The Self-Destruction of an all-American

Geoff Huston stood on the foul line with one second to play. He had two foul shots coming, and his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, was losing by six points. The Cavaliers, one of the worst teams in pro basketball, were the underdogs by five and a half points. I had bet on the Cleveland Cavaliers. That tells you something about how sick I was.

All Geoff Huston had to do was make one of his two foul shots and Cleveland would lose by fewer than five and a half points and I would win my bet. It meant a lot to me. Between parlays and straight bets, it meant $50,000, to be exact.

I was watching the game on television with my mother and father in the rec room in the basement of our farmhouse in Bloomingburg, Ohio, less than an hour's drive from Columbus. I was surrounded by the trophies and mementos of my athletic career at Miami Trace High School and Ohio State University. I was the starting quarterback at Miami Trace for three years, and in three years, we never lost a game. I was all-state in football and in basketball, too. In the semifinal game of the state basketball championships, I scored 23 points, and the man who guarded me, John Paxson, went on to be an all-American at Notre Dame.

At Ohio State, in Columbus, I started 48 straight games at quarterback, every game from my freshman through my senior year, no matter how banged up I was. If I was hurting, I took shots. I wanted to play. When I was a freshman, a doctor in Zanesville, Ohio, started the King Arthur Fan Club--a bunch of adults in a fan club for an 18-year-old kid. They wore shirts with my picture on them. When I was a sophomore, I was U.P.I.'s Player of the Year in the Big Ten, all-American in The Sporting News and fourth in the voting for the Heisman Trophy, the highest any sophomore had finished up till then. When I was a junior, a sportswriter wrote my biography. It came out when I was 21 years old. It was called Straight Arrow. It was a big book in Ohio.

When I was a senior, I set Ohio State records for passing yardage, touchdown passes and total offense, both for a single season and for a career. During my four college years, I threw for 50 touchdowns and ran for 35. I gained 8850 total yards, far beyond the old Ohio State record for total offense, set by Archie Griffin, who won the Heisman Trophy two years in a row in the Seventies. After my senior season, I was the fourth man selected in the National Football League draft, the first quarterback picked. The rec room in Bloomingburg was filled with scrapbooks and video tapes of my greatest games. But the only game I cared about right then, in January 1983, was the Cleveland Cavaliers' basketball game.

Geoff Huston missed the first foul shot. I sat there. I didn't move a muscle. I didn't say a word.

I had just finished my rookie year with the Baltimore Colts. I was supposed to have had a good season. I had a miserable one. I was the worst quarterback on the worst team in the N.F.L. We didn't win a game, and I completed only 17 of 37 passes all year, not one for a touchdown, not even one for a really long gain. I was so lousy that it got to the point, before the strike-shortened season ended, where I didn't care if I never called a play again. All I wanted to call was my bookmaker.

Huston missed the second foul shot. I was out $50,000. I thought the top was going to blow off my head. But I didn't flinch. I didn't show any emotion. I just said good night to my mother and father and went up to my room, and for the next three hours, I puked. I threw up my guts.

The nightmares blur in my mind. I'm not even sure if Huston missed the two foul shots that night or the night I was driving down the highway, listening to a game on the radio--the night I thought seriously about driving off the road. Or maybe he missed the foul shots the night I got down on my knees and cried and prayed for everything to end. The gambling. The losing. The lying. The sleepless nights. The painful days. Everything. I wanted all of it to end. I wanted to go to sleep and not get up, not face another day.

I had lost so much money gambling. I had used up the $350,000 bonus I got for signing with the Colts. I had used up my $140,000 rookie salary. I had gone into my parents' savings, and they had worked hard farming all their lives to make their money. I had borrowed from friends and strangers, relatives and banks. I must have lost $1,000,000, I guess. Maybe more than a million. I don't know. I didn't keep track. The money wasn't important. Gambling, betting--that's what was important. Doing something wrong, something sneaky. All my life, people had been telling me what I should do, what I should say. Do this. Say that. Smile. Sign autographs. Answer dumb questions. Be a good guy. Be a nice guy. Be the straight arrow. Screw it.

