I was reading a piece about quarterbacks and the NFL draft, and the name Art Schlichter came up. In, of course, a negative light.

Schlichter was a quarterback who came out of Ohio State 30 years ago, and now is remembered pretty much only as a train wreck of a football player and person.

And it struck me … how hard it must be, in the Internet Age (which is not going away) for an athlete to be remembered only in a bad way, your life story told on wikipedia by someone who is not a fan — and may actually be an angry fan. Certainly, we live in an era where judgments are swift and harsh and pitiless — and out there forever.

Others in this predicament?

Ryan Leaf, of course. The former Chargers quarterback is forever paired with Peyton Manning as the “down” to Peyton’s “up.” They were taken 1-2 in 1998.

USA Today a year ago did a story on the top-25 NFL draft busts of the previous 15 years. I was surprised by how many of those guys I had interacted with. Mike Williams of USC, Cade McNown of UCLA and R.Jay Soward of USC, whom I knew when he was in high school.

The web is littered with lists of NBA draft busts, too, and this one, from the sportspickle site at least is written with humor, which seems a kindness, compared to the villainy usually attached to guys who didn’t make it big.

Some of those guys, you could predict. Kwame Brown, who is still knocking around the NBA and having stories written regularly about how awful he is. Michael Olowokandi is remembered for little other than being awful, though his wiki entry is fairly straightforward. Adam Morrison is listed in there, too, and he is a Type 1 diabetic.

Greg Oden is included in that list, too … and he would be in most, as would Sam Bowie, drafted ahead of Michael Jordan. But Oden and Bowie were good players brought low by fragile bodies, and the fact that their feet or knees were not meant to stand up to the pounding of professional basketball somehow adheres to them as character flaws.

In point of fact, many of these sports guys now remembered almost only as losers and dogs … had significant mental or personality problems. They often had addictive personalities, in many cases. Schlichter could never shake a gambling problem. R.Jay Soward admitted to a drinking problem, and he apparently had drug problems, too.

Ryan Leaf probably would have been fine had he allowed to live as a hermit somewhere, perhaps occasionally shouting at kids to get off his property. But thrust into an NFL situation, with enormous pressures, he wilted.

It just seems hard. Someone decided you’re good. Really good. (This is their evaluation, not yours.) They give you a lot of money to play a game you perhaps are not all that proficient at or, more likely, are lacking the mental or physical makeup to survive.

Consider LaRue Martin. That poor sap was taken by the Portland Trail Blazers as the No. 1 pick in the 1972. Was it his fault that the Blazers passed on Julius Erving and Bob McAdoo? Of course not. But he is often cited as the worst NBA draft pick of all time — in, for instance, the first paragraph of his wiki entry. The man is 61 years old, and “thanks” to the worldwide web he may be more infamous now, 40 years after Portland called his name, than he was back then.

For all we know, LaRue Martin may have committed thousands of acts of kindness in his adult life. But any friend or relative who does a search for his name is going to come up with the same bad news he’s had to confront for 40 years.

Which brings us back to Art Schlichter. Only paranthetically is it noted that he and Ohio State came within a questionable fumble (non) call against USC in the Rose Bowl of winning a national championship. Or how he was a candidate for the Heisman Trophy for three years running.

If Art Schlichter had not played football … he would be just another hopeless gambling addict, known only to the courts. It seems as if he is flogged only because he at one point was a pretty good football player.

I actually interviewed him once, in a previous lifetime. He was in camp with the Baltimore Colts, and I drove up to chat with him, and even then teammates were saying he didn’t seem quite tuned in to the program. (Probably because he was worried about his bets at the local track.)

Neither of us, I’m sure, knew he would still be talked about, for all the wrong reasons, three decades hence, and that his wiki entry would be so “lovingly” updated with the latest proof of his problems, 30 years after the Colts drafted him.

I feel sorry for some of these guys. If only they had had the foresight not to be considered potentially great pros. They could be living lives of quiet desperation like the rest of us. With the emphasis on quiet.