Bill Schmidt holds the honor of being North Texas' first athlete to win an Olympic medal after taking the bronze medal in the javelin at the 1972 Games.
Schmidt was a walk-on to the track program in 1966, but earned a scholarship for his work with the javelin. He was captain of the 1970 Eagles track team and was a two-time Missouri Valley Conference champion in the javelin, placing second in the event at the NCAA championships in 1970.
In 1970, Schmidt was drafted into the U.S. Army, and competed in the World Military Championships. He won the military championships in the javelin, setting a new world military record at Turku, Finland, in 1971.
He competed for the United States in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where he won the bronze medal in the javelin. He still remains the only American to medal in the event since 1972.
During the Munich Massacre by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics, Israeli racewalker Shaul Ladany alerted American track coach Bill Bowerman, who called for the U.S. Marines to come and protect Schmidt and fellow American Jewish Olympian swimmer Mark Spitz.
Schmidt earned a post graduate scholarship and earned a masters degree in business education from Tennessee in 1976. He taught at Central High School in Knoxville, TN, and coached boys and girls cross country and track. He won the USA National Championships in the javelin at UCLA in 1978 and was named "Javelin Thrower of the Decade" for the 1970s in the United States by Track and Field News. His career best was 283'2".
He later entered sports marketing, earning recognition as one of "The 100 Most Powerful People in Sports" in 1996 and 1998 by The Sporting News. In 2014, The Sports Business Daily/Global/Journal awarded its Champions Award to Schmidt recognizing him as a Pioneer & Innovator in Sports Business.