile appears here with the author’s permission.

Art Schlichter is scrambling. Running late, headed from his father’s farm in Bloomingburg, Ohio, to the Springfield Antique Show and Flea Market, he flips on his Road Patrol XK radar detector and hits the gas, challenging the two-lane road, sliding into the wrong lane to take a blind curve. A farm truck appears dead ahead. With all-pro reflexes, Schlichter whips the car back into the right lane just as the rig blows by. “Did that scare you?” he asks his passenger. “It scared me.”

But he recovers quickly. “Was that my fault?” he asks.

Schlichter parks the car at the flea market. As he walks up to the family booth, he can hear his father: “If Arthur were here, where he’s supposed to be,” Max Schlichter is saying, “we’d be all set up. But he’s sleeping in somewhere.” Art starts to unload a van by grabbing two fake Christmas trees, both missing branches, and sticking them under a tent. “People here,” he says, “will buy anything.”

Though he stands 6-foot-2 and weighs more than 300 pounds, Max Schlichter doesn’t have the handshake you’d expect. Thirty years ago, he grabbed a hunting rifle by the muzzle, banged it against the tractor he was riding and shot a bullet through his palm. Last year, bad weather and falling prices forced him to sell his farm so he could plant corn, soy and tomatoes on 4,200 rented acres. Back when his son was a National Football League quarterback, Max figured Art would one day buy the family farm.

Once the vans are unloaded, the tables set up, Art gets itchy. But with thousands of people pouring in, driving out isn’t easy. He gets lost on a dirt road that cuts around the funnel-cake stands, past a guy in an “I Buy Bicycle Lamps” shirt and through the crowd. Suddenly, a woman steps in front of the car. When she looks up and sees Schlichter bearing down, she starts to shimmy like fresh Jell-O, part of her body going one way, part the other. Just as Art finds the brake, she aligns her limbs and leaps to safety. “Whoa,” he says, checking the rearview mirror, “scared the shit out of her.”

After lunch, Art stops by his brother’s house, where one of his little nephews comes to the door with a new, spiked haircut. The spikes take Schlichter by surprise. “You’re a farmer,” he says, “not a punk rocker.” He tosses a football with the boy, whose eyes take on an unmistakable glow.

It’s been five years now since Art Schlichter was first suspended by the NFL for gambling. Once the top quarterback prospect in the country, the fourth player taken in the 1982 National Football League draft, he last started an NFL game in 1985. Since then, he’s been cut by Indianapolis and Buffalo and played wide receiver for a Columbus flag-football team. When he tried to come back with Cincinnati last year, the NFL, citing a gambling relapse and his arrest in Indianapolis, suspended him again, so Schlichter took a job at VanLand, a Columbus dealership that claims to sell more vans than any other dealer in the world. He was so good, they made him a closer. “I’m a natural salesman,” he says. “I can sell the sleeves off a vest.”

Nonetheless, when the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League offered him a reported $25,000 bonus and $125,000 contract this past spring, Schlichter quit. Ottawa’s coach, Fred Glick, didn’t promise Schlichter he would start, but Glick made him feel wanted—something Schlichter hadn’t felt for a long time, not since high school. Today, even in Columbus, where he starred for Ohio State, still does charity work and still has many fans, there are those who consider him a spoiled kid who had everything, everything, and blew it. “The person on the street is sympathetic,” says an Ohio State booster. “He fired up the Buckeyes, and he beat Michigan. But I don’t think people that were close to him have much respect for him.”

They used to call him King Arthur. As a Little League pitcher, he twice struck out 18 batters in a six-inning game. In three years as starting quarterback at Miami Trace High School, Schlichter (pronounced Shlees-ter) never lost. He was all-state in football and basketball. Encouraged by his father, who was certain Art would be a great athlete from the time he was four, Schlichter trained religiously. During the summer, to strengthen his arm, he would throw 2,500 passes a week. In one drill, he lofted the ball 50 yards, over an 18-foot net, while seated on the ground.