Gambling was the one way I could say "Screw it, I can do whatever I want." It was my outlet, my release. I got high when I placed a bet. Not when I won a bet. When I placed it.

Right up until the time I went to the FBI last March and told them everything and then told the National Football League everything, turned myself in, got myself suspended indefinitely--which means for at least one season and maybe more--right up till then, I lied. I lied to my friends, to my parents, to myself. I was very good at lying. It was the thing I learned best in college. I had to to hide my gambling.

That's not easy for me to say. Not out loud. I'm used to hiding things like that inside me and just smiling and saying things like, "I learned to win at Ohio State ... I learned character ... I learned teamwork ... I learned...." Bullshit. I learned how to lie. I taught myself. Now I'm trying to learn how to tell the truth. To myself, first of all.

I almost wish I hadn't gone to Ohio State. Oh, I love the university. I guess I love the idea of Ohio State. I loved rooting for Ohio State before I went there, and I love rooting for Ohio State now. I even want to go back there. I want to finish my studies, get my degree. But I didn't love the four years I was there. I wasted those years in so many ways. I wasted them on the football field. And off.

I went to Ohio State because of Woody Hayes, because he was a legend in Ohio and he wanted me to go there and he came to Miami Trace High School and watched me play and made me feel like I was special, like I was very important. Best of all, he made me feel like he was going to change his style of coaching for me. Woody Hayes and Ohio State were known for the running game, not for the passing game, and no quarterback who played for him at Ohio State had ever made it big in the N.F.L.--not as a quarterback. But it was going to be different for me. I was a passer, I had an arm and I was going to lead Woody Hayes and Ohio State into the modern age of football. Woody didn't promise me that I'd throw all the time, didn't even promise me that I'd play all the time. But he made me feel I was so special. Of course I'd play, of course I'd pass--no question about it.

Joe Paterno, the Penn State coach, came to Bloomingburg and tried to persuade me to go to his school. Michigan wanted me badly, and so did Stanford, which already had a reputation for preparing passers for pro football, and so did a hundred other schools I didn't even consider. But most of the people I knew wanted me to go up the road to Ohio State, where they could follow me, where they could cheer for me. I liked the idea, too.

I liked Hayes the one year I played for him, my freshman year. I admired him as a coach and as a man. I don't think he used me properly, but that might have been my fault as much as his. He started me at quarterback the first game my freshman year--he'd never started a freshman quarterback before--without telling the press or the public that I was going to start. He put me in ahead of a senior quarterback named Rod Gerald, who had been starting for two years. Gerald was black, and right from the beginning, I had trouble with my black teammates--trouble I hadn't caused--and with some of the white ones, too. It was a veteran team, a lot of fifth-year players, a pretty wild group, and I was an 18-year-old kid who didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't do drugs, didn't even go out for a beer with the guys. I was a loner by nature, and the situation made me even more of a loner.

Still, I figured I was strong and I was good and I would prove myself on the field, and nothing else mattered. The first play from scrimmage, the first game, against Penn State, I threw a pass and completed it, and I thought it was a terrific omen. Then I threw five interceptions, and Penn State shut us out. That was the real omen. Woody wasn't used to being shut out, wasn't used to losing at all. I ended up throwing an average of fewer than 15 passes a game that season, and we lost four games.

The last game, in the Gator Bowl against Clemson, we lost our coach, too. Woody went off the deep end. On national television, he punched an opposing player, punched a Clemson linebacker who had just intercepted one of my passes. Woody was asked to resign--which might never have happened if I hadn't thrown the pass in the wrong spot--and the next season, Earle Bruce came in to coach Ohio State.

Right from the beginning, Earle and I didn't get along. I don't mean we fought or we hated each other. Nothing like that. We just didn't communicate. I never (continued on page 134)all-American(continued from page 54) agreed with his philosophy, and he didn't seem to be interested in mine. We never threw. Oh, we threw a lot by Ohio State standards--almost 17 passes a game. But I wanted to throw 30 to 35 times a game, so by my standards, we never threw.

Still, Earle's first season, my sophomore season, was the best one I had at Ohio State. After our first few games, I was leading the nation in passing. An Ohio State quarterback leading the nation in passing. That happens about as often as the top running back comes from Harvard. Or from a girls' school.

