The Detroit Lions, the Mafia, and the 1963 NFL gambling scandal
The events that led to the creation of "NFL Security"
Tomorrow night—Sunday, January 28, 2024—the San Francisco 49ers will play the Detroit Lions for the NFL’s NFC Championship. The winner will go to the Super Bowl.
Going back in history, the above screenshot is part of the cover page of a 1963 official report of the Detroit Police Department about the associations among members of the Detroit Lions and the Mafia, along with associates of the Detroit crime family. This probe was the centerpiece of a major investigation by the NFL that led to the creation of “NFL Security,” the internal police force within the league.
The following are excerpts about these investigations, published in my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football, which was re-released in 2014.
Tomorrow on Game Day, I will release my excerpts from Interference about Edward J. DeBartolo, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Mafia.
Chapter 3, “The Old Days with the Old Gang,” pp. 49-50
In June 1934, the NFL team, the Portsmouth Spartans, was sold for $21,500 to Detroit investor George “Dick” Richards, a former automobile dealer and another heavy gambler, who then moved the team to his hometown and renamed it the Detroit Lions. Although it was against the league rules for any member of the NFL—owner, coach, or player—to gamble, Harry Wismer, a radio announcer and one-time, part-owner of the Lions, wrote, “Everyone knew Richards gambled, as did many of the other owners. They always bet on their own team, and in those days odds, not points, were used to indicate the difference between the teams. In the letters he had foolishly written . . . Richards revealed that he had bet heavily on a number of the Lions’ games and called for everyone’s best efforts to win for him.”[1] He once claimed to have bet $50,000 on a single NFL game.
The famed Earl “Dutch” Clark, one of Richards’s star players, talked about the owner’s gambling habits. “[Richards] liked to bet on the Lions and he would get some of the players to go in with him. . . . Richards figured they’d play twice as hard to win twenty-five bucks, or maybe fifty bucks. So he got them going along with him.”[2]
Richards sold the Lions in 1940 after he was caught paying off a college player to play on his professional team. He sold his franchise for $225,000 to Fred Mandel, who owned a Chicago department store.
ENDNOTES
1. Harry Wismer, The Public Calls It Sport (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965), pp. 25-26. The college roommate of future Florida senator George Smathers and Washington Post publisher Phil Graham, Wismer was principally a sports broadcaster. His first wife was Betty Bryant, the niece of Henry Ford; and Wismer’s second wife was Mary Zwillman, the widow of New Jersey mobster, Abner “Longy” Zwillman—who had been part of a conspiracy in the 1930s to take over the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which became the largest union in Hollywood. Zwillman had also bankrolled studio mogul Harry Cohn in his takeover of Columbia Pictures. The mobster was later found hanging from a water pipe in his basement. Zwillman’s widow’s lawyer was Sidney Korshak, the Chicago Mafia’s liaison to the Hollywood film industry.
2. Myron Cope, The Game That Was, (New York: World Publishing, 1970), pp. 91-92.
Chapter 8, “Growing Pains,” pp. 83-85
Vincent Piersante, the former head of the organized-crime unit of the Michigan attorney general’s office, told me, “There was alleged to have been some pretty heavy betting going on by the Detroit Lions players on a game-to-game basis with a Detroit bookmaker named Dice Dawson. But it never became public. None of the games I investigated were ever proven to be thrown. But there were situations of shaving points or working with the point spread, particularly when the bookies were working with the players who had bet on the games.”
Born in 1921, Donald “Dice” Dawson was a popular figure in the Detroit gambling world and well-known among sports figures in the Motor City. Former Detroit Lions star Dick “Night Train” Lane, who told me that Dawson was a friend of his, told me, “Don is a good operator. He hung around gamblers all of his life, and that’s what he wanted to be. But he is a very likable guy and always fun to be around.”
Dawson is the son of a wealthy and respected Detroit Chevrolet car dealer. When young Dawson was thirteen, he was the water boy for the Detroit Lions, then owned by gambler Dick Richards. Dawson began gambling at an early age and in high school earned his nickname, “Dice,” because of his crap-shooting abilities. He attended Holy Cross, through which he became acquainted with other alumni, including attorney Edward Bennett Williams who would later become president of the Washington Redskins. Dawson also was in the Marine Corps and served in the South Pacific during World War II.
Upon his release from military service, Dawson went to work for his father, selling Chevrolets. He also started betting heavily on sporting events. During my interview with Dawson, he said, “I wasn’t an actual bookmaker. But I used to get the guys from the country club where I belonged in Detroit. They used to bet through a guy with me. I bankrolled it. I booked it all—but indirectly. I gave the booker twenty-five percent of what we won.”