Miami Trace’s “Hall of Fame” is an Art Schlichter shrine—his jerseys, his trophies, and the team pictures with the cheerleaders kneeling at his feet, Art’s hands on the shoulders of the girl he dated. “Close friends of mine always accused me of being hung up on him,” says Bill Hanners, then Art’s best friend and wide receiver. “There were times when I’d just stand around and watch him and think, How’s he do that? I’ve wished a lot of times that I could be like him. It just seemed there wasn’t anything he could do wrong. Everything he tried, he did well—and at the same time, he had to look like a goddamn model.”

Miami Trace is less than 40 miles from Columbus. The largest metropolitan area in America without a major league sports team, Columbus takes the fortunes of the Ohio State Buckeyes seriously. Downtown, across from the State Capitol, is a hundred-year-old church with a huge stained-glass window above its front door; pictured in the window is Ohio Stadium, home of the Buckeyes, former home of Woody Hayes.

The legendary coach, who was revered in Columbus long after he resigned in disgrace, won his first national championship at Ohio State six years before Schlichter was born. By the time Schlichter reached high school, Hayes, who died last year, had immortalized his plodding three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense and his coaching creed: “When you throw a pass,” he loved to say, “only three things can happen, and two of them are bad.” Together, Woody and Art would discover a fourth thing.

View attachment 18000
sbmkcsrrdrdgellm27sh.jpg


Hayes disdained hotshot quarterbacks, but it’s hard to ignore the best in the country when he’s playing in your backyard. An OSU assistant coach, George Chaump, eventually sold Woody and Art on each other. “I liked the idea,” said Schlichter, who succumbed to pressure from friends, relatives and Buckeye loyalists everywhere, “of an Ohio boy turning the Ohio State offense around. I wanted to be the one to make the Buckeyes pass.”

His freshman year, 1978, Schlichter beat out a senior incumbent who had been all–Big 10. Then he threw five interceptions in his first game, and Woody rediscovered the run. “You run a stupid-ass pass attack,” says Chaump, now head coach at Marshall University, “and you’re going to get intercepted. I recruited Art, and I felt bad morally. I think there was a breach of contract.”

The season ended with a loss to Michigan and a trip to the Gator Bowl, which is about as far from the Rose Bowl as you can get. The game was lost when a Schlichter pass was intercepted and Hayes, already famous for his sideline temper tantrums, punched the Clemson linebacker who had intercepted it. On the flight home. Woody got on the intercom. “This is your coach,” he said. “I won’t be coaching you next year.”

From 1988: Down and out with Art Schlichter, football god turned con man.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Down And Out With Art Schlichter, Football God Turned Con Man

swojphcopbo2mqunn3a7.png


Originally published as “The Long, Slow Fall of a Gridiron God” in the December, 1988 issue of GQ, this profile appears here with the author’s permission.

Art Schlichter is scrambling. Running late, headed from his father’s farm in Bloomingburg, Ohio, to the Springfield Antique Show and Flea Market, he flips on his Road Patrol XK radar detector and hits the gas, challenging the two-lane road, sliding into the wrong lane to take a blind curve. A farm truck appears dead ahead. With all-pro reflexes, Schlichter whips the car back into the right lane just as the rig blows by. “Did that scare you?” he asks his passenger. “It scared me.”

But he recovers quickly. “Was that my fault?” he asks.

Schlichter parks the car at the flea market. As he walks up to the family booth, he can hear his father: “If Arthur were here, where he’s supposed to be,” Max Schlichter is saying, “we’d be all set up. But he’s sleeping in somewhere.” Art starts to unload a van by grabbing two fake Christmas trees, both missing branches, and sticking them under a tent. “People here,” he says, “will buy anything.”

Though he stands 6-foot-2 and weighs more than 300 pounds, Max Schlichter doesn’t have the handshake you’d expect. Thirty years ago, he grabbed a hunting rifle by the muzzle, banged it against the tractor he was riding and shot a bullet through his palm. Last year, bad weather and falling prices forced him to sell his farm so he could plant corn, soy and tomatoes on 4,200 rented acres. Back when his son was a National Football League quarterback, Max figured Art would one day buy the family farm.