We won our first 11 games, then went to the Rose Bowl and played a Southern California team that was the best college team I ever saw: two Heisman Trophy winners in the backfield--Charles White and Marcus Allen--and giants in the line. Fast, strong, tough giants. I never saw so much talent. Yet we were six points ahead with less than two minutes to play. I'd passed for almost 300 yards. Then Charles White scored, and they kicked the extra point and beat us by one. We would have been national champions if we'd won.

I was pretty well shielded from the press during the regular season, and when I did talk, what could I say? When you're winning, you don't complain, you don't rock the boat. Besides, I was being treated like some god. I was making all the right kinds of humble noises, bullshitting everybody--I should've been all-American in bullshitting--but I was almost ready to believe that stuff myself. It's a weird feeling. Everybody's telling you you're great and you want to believe it, and you do, up to a point. But somewhere inside, you're scared. You're afraid people are going to find out the truth: You're not really great, you're not even good enough.

•

Between my sophomore and junior seasons, the media barrage was unbelievable. Reporters came from all over the country to interview me. They came down to the farm, and my mother would feed them and my father would talk to them and I'd sit on the tractor, posing for pictures and saying all the right things.

I was getting incredible anxiety attacks. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything. I'd have headaches. I'd think my head was going to explode. I had to relieve the pressure, and I did it by gambling. At first, it was just the race track, usually Scioto Downs, harness racing, just outside Columbus. I'd started going to the track when I was in high school. One of my best friends' fathers trained harness horses, and I loved being around the track. I started betting. Nothing serious. Two dollars. Five dollars. No problem. I had money. My father's farm was thriving, soybeans were booming and I'd saved some of the prize money from the Four-H steers I used to take to the fair.

Out at the track, I felt like a normal person. I could sit in a corner and eat a hot dog and drink a Coke and giggle and I wasn't a big football player, I was just another horse player. That was where I relaxed, where I got away from the bullshit. I took two of my teammates to the track the day before the Michigan game my sophomore season and we won $1500. Pretty good for college kids. I took it in stride. I didn't get excited. I impressed the other guys.

Everybody knew I went to the track. It was no secret. Coach Bruce used to go, too. He'd see me there. My gambling was even mentioned in Straight Arrow: " 'I like to bet, sure,' he says to those who inquire about his enjoyment of a sport at which gambling is legal."

What it didn't say in the book was that one of the reasons I was gambling was that I wasn't studying, I wasn't trying to learn. I didn't go to a lot of my classes, and when I did go, I was thinking about football and about girls. I wasn't really there. I cheated in school--and I cheated myself. Some straight arrow. I knew it was wrong. I was already on a serious guilt trip.

I wasn't participating in college life. I didn't even live in the dormitory room I was assigned. Most of the football players lived in one of two dorms, but I couldn't stay there. Girls would be knocking on the door at all hours. I had no privacy. I got a nice apartment in Arlington, not far from the campus. I wasn't supposed to be living there, but I didn't care. The rules weren't for me. I was special.

I went with one girl, a cheerleader, most of my last three years at Ohio State. She knew I could go out with just about any girl I wanted, and that made it tough on her and easy on me. I cheated and I lied and, probably worst of all, I never let her know me, never let her get close enough to know me. We went out for three years, and she never knew me. I was unfair to her.

One time, we went out to the race track, and I had a tip on a horse, a five-to-one shot, and I gave her $400 to bet for me, $400 to win on the number-six horse. I didn't want people to see me place the bet, because they might think I knew something and that might drive the price down. So she went up to the window where we always bet, and she told the seller, "Art wants me to put $400 on number six to win." The seller, who knew us pretty well, said, "The six doesn't have a chance. The four can't lose." He talked her into changing the bet. She put the whole $400 on the four horse. Then the race went off, and they came to the stretch neck and neck, the four and the six. I wasn't showing any emotion, of course, but inside, I was screaming for the six. They ended up in a photo finish, and the six horse won. My girlfriend started crying. "What's the matter?" I said.

"I can't tell you," she said.

"Tell me."

She did. I was out $2400. I just wanted to throw her out of the stands. It wasn't the money. It was the idea.

