After Dealing With His Gambling Habit, Quarterback Is a Man Without a Team : For Schlichter, Being Dropped Was the Unkindest Cut of All

Half a dozen winters ago, when everybody who was anybody was going to bowl games, Art Schlichter was going, too.

As Ohio State’s quarterback, Schlichter led the Buckeyes to four straight postseason bowls.

At that time, he thought that by this time he’d have reached the Super Bowl as well.

But it hasn’t happened, and it may never happen. Before it can, he will have to get another job. At the end of the NFL season, no one was paying Schlichter to play football.

Things were different when the season began. At Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium last September, he started the first game at quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, the team that drafted him No. 1 in 1982 when it was still in Baltimore.

But he never started again. He never played again. In fact, he never took another snap on the practice field at Indianapolis.

Bewildered and frustrated, Schlichter suffered the final indignity in mid-October when the Colts--after trying unsuccessfully to trade him, they said--cut him.

“He doesn’t have an NFL arm,” Coach Rod Dowhower said at the time. He still says it, even though he made Schlichter his opening-day starter after studying him in the 1984 movies, watching him through 1985 training camp and observing him during the Colts’ exhibition season last summer.

Out the window with the job went Schlichter’s income. He hasn’t been paid since.

What happened? What led the Colts to handle their quarterback so mysteriously? Why didn’t any other club pick him up?

And what of his future?

He’s confident about that, he said the other day. A reformed compulsive gambler, Schlichter is certain he’ll make another connection as soon as his injured knee heals. He underwent arthroscopic surgery last month.

Among other things, he said, the Colts cut him while he was hurt. In the final game or two he played for Indianapolis, he broke the thumb on his passing hand, he said, and hurt the knee.

Some people in the NFL agree that Schlichter should be back in uniform shortly.

“He was an impressive quarterback earlier this year, the last time I saw him,” Denver Coach Dan Reeves said.

But so far, nobody has made Schlichter a firm offer. As a football player, he is a man without a country.

“The first thing people think of when something like this happens is that Art must be gambling again,” a friend said from Indianapolis. “But he isn’t. I’m sure of that. There were no indications of it all the time he was here.”

The friend is Brian Hammonds, an Indianapolis TV news and sports announcer.

“Everybody was surprised when they let him go,” Hammonds said. “He didn’t play well in the Pittsburgh game, but then, nobody did. When the gambling rumors died quickly, there was speculation that the Colts were just trying to unload his $235,000 salary--but they deny that, too. The whole thing is very strange.”

NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, who suspended Schlichter for a year in 1983 when the young quarterback began treatment for his compulsive gambling, said there was no evidence pointing to a recurrence.

“I know of nothing at this time that would preclude Art from playing in the NFL,” Rozelle said.

In fact, the league is sympathetic. It wants to see Schlichter working again and paying the bills he ran up while he was gambling. He owes about $1 million to lenders who unwittingly financed his habit.

Clearly, Schlichter is a guy with problems.

“I was down, fought back and became an NFL starter,” he said sadly. “And now this.”

Back on his father’s farm near Columbus, Ohio, Schlichter has returned to school at Ohio State. He still is in treatment for his gambling addiction, too.

“I’ve been in successful therapy for three years,” he said. “I’m still seeing a Columbus (psychiatrist) once a week, and I’m in contact with Dr. (Robert L.) Custer all the time.”

Custer heads the National Foundation for the Study and Treatment of Pathological Gambling, based in Washington.

Under Custer’s direction, Schlichter will begin making public appearances for the foundation this spring.

But all things considered, he would rather be studying a playbook.

For somebody. For anybody.

The Colts, however, won’t have him.

His most recent coach, Dowhower, said Schlichter is athlete enough, he just isn’t passer enough.

A former Stanford coach and NFL assistant who took over at Indianapolis a year ago, Dowhower called Schlichter an ideal quarterback in most respects.

“Art has the size, the quick feet, and great mobility,” he said. “He has the mobility every team wants. Another good thing is that he’s a dedicated student. He’s willing to spend whatever time it takes with the films, and his study habits are excellent. He did everything we asked of him.”