Once the vans are unloaded, the tables set up, Art gets itchy. But with thousands of people pouring in, driving out isn’t easy. He gets lost on a dirt road that cuts around the funnel-cake stands, past a guy in an “I Buy Bicycle Lamps” shirt and through the crowd. Suddenly, a woman steps in front of the car. When she looks up and sees Schlichter bearing down, she starts to shimmy like fresh Jell-O, part of her body going one way, part the other. Just as Art finds the brake, she aligns her limbs and leaps to safety. “Whoa,” he says, checking the rearview mirror, “scared the shit out of her.”

After lunch, Art stops by his brother’s house, where one of his little nephews comes to the door with a new, spiked haircut. The spikes take Schlichter by surprise. “You’re a farmer,” he says, “not a punk rocker.” He tosses a football with the boy, whose eyes take on an unmistakable glow.

It’s been five years now since Art Schlichter was first suspended by the NFL for gambling. Once the top quarterback prospect in the country, the fourth player taken in the 1982 National Football League draft, he last started an NFL game in 1985. Since then, he’s been cut by Indianapolis and Buffalo and played wide receiver for a Columbus flag-football team. When he tried to come back with Cincinnati last year, the NFL, citing a gambling relapse and his arrest in Indianapolis, suspended him again, so Schlichter took a job at VanLand, a Columbus dealership that claims to sell more vans than any other dealer in the world. He was so good, they made him a closer. “I’m a natural salesman,” he says. “I can sell the sleeves off a vest.”

Nonetheless, when the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League offered him a reported $25,000 bonus and $125,000 contract this past spring, Schlichter quit. Ottawa’s coach, Fred Glick, didn’t promise Schlichter he would start, but Glick made him feel wanted—something Schlichter hadn’t felt for a long time, not since high school. Today, even in Columbus, where he starred for Ohio State, still does charity work and still has many fans, there are those who consider him a spoiled kid who had everything, everything, and blew it. “The person on the street is sympathetic,” says an Ohio State booster. “He fired up the Buckeyes, and he beat Michigan. But I don’t think people that were close to him have much respect for him.”

They used to call him King Arthur. As a Little League pitcher, he twice struck out 18 batters in a six-inning game. In three years as starting quarterback at Miami Trace High School, Schlichter (pronounced Shlees-ter) never lost. He was all-state in football and basketball. Encouraged by his father, who was certain Art would be a great athlete from the time he was four, Schlichter trained religiously. During the summer, to strengthen his arm, he would throw 2,500 passes a week. In one drill, he lofted the ball 50 yards, over an 18-foot net, while seated on the ground.

Miami Trace’s “Hall of Fame” is an Art Schlichter shrine—his jerseys, his trophies, and the team pictures with the cheerleaders kneeling at his feet, Art’s hands on the shoulders of the girl he dated. “Close friends of mine always accused me of being hung up on him,” says Bill Hanners, then Art’s best friend and wide receiver. “There were times when I’d just stand around and watch him and think, How’s he do that? I’ve wished a lot of times that I could be like him. It just seemed there wasn’t anything he could do wrong. Everything he tried, he did well—and at the same time, he had to look like a goddamn model.”

Miami Trace is less than 40 miles from Columbus. The largest metropolitan area in America without a major league sports team, Columbus takes the fortunes of the Ohio State Buckeyes seriously. Downtown, across from the State Capitol, is a hundred-year-old church with a huge stained-glass window above its front door; pictured in the window is Ohio Stadium, home of the Buckeyes, former home of Woody Hayes.

The legendary coach, who was revered in Columbus long after he resigned in disgrace, won his first national championship at Ohio State six years before Schlichter was born. By the time Schlichter reached high school, Hayes, who died last year, had immortalized his plodding three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense and his coaching creed: “When you throw a pass,” he loved to say, “only three things can happen, and two of them are bad.” Together, Woody and Art would discover a fourth thing.