Dawson admitted to me that he did business with Lions quarterback Bobby Layne. “It was Bobby Layne who was the bettor, who I bet for,” Dawson says. “I knew him better than [I knew] my own brothers. And he did plenty. He’d be playing in his own game, and he’d be betting all over the board. He’d bet five, six, seven games on a Sunday.”
Like Night Train Lane, quarterback Bobby Layne is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is viewed as being among the best pressure players ever to play the game of football. Layne was born in Santa Ana, Texas, and grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A graduate of Texas University, he played his first year in the NFL with the Chicago Bears and with the defunct New York Bulldogs, which was owned by singer Kate Smith, in his second. In 1950, he joined the Detroit Lions and led his team to three NFL championships.
Layne was thought to have shaved points or participated in the fixing of several NFL games, according to several bookmakers and law-enforcement officials. One was the final game of the 1956 season in which the 9-2 Lions played the 8-2-1 Chicago Bears on December 16. Layne left the game in the second quarter supposedly with a concussion. The Bears won the game, 38-21, and the Western Division title.
Lions receiver and 1955 Heisman Trophy winner Howard “Hopalong” Cassady told author Bernie Parrish of the Cleveland Browns that Layne “had faked his injury” during the 1956 Bears game. However, Parrish added that “other players discounted the story because of the enmity between Hoppy and Bobby Layne.”[1]
Don Dawson told me, “I wasn’t involved in that game. He [Layne] was then with a bookmaker in Odessa, Texas. Bobby was whacked pretty good in the 1956 Bears game. He really was. If he was doing anything, like betting against himself, the last thing he would’ve wanted to do was get injured. He would’ve wanted to continue in the game to control it. I would say that Bobby did not throw that particular game. It was not fixed.”
However, Layne did fix games and shave points on other occasions. “I used to go down and play golf with Bobby in a tournament and would stay at his house,” Dawson recalls. “Bobby was shaving, and he was doing all the betting. When I got to know Bobby, he blew the other guy [in Odessa] off. And then he started betting with me. He came to me. He bought a couple of cars from me when I first met him.”[2]
When I asked Dawson what the mechanics of the fixes were, Dawson replied, “Layne would come to me and say, ‘I need some bread.’ Then he’d ask me to make a bet for him and myself. If the Lions were ten-point favorites, he’d say, ‘Well, we’ll probably win by six or seven. We won’t cover the spread.’ ”
Dawson adds that Layne had fixed games or shaved points in no fewer than seven games over a period of four years—while Layne played with the Detroit Lions and later the Pittsburgh Steelers.[3]
On the subject of whether there were other players who fixed games and shaved points, Dawson told me, “There were a lot of players who did business. That’s all I can say. I wouldn’t want to say anything else because they are still alive and have families. Bobby was one of several players I knew. Naturally, I wanted to do business with the quarterback because he handles the ball on every play. And a lot of quarterbacks were shaving points. Sure, it happened. The players didn’t make any money [from playing football], and so they bet. In those days, they were barely getting by. They were getting their brains beaten out for almost nothing.
“I was involved with players in at least thirty-two NFL games that were dumped or where points were shaved. I knew a lot of players and then through them I got acquainted with other players and then did business with them.”[4] (Emphasis added)
ENDNOTES
1. Bernie Parrish, They Call It a Game (New York: Dial Press, Inc., 1971), p. 186.
2. Speaking of fixing games during the 1950s, Don Dawson told me, “In those days, maybe you’d find a couple of bookmakers in Cleveland or Detroit or Buffalo or Cincinnati or Miami or Dallas or Houston or L.A., wherever it was. Most of them were regular guys, not mob guys. But in order to move any big money, they’d have to go to the mob to get it approved.”
3. On August 12, 1957, just prior to the opening of the NFL season, the Lions’ head coach Raymond “Buddy” Parker suddenly resigned, saying, “I’m quitting. I can no longer control this team. And when I can’t control it, I can’t coach it. I don’t want to get involved in another losing season, so I’m leaving Detroit.” Parker was replaced by assistant coach George Wilson.
Piersante, who says he had heard about the alleged fixes, told me, “The Detroit team management broke up the operation. The way it was broken up was Bobby Layne was sold to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1958 during midseason.”
4. Layne died of cardiac arrest on December 1, 1986, in Lubbock, Texas. Dawson told me that he decided to reveal his on-field business relationship with Layne because, “Bobby got to be a bad boy. There were people back in Detroit that he owed. He’d borrow money and would not pay it back. He didn’t have any regard for anybody. When he died, he owed me money—money I bet for him on games, even after he quit football.”