Except throw the ball Dowhower’s way.

“Young men who have Art’s athletic ability--he’s really a great athlete--can usually throw the ball pretty well,” the Indianapolis coach said. “But there’s a difference between that and throwing NFL passes. I mean, Art doesn’t have the (arm) power to do what I want my passer to do.”

Why did it take Dowhower so long to find that out?

He said that Mike Pagel, his other quarterback, also has some limitations as a passer, and that, in the Colts’ 1984 movies, Schlichter seemed to have more promise than Pagel.

“Art showed me a lot. I thought he was coming along,” he said. “But after Pittsburgh, I didn’t see any future with him in the kind of offense I want.”

If Dowhower had made that decision in training camp, Colt fans would have taken it in stride. It was the timing of Schlichter’s release that surprised everybody.

“All I can tell you is that (evaluating quarterbacks) isn’t an exact science,” Dowhower said. “For what I’m looking for, based on my experience as a (quarterback) coach, I knew after the Pittsburgh game that he wasn’t the passer for me.”

Schlichter, however, pointed out that Dowhower’s track record as an NFL head coach isn’t a long one.

“His is just one man’s opinion,” Schlichter said. “And I won’t let one man’s opinion ruin my career. I might not have the strongest arm in the league, but I can throw the deep out--that’s the test--and I feel comfortable throwing every pass there is.

“To point to one area (of quarterbacking) as weak, and judge a man on that, isn’t my idea of a coach. Quarterbacking is a total package, and I’ll prove that to whoever picks me up.”

Schlichter doesn’t think any quarterback can be fairly graded in one game.

“If he’d released me when the season was over, or after I’d played half the games, or even three or four, he’d be more believable,” Schlichter said. “I can’t believe him (giving up) after one game. I take offense at what he’s doing to me.”

Dowhower conceded that cutting players is the hardest job in coaching.

“I don’t have all the answers,” he said. “Who knows enough to pass judgment on another man’s life? I feel sure that Art will come back. He’ll be back (in the NFL).”

Reeves, the Denver coach who has followed Schlichter’s career since the 1970s, also predicted that the former Ohio State quarterback will return soon to an NFL lineup.

“Schlichter must have had a good preseason last summer or (Dowhower) wouldn’t have started him in the regular-season opener,” he said. “We have our quarterback at Denver (John Elway), but I would certainly think that people having trouble (at quarterback) would look at a guy of Schlichter’s caliber.”

A Raider spokesman, requesting anonymity, isn’t so sure of that.

Though the Raiders presumably need help at that particular position, he said: “Schlichter’s (gambling) background shouldn’t be a liability today, but we don’t like him as a quarterback. He isn’t our type.”

Is he anyone’s type?

Football people say there are different kinds of quarterbacks and that many journeyman passers have succeeded.

Neither Bobby Layne nor Billy Kilmer had an NFL arm. They and Joe Montana, among others, have all been described as athletes and winners or leaders rather than picture passers.

Dowhower wants the picture passers--and so does San Diego’s Don Coryell--but many coaches have won with highly competitive quarterbacks who weren’t great passers.

As Dowhower said, there’s a place for fierce competitors at the position.

“I know about Billy Kilmer,” he said. “One season, I was a backup quarterback behind Kilmer (at San Francisco). And I was a better passer than he was. But he was more competitive than any of us--than anybody I’ve ever known.”

Dowhower, whose passing philosophy is similar to the Raiders’, said he was right on one thing--cutting Schlichter when he did instead of after the season.

“I know this is difficult for Art financially,” he said. “I’m very sorry about that. But I have a program to get going at Indianapolis. (To procrastinate) wouldn’t have been fair to the others here.”

Nor does Dowhower agree that Schlichter was seriously injured during his last weeks at Indianapolis.

“That’s between them and the grievance committee,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, when Art was with us, he was (physically) ready to play.”

Schlichter disagreed. “I went out of the Pittsburgh game with a knee injury,” he said. “I broke the thumb in the third exhibition game. It healed by itself, but not completely. I didn’t cast it because I wanted to keep playing.

“This was probably a mistake. It definitely hindered my throwing for some time.”