View attachment 18000
sbmkcsrrdrdgellm27sh.jpg


Hayes disdained hotshot quarterbacks, but it’s hard to ignore the best in the country when he’s playing in your backyard. An OSU assistant coach, George Chaump, eventually sold Woody and Art on each other. “I liked the idea,” said Schlichter, who succumbed to pressure from friends, relatives and Buckeye loyalists everywhere, “of an Ohio boy turning the Ohio State offense around. I wanted to be the one to make the Buckeyes pass.”

His freshman year, 1978, Schlichter beat out a senior incumbent who had been all–Big 10. Then he threw five interceptions in his first game, and Woody rediscovered the run. “You run a stupid-ass pass attack,” says Chaump, now head coach at Marshall University, “and you’re going to get intercepted. I recruited Art, and I felt bad morally. I think there was a breach of contract.”

The season ended with a loss to Michigan and a trip to the Gator Bowl, which is about as far from the Rose Bowl as you can get. The game was lost when a Schlichter pass was intercepted and Hayes, already famous for his sideline temper tantrums, punched the Clemson linebacker who had intercepted it. On the flight home. Woody got on the intercom. “This is your coach,” he said. “I won’t be coaching you next year.”

Entire article: https://thestacks.deadspin.com/[object Object]


.....link is fixed!
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Down And Out With Art Schlichter, Football God Turned Con Man

swojphcopbo2mqunn3a7.png


Originally published as “The Long, Slow Fall of a Gridiron God” in the December, 1988 issue of GQ, this profile appears here with the author’s permission.

Art Schlichter is scrambling. Running late, headed from his father’s farm in Bloomingburg, Ohio, to the Springfield Antique Show and Flea Market, he flips on his Road Patrol XK radar detector and hits the gas, challenging the two-lane road, sliding into the wrong lane to take a blind curve. A farm truck appears dead ahead. With all-pro reflexes, Schlichter whips the car back into the right lane just as the rig blows by. “Did that scare you?” he asks his passenger. “It scared me.”

But he recovers quickly. “Was that my fault?” he asks.

Schlichter parks the car at the flea market. As he walks up to the family booth, he can hear his father: “If Arthur were here, where he’s supposed to be,” Max Schlichter is saying, “we’d be all set up. But he’s sleeping in somewhere.” Art starts to unload a van by grabbing two fake Christmas trees, both missing branches, and sticking them under a tent. “People here,” he says, “will buy anything.”

Though he stands 6-foot-2 and weighs more than 300 pounds, Max Schlichter doesn’t have the handshake you’d expect. Thirty years ago, he grabbed a hunting rifle by the muzzle, banged it against the tractor he was riding and shot a bullet through his palm. Last year, bad weather and falling prices forced him to sell his farm so he could plant corn, soy and tomatoes on 4,200 rented acres. Back when his son was a National Football League quarterback, Max figured Art would one day buy the family farm.

Once the vans are unloaded, the tables set up, Art gets itchy. But with thousands of people pouring in, driving out isn’t easy. He gets lost on a dirt road that cuts around the funnel-cake stands, past a guy in an “I Buy Bicycle Lamps” shirt and through the crowd. Suddenly, a woman steps in front of the car. When she looks up and sees Schlichter bearing down, she starts to shimmy like fresh Jell-O, part of her body going one way, part the other. Just as Art finds the brake, she aligns her limbs and leaps to safety. “Whoa,” he says, checking the rearview mirror, “scared the shit out of her.”

After lunch, Art stops by his brother’s house, where one of his little nephews comes to the door with a new, spiked haircut. The spikes take Schlichter by surprise. “You’re a farmer,” he says, “not a punk rocker.” He tosses a football with the boy, whose eyes take on an unmistakable glow.

It’s been five years now since Art Schlichter was first suspended by the NFL for gambling. Once the top quarterback prospect in the country, the fourth player taken in the 1982 National Football League draft, he last started an NFL game in 1985. Since then, he’s been cut by Indianapolis and Buffalo and played wide receiver for a Columbus flag-football team. When he tried to come back with Cincinnati last year, the NFL, citing a gambling relapse and his arrest in Indianapolis, suspended him again, so Schlichter took a job at VanLand, a Columbus dealership that claims to sell more vans than any other dealer in the world. He was so good, they made him a closer. “I’m a natural salesman,” he says. “I can sell the sleeves off a vest.”

