My 1993 anti-sports gambling testimony before the N.J. State Assembly
Foreshadowing how legalized gambling will destroy college and pro sports
The 2023 NFL season will open on Thursday, September 7. Billions of dollars will be bet on all upcoming games, featuring the NFL’s once-taboo but now full-body embrace of gambling on NFL games, which I had predicted on ABC’s Nightline on September 11, 1989.
On behalf of the New Jersey Thoroughbred Horseman's Benevolent Association, I presented public testimony before the N.J. State Assembly’s Appropriations Committee on May 19, 1993, opposing a legislative initiative that would have begun the process to legalize sports gambling in Atlantic City.
I focused my testimony on the evidence I had collected and uncovered for my 1989 book—Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football—about the many connections between the NFL and the underworld, as well as additional materials I had obtained in the aftermath of its publication when I was retained as an expert witness for the defense in Cooke v. Washingtonian, a little-known civil case with NFL game fixing at its core.
Below is a brief excerpt of my 1993 statement:
On the surface, the NFL's opposition to legalized sports gambling appears to be sheer hypocrisy, particularly since its fortunes have been so enhanced by any form of gambling, legal or illegal. The NFL has a proprietary interest here and does not want someone else profiting from the sale of its product. As television revenues decline and NFL owners continue paying over $100 million for their franchises, other forms of income will become necessary in order for these franchises to remain viable. I believe that the NFL team owners want those new revenues to come from the gambling operations that they, themselves, will control. But that is another discussion for another time.
With the legalization of sports gambling just starting to hit its stride in 2023, a huge sports-gambling scandal is looming large on the horizon, and—as I have been saying since the publication of my 1989 book and especially since the catastrophic U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2018—it has the potential to destroy college and professional sports in America.
Bet on it.