Legalized Gambling Will Destroy College and Professional Sports, Part 7
Scotty Schettler and The Stardust
In this chapter, I discuss the The Stardust Sports Book in Las Vegas, based on my interviews with Scotty Schettler.
This is an excerpt from my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football, pp. 424-429.
Today, the sports book at the Stardust, the one-time home of the outlaw line, is under new management but still resembles the bar scene in the movie Star Wars on Sunday afternoons during the football season. Some patrons wear suits and ties, while others are more relaxed, donning jerseys, T-shirts, hats, and headgear from their favorite NFL team. Other sports gamblers look as though they live in the street but appear to be regulars at the payout window.
Although The Stardust lacks the glamour and sophistication of the newer, state-of-the-art sports books at Caesars Palace and the Las Vegas Hilton, The Stardust is still the place to be before and during NFL games. On the large, glitzy marquee rotating outside the hotel, The Stardust boasts that its sports book is “the Home of the Official Las Vegas Line.”
One of oddsmaker Michael Roxborough’s top clients is The Stardust. Explaining the process, Roxy told me: “The whole thing begins on Saturday. We can’t make a line until we see some college results. With the NFL, it starts right after the Sunday games. We’re looking for injuries to skilled players, and anything else we can discover from the results of the games. Basically, it’s a real crunch period between noon on Sunday and five P.M., when I phone my numbers into the Stardust. They take my line. On that basis, The Stardust supervisors decide which way they want to go.”[1]
The director of The Stardust sports book who takes and adjusts Roxy’s numbers is Scott Schettler, who was born in Pennsylvania and has been in Las Vegas since 1968. By 1971, he was working at Bobby Martin’s old haunt, the Churchill Downs Sports Book, writing betting tickets, handling the board, and giving out scores over the telephone. He remained at Churchill until 1977. Then he opened the sports book at the Royal Casino, leaving that job in 1978 to open another in Reno at the Club Cal-Neva. Schettler returned home to western Pennsylvania for a year before going back to Vegas in 1981 and becoming a clerk at The Stardust. He stayed at The Stardust for eighteen months before leaving to open another sports book at Jerry’s Nugget, a casino in North Las Vegas.
In December 1983, with the Stardust in receivership by the state after the federal skimming indictments, Schettler was selected by gaming officials to operate the casino’s sports book as part of the state-appointed management team. He has run The Stardust Sports Book ever since under The Stardust’s owner, Sam Boyd, who purchased the hotel/casino from Al Sachs.
“At the Stardust,” Schettler told me, “we open the line up first. Our line is based on Roxy’s numbers and those of my guys who work here.[2] There are about four or five opinions that go into this. Then we take bets and move the line. When the fine has flattened out, the other books will follow our lead. By putting my line up first, I have a chance to get two-way business. The other books are basically gambling. They are giving one-way business because they wait to put up the line. We strictly book here. We don’t gamble. Right now, at the major hotels, we’re doing forty-four percent of the business. Caesars and Hilton are the glamour places, but we’re actually a book joint.”
When I asked Schettler about today’s outlaw line, he replied: “The whole world doesn’t hinge on The Stardust line. There’re guys who put fines up around the country before The Stardust. I’m talking about the outlaw bookmakers. They still have their own man-to-man betting system. They take bets and move their fine. But we don’t care what the outlaws have. We make our own fine no matter what anybody else thinks. We put our own numbers up. We get no opinions from the outlaws.”
In fact, today the first gamblers to have the opportunity to bet into the Stardust fine are from the general betting public. By the time the Stardust opens its fine on the NFL and college games at 6:00 p.m. every Sunday of the football season, a lottery to determine who bets first has already been conducted. Anyone who wants to bet into the initial fine signs his name on a fist, which is available at the front of the sports book throughout the day. When the fist is picked up by the Stardust staff at 5:50, those who have signed it will have their names called.
They then draw cards to determine the order of gamblers who are each assigned to a specific cashier’s window. The bettors quietly get in line. They understand that their minimum bet has to be at least $200. The most they can bet on an NFL game is $50,000; the limit on a major college game is $10,000.[3]
“In other words,” says Roxborough, “everything has changed since the days of the old outlaw fine. The public now has the opportunity to bet on The Stardust fine before any of the so-called inside professionals.”
When I asked Schettler why he created the lottery system, he replied: “It was out of necessity. The way it used to be done was a few wise guys bet the fine first. Then the fine would flatten out and all the bargains would be gone. We put the fine up for the public. It’s never been bet into. It’s a virgin fine.
“Before the lottery, guys were coming in here two days in a week ahead of time. People would pay guys five or six dollars an hour to stand in line twenty-four hours a day. I got so sick of seeing these people. Finally, I came in one day and some guy had left his place in line to get a cup of coffee and when he came back there was a guy in his place. And he told the new guy, ‘You took my spot, and I want it back.’ And the guy who took the spot opened his coat, and there was a gun. That’s when I created the lottery.