Nonetheless, when the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League offered him a reported $25,000 bonus and $125,000 contract this past spring, Schlichter quit. Ottawa’s coach, Fred Glick, didn’t promise Schlichter he would start, but Glick made him feel wanted—something Schlichter hadn’t felt for a long time, not since high school. Today, even in Columbus, where he starred for Ohio State, still does charity work and still has many fans, there are those who consider him a spoiled kid who had everything, everything, and blew it. “The person on the street is sympathetic,” says an Ohio State booster. “He fired up the Buckeyes, and he beat Michigan. But I don’t think people that were close to him have much respect for him.”

They used to call him King Arthur. As a Little League pitcher, he twice struck out 18 batters in a six-inning game. In three years as starting quarterback at Miami Trace High School, Schlichter (pronounced Shlees-ter) never lost. He was all-state in football and basketball. Encouraged by his father, who was certain Art would be a great athlete from the time he was four, Schlichter trained religiously. During the summer, to strengthen his arm, he would throw 2,500 passes a week. In one drill, he lofted the ball 50 yards, over an 18-foot net, while seated on the ground.

Miami Trace’s “Hall of Fame” is an Art Schlichter shrine—his jerseys, his trophies, and the team pictures with the cheerleaders kneeling at his feet, Art’s hands on the shoulders of the girl he dated. “Close friends of mine always accused me of being hung up on him,” says Bill Hanners, then Art’s best friend and wide receiver. “There were times when I’d just stand around and watch him and think, How’s he do that? I’ve wished a lot of times that I could be like him. It just seemed there wasn’t anything he could do wrong. Everything he tried, he did well—and at the same time, he had to look like a goddamn model.”

Miami Trace is less than 40 miles from Columbus. The largest metropolitan area in America without a major league sports team, Columbus takes the fortunes of the Ohio State Buckeyes seriously. Downtown, across from the State Capitol, is a hundred-year-old church with a huge stained-glass window above its front door; pictured in the window is Ohio Stadium, home of the Buckeyes, former home of Woody Hayes.

The legendary coach, who was revered in Columbus long after he resigned in disgrace, won his first national championship at Ohio State six years before Schlichter was born. By the time Schlichter reached high school, Hayes, who died last year, had immortalized his plodding three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offense and his coaching creed: “When you throw a pass,” he loved to say, “only three things can happen, and two of them are bad.” Together, Woody and Art would discover a fourth thing.

View attachment 18000
sbmkcsrrdrdgellm27sh.jpg


Hayes disdained hotshot quarterbacks, but it’s hard to ignore the best in the country when he’s playing in your backyard. An OSU assistant coach, George Chaump, eventually sold Woody and Art on each other. “I liked the idea,” said Schlichter, who succumbed to pressure from friends, relatives and Buckeye loyalists everywhere, “of an Ohio boy turning the Ohio State offense around. I wanted to be the one to make the Buckeyes pass.”

His freshman year, 1978, Schlichter beat out a senior incumbent who had been all–Big 10. Then he threw five interceptions in his first game, and Woody rediscovered the run. “You run a stupid-ass pass attack,” says Chaump, now head coach at Marshall University, “and you’re going to get intercepted. I recruited Art, and I felt bad morally. I think there was a breach of contract.”

The season ended with a loss to Michigan and a trip to the Gator Bowl, which is about as far from the Rose Bowl as you can get. The game was lost when a Schlichter pass was intercepted and Hayes, already famous for his sideline temper tantrums, punched the Clemson linebacker who had intercepted it. On the flight home. Woody got on the intercom. “This is your coach,” he said. “I won’t be coaching you next year.”
From 1988: Down and out with Art Schlichter, football god turned con man.

VanLand? And the church across from the Statehouse certainly does not have a stained glass picture of Ohio Stadium. (I don't think)
 
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