My junior year, I started betting on other sports--with a bookmaker. I didn't bet with the bookie myself, but I had a friend, and we'd make our selections and he'd place the bets. I never bet on an Ohio State game. I was dumb, but I wasn't that dumb. One time, some creep out at the race track came up to me and asked me about shaving points, about winning by less than the spread, and I went right to the coaches and then to the FBI, and they looked into the matter, and nothing ever happened. I guess the guy wasn't serious, but I wasn't going to take any chances.

I was betting basketball, college and pro, and Monday Night Football--things I could watch on TV. I didn't study, so I had all these nights with nothing to do but watch games on television. It made it more fun if I had a bet going. I wasn't a big bettor in college, but a couple of times, my parents had to bail me out. I was down $3000 one time, I think, maybe $5000 another. My parents were real upset. I told them I'd never bet again, I had learned my lesson. I lied up and down.

Maybe it was coincidence, maybe not, but I wasn't doing a whole lot better on the football field. The second game of my junior year, against Minnesota, after the big publicity build-up all summer, I passed only 11 times. It wasn't my choice. The coaches called all the plays, rotating guards and wide receivers to send in the plays. I was allowed to call audibles if I saw something in the defense, but only run audibles, not passes, except for one short-pass play. In the locker room after the Minnesota game, all the reporters were asking, "What do you think? Why aren't you throwing more, Art? Does it bother you?"

I lied. "Whatever Coach wants," I said. "I'm behind him 100 percent. All we want to do is win. That's all that matters."

Inside, it was just tearing me up. I walked out of the locker room, went over to my father and said, "Dad, I'm leaving; this is it. I'm going somewhere else."

Then our quarterback coach, Fred Zechman, who had been my high school coach at Miami Trace, talked me into staying at Ohio State for one more game. They let me throw the next week against Washington State, and I hit for 270 yards and three touchdowns, and I said, "OK, I'll stay." Then, the following week, UCLA just beat the shit out of us. I got sacked about eight times. I got knocked out. And from then on, the whole thing at Ohio State was miserable. I would have given anything to win the Heisman Trophy, but I didn't even come close.

The summer between my junior and senior years, I went on tour with five or six other college players, visiting cities around the country, promoting college football and the N.C.A.A. and ABC Sports. One of the others was Jim McMahon, the quarterback from Brigham Young. I hated him before I even met him, because he got to throw 35, 40 times every game. The other guys seemed to like the tour. McMahon, for instance, hadn't had that much exposure, and he loved it. I hated the whole thing. I'd had too much exposure already.

The day the tour ended, I couldn't wait to get home. The air controllers' strike was on, and I started home from the West Coast in the morning, went through Dallas, spent three or four hours sitting on the ground there, finally got to Columbus in the middle of the night. My girlfriend was waiting at the airport, but I couldn't find her, and I was so pissed off, all I wanted to do was get home, get into a pair of shorts, go down to the rec room and just breathe. I drove off from the airport at about 85 miles an hour and I got caught, got a ticket for speeding, and that speeding ticket ended up in headlines for weeks--because I got let off pretty easily.

Some people acted like I was a murderer, like I deserved capital punishment or worse. And some others seemed to think I should be allowed to speed, because I was so special. That was the funny thing: Nobody ever felt neutral about me. People hated me or loved me, and it didn't make any difference that none of them really knew me, because they all prejudged me.

We lost three games my junior year and three more my senior year, terrible years by Ohio State standards. The last season, against Florida State, I had the kind of game I'd always dreamed of having. I threw 52 passes and completed 31 of them for 458 yards. It would have been great except that we lost the game, and I was passing so much largely because I was playing on a twisted ankle that hurt too much for me to run the option.

I had some hellacious statistics at Ohio State, but I never knew if the coaches respected me. They showed me no sense of security, no sense of gratitude, nothing. And I just lied all the time. I said I was proud to be there, proud to be at Ohio State. "Are you frustrated because you don't throw more?" reporters would always ask. Oh, no, not me. I never said a bad word about Earle. And I was so pissed off, I'd go home and scream at the top of my lungs, and I'd cry, but nothing did any good. I was miserable. I escaped the only way I knew how: by going to the race track. Gambling. Doing it to spite people, to spite everybody.

