He ran up massive gambling debts while playing for the Detroit Drive, though general manager Gary Vitto helped pay some of them off. Soon after arriving in Cincinnati, he was arrested in July for passing a bad check. He admitted suffering a relapse, but the Rockers were willing to stand by him. They worked out a deal with Schlichter in which they put most of his paycheck into an account to pay his gambling debts, except for $300 which they gave to Mitzi. However, by the end of the 1992 season, the Rockers were losing patience with him, and asked him to take a substantial pay cut if he wanted to return for the 1993 season. In a 2020 interview, former AFL commissioner Joe O'Hara claimed that Schlichter was forced out of the AFL when he was actually caught betting on AFL games.