Chapter 11, “Murchison, Modell, and Ford Buy In,” pp. 108
A third management change occurred in 1961. The new president of the Detroit Lions, William Clay Ford, was the vice president of product design for the Ford Motor Company and a member of its board of directors. He was also the son of the company’s founder, Henry Ford. In 1964, Bill Ford bought the Lions for $6.5 million.[1]
Although Ford’s older brother, Henry Ford II, became involved in casino gambling operations on St. Maarten island, there is no evidence that his gambling ties or Henry Sr.’s little-known underworld contacts were handed down to William Clay Ford.[2]
The NFL has never disclosed any investigation it has done on Ford or his family’s gambling businesses.
ENDNOTES
1. Henry Ford had operated union-busting activities in Detroit, particularly against Walter Reuther and the United Auto Workers, with the help of the Detroit Mafia. The chief strike-breaker in Detroit was Santo Perrone, a feared and ruthless mobster who was born in Alcamo, Sicily, and later became one of Jimmy Hoffa’s top henchmen. When Perrone went to court for assaulting Reuther and other trade unionists during the infamous “Battle of the Overpass” at Ford’s River Rouge Plant in 1937, Perrone was represented by Ford legal counsel, Louis J. Columbo, Sr. Law-enforcement officials allege that Perrone also was behind the 1948 shooting of Reuther.
As part payment for their goon-squad activities, Perrone, who later went to prison for liquor law violations, and the Detroit Mafia received a major share of business in Detroit’s trucking industry in concert with Hoffa and the local Teamsters, particularly its steel-hauling operations, which did considerable subcontracting with Ford. Perrone’s work in the steel-hauling business netted him $4,000 a month, even while he was in jail. “Perrone’s steel-hauling interests were handled by his wife while he was in prison,” Vince Piersante told me. “She probably got some kind of break with the [Teamsters]—like it left the business alone. We also know that other crime families started getting into the trucking business during this period of time.”
Ironically, it was Perrone and his underworld associates, Angelo Meli and Frank Coppola, whom Jimmy Hoffa turned to after Hoffa’s Teamsters’ turf was threatened by John L. Lewis and a raiding CIO local. Hoffa made a pact with these underworld figures and former Ford union busters—in return for driving the CIO out of Detroit. This deal became the major turning point in Hoffa’s plunge from union reformer to labor racketeer. The myth has always been that Hoffa turned to organized crime in order to unionize stubborn employers. In fact, he had used the mob to run a rival union out of town.
Another Detroit mobster who worked with Ford was Anthony D ’Anna, who received a half interest in a Ford dealership in return for his “cooperation.” And yet another Mafia figure, Joe Adonis, had the controlling interest in a New Jersey firm that received Ford’s regional distributorship.
The Kefauver Committee noted that “[o]n some occasions organized gamblers would throw very large funds into union elections in major locals in the Detroit area in the hopes of securing the election of officials who would tolerate in-plant gambling.”
2. The incorruptible Vince Piersante vouched for Ford, telling me, “Bill Ford’s clean, and he runs a stable ownership structure.”
Detroit bookmaker Don Dawson, who was well informed about the Lions’ betting habits, agreed with Piersante, telling me that although Henry Ford II was a gambler, Bill Ford was not.
Chapter 13: “The Party Bus,” pp. 118-127
Despite all the publicity the 1963 NFL gambling scandal produced, the full story behind the Lions’ role in the affair has never been told. In Detroit, the investigation began in the early morning hours of Saturday, August 18, 1962. Later that night, the Lions were to play the Dallas Cowboys as part of an NFL preseason doubleheader in Cleveland. Detroit police officers were conducting surveillance at the Grecian Gardens, a popular Detroit restaurant in the city’s Greektown section. The cafe was located only a block south of police headquarters.
The police had been tipped off that Detroit’s top Mafia figures were present at the restaurant that night, including: Anthony Zerilli, the son of the boss of the Detroit mob, Joseph Zerilli, and an officer of the Hazel Park Racing Association; Peter Vitale, a narcotics trafficker; Sam Giordano, who had been twice convicted of gambling; Anthony Corrado and Dominic Corrado, the sons of the “enforcer” of the Detroit Mafia, Peter Corrado; Anthony Cimini, a lieutenant in the local underworld; Anthony Giacalone, who was convicted of bribing a police officer in an effort to end the department’s gambling surveillance and arrests; Vito Giacalone, Tony’s brother and a convicted gambler; and Anthony Thomas, a convicted murderer.