•

I was surprised when I was picked so high in the N.F.L. draft, when Baltimore made me the fourth choice. I didn't think I'd impressed many people in the post-season games. My arm was tired then, and I was disgusted. I felt I hadn't really accomplished anything in my four years at Ohio State. I was all screwed up inside.

When it came time to go to training camp, I was in bad shape, physically and emotionally. I had lost the will power to work out, and I had broken up with my girlfriend. She had given up on me. I felt hurt. I felt as if I were being made fun of. I had it coming, but I couldn't take it.

Breaking up was painful but not so painful as quitting gambling. I kicked it cold turkey. I did it for my parents. They'd bailed me out again, and the farm was starting to have troubles, and so I told them I wasn't going to bet anymore. And I didn't for a while. Then the players went out on strike and I went home to Columbus, and I had nothing to do.

I started gambling again. It sure beat running or throwing or doing anything useful. For the first time, I began betting with a bookie myself. I had a code number--I was 270--and I started off slowly, $1000 here, maybe $2000 there. I lost $10,000, $20,000. It hurt, but I could cover it, and when the strike ended in November, I went back to Baltimore.

One night, I was with a girl I'd met who worked as a barmaid in a motel in Baltimore. I saw her once in a while. It was convenient. It was easy. She didn't mean anything to me till she mentioned one night that her ex-boyfriend used to take bets. That got me more excited than anything else she could have done.

His name was Sonny. Could she get in touch with him? Could she get a bet down? She could. I started betting in Baltimore through her. She'd call Sonny, get the line, call me with the line, I'd make my selections and get back to her. I took good care of her for helping me. Then I found out she was cheating me. I was $300 ahead and I lost $800 one night, betting through her; and the next night I couldn't reach her, so I called Sonny, explained who I was and asked him what my figure was. I wanted to know how I stood. He told me I was up $300. She hadn't placed the bet the night before. If I had won, she would've told me she couldn't get the bet down, but since I lost, she was going to pocket the $800 herself. She was going to tell me that I was down $500 and then take that $500 from me, plus the $300 from Sonny.

I started betting with Sonny directly. My code name was Fred. I was betting college and pro basketball and Monday Night Football, and for a while, I was picking them pretty good. I wasn't playing much football for the Colts, and the gambling began to control me. It was all I could think about. I couldn't concentrate on anything except the next bet. I spent so much time on the phone in our locker room that my teammates, for a gag, moved all my gear into the phone booth one day. They thought it was very funny. They thought I was calling girls all over the country. They didn't have the slightest idea I was calling a bookmaker. It's not the sort of vice you share with teammates. Drugs, alcohol, those are social vices; but not gambling. Nobody can know about that. It's got to be your own private hell.

I dreaded practicing. I dreaded going to meetings. At the meetings, the Colts gave me a new pen every day, because every day I chewed up the one they gave me. I ate it. The Colts thought I was just screwed up. They didn't know what was wrong. The more I bet, the less I played, and the less I played, the more I bet. When the season finally ended and I went home to Ohio, I hit a hot week. I was up $120,000. I was ready to get out. I wasn't going to stop gambling; I just wasn't going to bet with Sonny anymore. I was going to move my action to Columbus. But Sonny warned me not to stop, that the guys he was passing the action to would be very upset. "You better keep playing," he said, "the same way you been playing, parlays and round robins and everything, or these guys'll think you took a pot shot at them."

Sonny was bullshitting me, but it didn't make any difference. If I hadn't lost it back to them, I would've lost it somewhere else. The next day, I bet two N.F.L. playoff games and lost $20,000. Then I saw that Indiana was playing Ohio State in basketball and Kentucky was playing LSU, and I thought Indiana and Kentucky were the two locks of the goddamn century. I bet them in parlays and I bet them straight, and I got drilled. One lost outright and the other didn't cover the spread. I was on a roll. I lost $200,000 in three days.

