Catalog for my 12-part series on the NFL, sports gambling, and the Mafia
A history of NFL Security
In my sophomore and junior years at Garfield High School in Akron, Ohio, I was nothing more than a scrub on our prep football team—and I had a bad attitude about it. So, after receiving the news that I would be benched as a senior, too—in favor of two talented juniors, Steve Craig and Jim Lash, both of whom later played for the Minnesota Vikings—I quit the team and went into student politics, getting elected as senior-class president in high school and later as student-body president in college. Those jobs were my early life salvation.
But, despite my disappointing personal experience on the gridiron, I had always loved the game.
In June 1983, I received an offer to write a book about corruption in the National Football League. For guidance, I went to see my Dad who was on his deathbed, battling the final stages of pancreatic cancer.
With two earlier books published, I asked him if he had any advice for me about my career as a grunt crime reporter. Dad, who had played varsity football for Ohio State, became very quiet before replying in a hushed voice, “Yeah. Don’t write that damn book about the NFL.”
Knowing me, he also knew instinctively that the reaction to that proposed book would likely break my heart.
Dad, as usual, was right. . . . Long story.
My fourth book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football, was released by William Morrow & Company in August 1989 and went into three hardcover printings. It chronicled the long-standing relationship between the NFL and organized crime, which had resulted in no fewer than twenty-six past and present NFL team owners with documented ties to either the gambling community and/or the organized crime syndicate, evidence of no fewer than seventy fixed professional football games, and the suppression of no fewer than fifty legitimate law enforcement investigations of corruption within the league.
I also charged that legalizing sports gambling would cause a proliferation of illegal bookmaking and organized crime activity; and that the illegal gambling economy had become an adjunct to the First Amendment because of the insistence by the sports media to print and broadcast the betting lines and to hire oddsmakers and handicappers for the purpose of predicting the outcomes of games.
For many decades, the NFL admonished owners, coaches, players, and team staffs against both gambling and associating with gamblers. However, in my book, I insisted that the NFL was a beneficiary of both legal and illegal gambling.
On September 11, 1989, during my appearance on ABC’s Nightline, I predicted that the day would come when sports gambling would be legalized and that the NFL, contrary to its long-standing but cynical anti-gambling stance, would not only embrace the betting action but attempt to control and profit from it, even offering gambling operations in NFL stadiums.
My prediction, which I had also foreshadowed in my book, was met with considerable skepticism. But then—in 2018, twenty-nine years later—a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision paved the way for the legalization of sports gambling nationwide.
Immediately, as I predicted, the NFL team owners began making investments in new online sports-gambling sites while making plans to construct legal bookmaking establishments in their stadiums.
It was a world-class prediction, completely vindicated.
In recommending the book, The Gold Sheet, nationally recognized as the "bible" for America's sports gamblers, wrote: "Interference shreds the sanctimonious NFL facade and exposes the league's hierarchy for what it really is—a bunch of wheeler-dealers who are in bed with the very associations they publicly denounce. Fascinating reading."
The Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote: "Book stores here are having problems meeting the demand for copies of Dan E. Moldea's hot-selling hardback, Interference, and with good reason—the index reads a little bit like a 'Who's Who' of Las Vegas."
In a second review in Las Vegas, the Review-Journal added: "The best book on the NFL's connection to the mob and the American gambling scene was Dan Moldea's groundbreaking Interference. Moldea tore apart the league's papier-mache image and illustrated that, without gamblers, it would have remained on the sandlots."
The Boston Herald stated: "Stand by for some fascinating assertions made by Dan Moldea, who this time. . . colorfully describes how the underworld reaches into NFL locker rooms and boardrooms for inside information. He describes the 'outlaw line' as part of the game's very fabric."
The San Francisco Chronicle said: "What does come through in Interference is that mob contacts within the NFL appear to be as subtle and profitable as insider trading on Wall Street. . . . Learning about this 'infiltration' by Mafia players makes Moldea's book quite a page-turner."
The Rocky Mountain News wrote: "This book, which details the influence of gambling and the link to organized crime in the NFL, is credible for one particular reason: It indicts the owners of the league more than the players and exposes the NFL for the gambling machine that it is."
The Los Angeles Times said: "Interference is like a hard-nosed fullback, . . . packed with names, dates and places, hitting the holes until the defense—one's incredulity—gives way. The weight of evidence is overwhelming."
In my favorite review of all, Keith Olbermann, anchorman for ESPN Sports, stated: "Moldea has written perhaps the most important sports book in the history of the language."
Here is a catalog of the 12-part series about my investigation of the NFL and the Mafia, excerpted from the third edition of my memoir, Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer.
2/12: Investigating professional football
3/12: Game-fixing in the NFL
4/12: Rosenbloom was not murdered
5/12: Predicting the media's reaction
6/12: Pre-publication
7/12: "A troublesome book"
8/12: Looking for fights
9/12: Debating an empty chair
10/12: A secret meeting in Las Vegas
11/12: "We have to destroy you now"
12/12: “Remember where you heard it first”
* Addendum. . . . October 19. 2025: This month is the 30th anniversary of the book, “Casino.” . . . Next month is the 30th anniversary of the movie: Several outstanding journalists investigated The Stardust skimming caper. But it was Nick Pileggi who earned the right to call it his own.
* Addendum. . . . October 26, 2025: A question to five AI sites: Is DEM’s 1989 book about the NFL and the Mafia still relevant in context with the current NBA gambling scandal?: Neutral AI venues—Copilot, Gemini, Grok, OpenAI (ChatGPT), and Perplexity—place my 36-year-old work in context with today’s news.