Art grew up a round horse associated gambling, his mom, dad, and of course coach Bruce.
He was enabled and everyone looked the other way on everything, his HS coach was still in denial in a 1983 NY Times article
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/16/sports/sports-of-the-times-on-schlichter-and-gambling.html
From a 1983 NY Times article
SPORTS OF THE TIMES
SPORTS OF THE TIMES; ON SCHLICHTER AND GAMBLING
By Ira Berkow
Published: April 16, 1983
Fred Zechman, now head football coach at New Mexico State, was Art Schlichter's coach at Miami Trace High School in southern Ohio and the quarterback coach when Schlichter was the star for Ohio State.
And last week he heard the news that Schlichter, now a third-string quarterback with the Baltimore Colts, had lost $389,000 betting on basketball games. When Schlichter was unable to pay it all, he went to F.B.I. agents to trap his bookies.
''Art,'' said Zechman, ''is just a good ole country boy and evidently got caught up in something big.'' Art Schlichter's father, Max, of Bloomingburg, Ohio, defended his son. ''Everybody knows that sports is filled with cocaine sellers and alcoholics and bums,'' said the elder Schlichter. ''He's not a bum. He's 22, and he's made a bad mistake.''
But Schlichter knew exactly what he was doing. Bookmakers don't force anyone to gamble - just as Offtrack Betting officials don't dragoon unwary pedestrians off the street and force a mutuel ticket down their throats.
Schlichter, who grew up on his parents' 1,000-acre farm in Bloomingburg, lived in an atmosphere of betting - at home, at school and as a professional football player.
His mother, Mila, owned a harness-racing horse, and his father had a box near the finish line at Scioto Downs. His football coach at Ohio State, Earle Bruce, owned a harness-racing horse, and Bruce and Schlichter would go together to Scioto Downs or to Beulah Park, where thoroughbreds ran, and place what the coach calls ''friendly'' wagers.
Schlichter also seems to have grown up in an atmosphere in which, being the ''all-American boy,'' as he is described in his biography, ''Straight Arrow,'' he was placed on a level above others, treated in the special manner of football heroes.
What appears to have been the most egregious example occurred in 1981 in Columbus, where he was given three traffic tickets for speeding over a period of 11 months. Each time, a referee in Municipal Court suspended the fines.