Suddenly, I owed $80,000. "Bullshit," I said, "I'm not paying these guys. They weren't going to pay me." Then Sonny got out of the picture and the other guys moved in. They had the phone number of a friend of mine in Columbus--I wasn't going to give them the number at the farm--and they reached him and said they wanted to get in touch with me. I called them and said, "Look, I can't pay you that kind of money, and it's bullshit the way it happened."

"Well, you did it," one guy said. "You'd have gotten your money if you'd won."

They started threatening me. They were going to call my parents. They were going to call the Colts. They scared me. I borrowed money. I paid them, and I kept betting--crazy parlays, crazy things. I went days without hitting a winner, and when I had a winner, I'd parlay it with a loser. After a while, I just said, "Screw it, take all the chances you can, what's the difference? You're buried."

They figured out my betting tendencies, which didn't take much genius, and they began messing with the line. They knew that in the N.B.A., I went for the big teams--Boston, Philadelphia, L.A.--knew I liked them to cover. I'd see in the paper that Boston was favored by five, and I'd call Baltimore and they'd tell me that in their line, the Celtics were favored by eight. They knew I wouldn't go the other way. They knew I wouldn't go against Boston. I'd give eight points when I should've only been giving five.

My losses kept getting bigger, and every time I fell behind, which was all the time, their threats got worse. They were going to break my right arm, my throwing arm. They were going to turn me in to the N.F.L. They said they were in tight with the N.F.L., that some of the guys in the N.F.L. security office were gamblers themselves. Which was bullshit. But I was scared and dumb and sick, an unbeatable parlay.

I was phoning in bets from my parents' house and I didn't want to get caught on the phone, so I'd just tell them to read the line to me real quick and I'd rattle back my picks even quicker. I'd thought about them a little bit in advance--I did check out the line in the papers--but I was past the point of trying very hard to figure out who would win. I'd bet anybody. I had to have action. Sometimes, I didn't even write down my picks. I had to take the bookmakers' word on whether I won or lost. I don't think they lied to me. They didn't have to.

I wanted these guys to be my friends. I wanted them to love me. Most of all, I wanted them to give me credit. And they did--to a point. But every time I got $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000 behind, which was too often, they wanted their money. I reached out, conned friends, conned anyone I could, said I was making important investments, big deals. I lied better and better. Three or four times, the guys from Baltimore flew into Columbus and I had a friend take the money to them, deliver it at the airport in a plain brown-paper bag. They never counted the cash at the airport, but they said if I was one penny short, they'd have my leg broken.

Finally, I used up every source I had, every friend, every possibility, and I was still down $80,000. I took one more shot to get even--I had to bullshit the bookies to get them to take the action--and I lost another $70,000. I hit bottom.

•

I went to Gil Kirk, a Columbus businessman, a real-estate investor who'd heard that my family was having some cash-flow problems with the farm. He wanted to be helpful. I told him we needed a lot of money very badly and very quickly. Instead of just giving me the money, the way a lot of people did, Kirk tried to figure out exactly what the problem was with the farm. And when he couldn't put his finger on any problem, he wasn't about to give me a dollar. He turned me down. I was finished. I was desperate. I told him the whole story. Almost the whole story. I lied a little. I didn't tell him all the people I owed money.

Kirk brought in a friend of his, a lawyer named Chuck Freiburger. They were teammates on a touch-football team, and they said they were going to help me get straightened out. The next time the guys from Baltimore flew into Columbus, Freiburger went out to the airport to meet them--without any money. They were expecting a substantial payment, something like $80,000. Chuck talked them into giving me two weeks to come up with the cash. But I hadn't told him about the money I owed the bookmaker in Columbus or about the rest of the money I owed the guys from Baltimore or about some of the loans I'd taken.

In the next week or two, I told Kirk and Freiburger more and more of the truth, and they realized there was no easy way out for me. They made me realize it, too. "They've got you," Kirk said. "You've got nothing left and no prospects." The next step might be that the bookmakers would try to pressure me to fix a game, and that would be one step too far. It all came down to one thing; I had no other options: I had to go to the FBI and tell them everything. No more lies. No more bullshit.

I didn't want to welsh. No gambler does. I wanted the bookmakers to be my buddies, not my enemies. But I had run out of money and friends. The bookies had put my back to the wall. I was being threatened. It was over.