“At first, we just opened the telephones, just so people wouldn’t have to come in here and kill each other just to stand in line to give us their money. But the reason why we’re in this business is to get people to come to this hotel and its casino. Hey, the guy who is sitting at his house is not going to come here and blow his money on something else.
“So, then we came up with the lottery system. The government should come in here and watch how we do this—because it is a model of true democracy. The system couldn’t be fairer. The gamblers police themselves. We put the list there. If you’re first or second in line, you have to make a bet. You can’t come in here with ten guys and whoever gets the best number will cause the other nine to drop out of line. So, by forcing these guys to make a bet eliminates guys coming in here and clogging up the lines. If you get drawn and don’t make a bet, you’re out of the lottery forever.
“Also, once we draw the cards, there is no talking. The reason for that is, say, if you draw number seven and another guy draws number one, you could go up to him and say, ‘Hey, make this bet for me.’ And then the system would be useless. And, again, the gamblers actually police each other. Also, if you talk in line after the lottery, you’re history. If one guy in line hands another guy in line a piece of paper with a bet on it, the gamblers will tell on him in a second. And then the guy who handed the paper is history. The system is for them and for us. And it’s the only way it can work.”
At 6:00 P.M. a Stardust employee who is standing in front of a microphone begins to read off only the favorite college teams along with the number of points in which they are favored. The opposing, underdog team is not mentioned. There is total silence in the large room as the thirty favored college teams and their lines are read off.
“Notre Dame minus twenty-one and a half. . . . Duke and six and a half. . . . Pittsburgh minus two. . . . Iowa and twenty-four. . . .”
After the college games are finished, the pros are read off. Twelve games are mentioned—“Chicago plus five ... Minnesota and six and a half . . . Houston minus three and a half . . . New Orleans and thirteen . . .”
The thirteenth and fourteenth games to be played the next week involving the two teams playing each other the following night on Monday Night Football are not included. The line on their games will depend on their performances and casualties on Monday night.
After the pro games have been read off, those who have signed the list and drawn cards step up to the window and begin rattling off their bets. As the bets are being made, the line begins to move—with a Stardust employee calling out the shifts in the point spreads. No computer is computing the changing odds; in fact, the computer is ignored when the betting opens. The Stardust bookmaker, without the benefit of the computer, makes his own personal calculations to move the line, strictly based upon his own experience and his estimate of the money being bet. The computer is simply a bookkeeping device after the initial, frantic wave of action has been completed.
The first man in the lottery on September 18, 1988—who was wearing a blue jogging suit, carrying a clipboard, and bearding for persons unknown—told me: “We have a pretty good idea of what the numbers are going to be before they’re read off. After I write them down while they’re reading them off, I go down both lists and bet the games I want to bet. If something unexpected has happened, I’ll take that into consideration too. Money is no object. My job is to take the lead. Our people will try to middle later on in the week.”
Although reforms are evident on the Las Vegas sports-gambling scene, it would be naive to think that the underworld has no further interest in Nevada—or that the state’s gaming industry will never again be confronted with charges of penetration by the mob. But the key to the continued smooth and honest functioning of the legal Nevada sports books—as well as to the integrity of the NFL—will be keeping the organized-crime gambling syndicate’s influence over professional sports in check. This means strong and vigilant law enforcement and surveillance in Nevada and within the NFL. And that demands public officials who are more sensitive to the problem of organized crime in America, and members of the sports media who are more willing to report it.
ENDNOTES
[1] Roxborough’s company, Las Vegas Sports Consultants, now offers casinos and sports books a computerized service that transmits up-to-the-minute line changes, weather conditions, and significant injuries, as well as future book prices and proposition wagers.
[2] Another top Las Vegas oddsmaker who was paid to supply his numbers to the Stardust, forty-six-year-old Gerald “Jerry the Hat” Taffel, died from a heart attack on January 5, 1989.
[3] Las Vegas gambler Gene Maday—who owns and operates Little Caesars, a small, independent sports book on the Strip in Las Vegas—has made his reputation for accepting the largest sports bets in Nevada. In the 1985 Super Bowl XIX between the San Francisco 49ers and the Miami Dolphins, Maday accepted a $500,000 bet on the 49ers, who were favored by three points and lost. He also reportedly accepted a $1.05 million bet from Bob Stupak, the owner of Vegas World, on the Cincinnati Bengals, who were seven-point underdogs in the 1989 Super Bowl XXIII, and lost that bet as well. Although considerable suspicion revolves around the actual circumstances of the Maday-Stupak bet, Maday, formerly of Detroit, has earned the reputation as the boldest sports gambler in the country.