I sat down with Tom Decker of the FBI, and he took charge. He was involved with a new FBI program, based in Washington, D.C., that was set up to work with professional teams on drug- and gambling-related problems. The FBI got in touch with the N.F.L. and asked Warren Welsh, the director of security for the league, to meet with Decker in Columbus on April 1,1983.

I arranged for the guys from Baltimore to come to Columbus the same day, April Fools' Day. They flew in that morning. They thought their money would be waiting for them. Instead, Decker had more than a dozen FBI agents waiting. I was sitting in a car outside the terminal, listening to a two-way radio that was letting us know what was happening inside. It was all over quickly. The security was so tight the P.L.O. couldn't have gotten through. The agents arrested three bookmakers from Baltimore without the slightest trouble. I watched them drive by me on the way to the FBI headquarters in Columbus, an underground office. Then I went to the office and, scrunched down in sunglasses and a hat, identified the guys. I was scared shitless--I didn't feel good about turning anyone in--but, at the same time, I was so relieved. I felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off me.

That afternoon, Decker and I met with Welsh in a Columbus hotel room and told him what had happened, told him about my involvement with the bookies in Baltimore and Columbus. Shortly thereafter, a decision was made to bring in another lawyer, Jack Chester, who used to work for President Nixon. A couple of weeks later, Welsh came back to Columbus and, with Chester and Freiburger present, took a more formal statement from me. I answered his questions as well as I could. Then, in May, I went to New York with Chester and Kirk and Freiburger to appear before Pete Rozelle, the commissioner of the N.F.L. We met in his conference room, and he went over the whole situation again, asking me questions, checking the story very carefully. The commissioner wanted to know every N.F.L. game I had bet on, and he wanted to make certain I had never bet on a Baltimore game. He was efficient, cordial, impressive. He seemed genuinely concerned for me as well as for the game.

Dr. Robert Custer attended that meeting, too. Dr. Custer works at the Veterans' Administration Hospital in Washington, D.C., and he is the expert on compulsive behavior. I had already begun seeing him and another expert, Dr. Thaddeus Kostrubala in San Diego. They agreed I was sick, I was a compulsive gambler. I was an alcoholic who didn't drink, a junkie who didn't use drugs. I was hooked on gambling. I needed counseling. I needed guidance. And, most of all, I needed never to place a bet again.

The doctors advised the N.F.L. that, with the proper treatment, I could be rehabilitated, my sickness controlled. They recommended that I commit myself to South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, New York, a psychiatric institution specializing in compulsive behavior. I went in for four weeks, surrounded by gamblers, drug addicts and alcoholics. I sat through long group-therapy sessions, and at first, I sat very quietly. I was numb at the start. I had a long way to go. I thought I couldn't have feelings for anyone or anything ever again. Sometimes, my mind would start spinning 100 miles an hour, and I couldn't stop it the way I used to, by gambling. I just had to say "Whoa, horsy" and step back and take a deep breath and think about where I'd come from and where I wanted to go.

The other patients gradually drew me into the sessions. "What do you think, Art? How do you feel, Art?" I felt uncomfortable, which meant it was starting to work. I began to get in touch with my feelings, feelings I'd buried for years, about football and women, about cheating and lying, about being put up on a pedestal because of my athletic ability. I began to see how other people had created me, pushed me, molded me; how I hadn't been allowed to be myself.

I hoped the N.F.L. would see that I was in treatment and go easy on me, allow me to continue to play football, to earn a living, to try to begin paying off my enormous debts, the legitimate debts, which added up to more than $750,000. But Commissioner Rozelle decided he had to suspend me and said he would review the suspension in a year. The decision pained me, but I understood his ruling. He had to protect the image of the game, protect its integrity, and even though I never bet on a Baltimore game, never gave inside information to any gambler, never tried to influence the outcome of any game (except to win it), I was still in a vulnerable position. I was exposed. I was sick.

I won't pretend that I don't miss gambling. But I fight it. The first weekend of the 1983 N.F.L. season, I watched the Monday-night game between Washington and Dallas. I happened to see in the paper that Dallas was favored by two and a half points. I knew that if I were gambling, I'd go with the Cowboys. Dallas minus two and a half.

The Cowboys were down by 20 points at half time, but in the second half, they exploded, and with a minute to play, they were eight points ahead. The game was locked up. The spread wasn't. In the final minute, Washington drove for a touchdown, a "meaningless" one, as meaningless as Geoff Huston's free throws that had cost me $50,000. The Redskins still lost, by one point. But they covered the spread. I knew that if I'd been betting, I'd have had Dallas and I'd have lost. I actually giggled when Washington scored, and I went to bed with a smile on my face, with a good feeling. I'm not a gambler anymore, I told myself, and, more important, I'm glad I'm not.

I've got to be careful that I don't get too cocky. I know I'm not cured. There's no such thing as a "cure" for compulsive gambling. It's something I'll have to fight to control for the rest of my life. Just about every day, I drive past Scioto Downs, the track between my home and Columbus. I feel it tugging at me, and I fight it. Dr. Custer isn't surprised. He says that's normal for someone who has gone through what I've gone through. He knows that my treatment is painful and that I'm not going to get better all at once.

The doctor has been unbelievably supportive. So have total strangers. I went to a high school football game one night and literally hundreds of people came down onto the field, asking for my autograph, wishing me luck. One guy stood a good distance away and kept yelling, "Hey, gambler, who do you like? What's the spread here?" But everyone else seemed to be on my side.

I've got a wonderful girlfriend now--she's in school in Santa Barbara--and she's helping me every way she can. She's the first woman I've ever allowed to know me. She's one of the very few people who know most of the things I've written here. Some of them have to be painful for her to read, as painful as they are for me to admit, but she understands that now, finally, I've got to be honest. No more lies.

Gil Kirk and Chuck Freiburger are the best friends I've made in a long time. I've even joined their touch-football team, playing defensive end most of the time, not one of the glamor positions. Chuck, who was the first player inducted into the National Touch Football Hall of Fame--honestly--tells me I'm a pretty good defensive end. He doesn't think as much of me as a backup quarterback, maybe because I'm backing up a gray-haired 39-year-old lawyer named Freiburger. Touch football is pure fun, no pressure. It's relaxing. So are fishing, which I've taken up, and singing. Everybody in my family sings pretty well and--who knows?--with a little coaching, I might have a future as a country singer.

Kirk and Freiburger understand me, and when they're not helping me learn to relax, learn to appreciate leisure time, they're pushing me, driving me, prodding me to stay away from gambling and to get in shape physically and mentally. They want me to be completely prepared when I do get a chance to play football.

It isn't easy to work out by yourself, to do all the things you have to do to keep sharp as a quarterback, when you know you can't play for at least a year. But I'm trying. I'm lifting weights, more than I've ever lifted in my life, and I'm throwing. I'm in the best shape I've been in in years. I've got something to prove to a lot of people, and I've got the confidence I can prove it, and all I need is a place to play, in the N.F.L. or the United States Football League or somewhere else.

I know there are people rooting for me--and people rooting against me, people who think I haven't fallen far enough yet. Some of them are in Baltimore and some are in Columbus, and they'll do anything they can to drag me down: tempt me or taunt me or taint me with rumors, or just plain lies--such as the story that came out that I broke into somebody's home and stole a bookmaker's number and bet $20,000 or $30,000 on football games early this season. That's ridiculous. The people who spread those stories are people I cost a lot of money. They don't like me at all.

A vicious cartoon appeared in September in one of the student publications at Ohio State. The first panel showed me in my Ohio State uniform, and the caption said, This is art. The second caption said, See art run. Run, Art, Run. See art pass. Pass, Art, Pass. The third said, See art play pro football, Sit, Art, Sit. The fourth said, See art get bored and start to gamble. Lose, Art, Lose. The fifth said, See art turn in his bookie to the FBI. Sing, Art, Sing.

The caption under the final panel said, This is art. The drawing showed a tombstone with my name on it. I can't do much about the first five captions, no matter how much they hurt. All I can do now is try to make it a long and better time between the fifth panel and the last.

"I'd think my head was going to explode. I had to relieve the pressure, and I did it by gambling."