Also identified in the police reports as being with the group was Wayne Walker, a linebacker for the Detroit Lions.
At 4:10 A.M., the police observed Vito Giacalone drive out of the parking lot in a 1947 twin-bus containing several men and women. The bus—painted in blue and silver, the Lions’ team colors—was registered to Odus Tincher, a three-time-convicted gambler who was part of the group. The police report stated that Walker left the restaurant with the group and climbed into his 1961 Oldsmobile station wagon with Idaho tags and followed the bus.
The “party bus,” as it was known to the Detroit police, was a frequent sight on the city’s streets. When in use, the bus was always loaded with mobsters, their women, and booze. There was even a bar and some bunk beds built in. So many Detroit gangsters were seen in the bus at the same time that one police officer joked that a simple speeding violation could lead to the biggest arrest since the 1957 Apalachin Conference.
At 5:50 A.M., both the bus and Walker’s car arrived at the Bunk House Cafe in Toledo, which was described in the police reports as being “connected in gambling operations in the Toledo area.” The police looked into the cafe through a window and observed nine Detroit men and four women sitting and talking together. A half hour later, both the bus and the station wagon left the cafe and continued on to Cleveland. Also, three other people, who had not been present in Detroit, were now in Walker’s car. Among them was Raymond Gentile, the owner of the Bunk House, who was identified by police as “a well-known hoodlum in that area.” In all, there were now sixteen people in the Detroit group.
At 7:39 A.M., according to police reports, the Ohio Highway Patrol “stopped the bus and the station wagon but got only the names of the drivers of the vehicles—Vito Giacalone was driving the bus and Wayne Walker was driving the 1961 Olds station wagon.” The cars proceeded to Cleveland without further interruption.
A few days later, the Detroit police decided to discuss the matter with the Lions’ head coach, George Wilson. An appointment was made at a surburban restaurant, the Fox & Hounds Inn, which was part-owned by Donald Dawson, the Detroit gambler. During their conversation, Wilson said that he knew nothing about Walker’s reported drive to Cleveland, but that several of his players—Walker, Alex Karras, guard John Gordy, and defensive end Darris McCord—had requested to return to Detroit apart from the rest of the team. Wilson said that all but Walker were to be traveling on a bus. Walker wanted to return in his own car—which was going to be driven to Cleveland by Jimmy Butsicaris, a weekend gambler and Karras’s partner in the Lindell Bar.
Pete Rozelle had ruled the Lindell off limits to NFL personnel because Detroit gamblers and Mafia figures often went there. However, Rozelle, according to Wilson, had lifted the ban when Karras told him that he wanted to become a partner in the Lindell with Butsicaris and the gambler’s brother. Karras had paid the Butsicarises $40,000 for his one-third interest. Lions president, William Clay Ford, supported Karras’s Lindell partnership.
The police report continued that Wilson had said, “Karras was a gambler and he [Wilson] didn’t believe that he would ever stop gambling.” Wilson told the police that he would talk to Karras and Walker—as well as make the Grecian Gardens off limits to his players.
On January 4, 1963, as revelations about NFL gambling started to become public, the Detroit police interviewed Jim Butsicaris. In generally confirming the police surveillance reports, Butsicaris added that he and another Detroit gambler had sat on the Lions bench during the game as guests of Karras and Walker. Although Butsicaris was not identified in any police reports as being among the Detroit group traveling to Cleveland the previous August, he told the police that he, not Walker, had driven Walker’s station wagon to Cleveland. The police did not confront him with the fact that the Ohio Highway Patrol had identified Walker as the driver.
After the game, Butsicaris said, the Detroit group went to Captain Frank’s restaurant near Cleveland Stadium for dinner. Although Walker was not listed as being in attendance, the Detroit group was joined by players Gordy and Karras. Vito Giacalone picked up the check for everyone, according to Butsicaris, who added that Gordy and Karras then stayed with the group at the Shaker House Hotel in Cleveland. They all returned together on the bus the following afternoon as Giacalone’s guests.
Detroit Police Commissioner George Edwards reportedly gave Rozelle a written report on December 27, 1962. However, Lions president Ford said that he wasn’t notified of the police investigation until December 31. He learned of the probe from the Lions’ general counsel. Apparently, head coach Wilson had failed to report his August meeting with the Detroit police to his superiors.
On January 6, 1963, after the NFL betting probe was revealed, the Miami police, at the request of Detroit police officials, placed Vito Giacalone and another Detroit mobster, Mike “The Enforcer” Rubino, under physical surveillance while they were present at the Lions-Pittsburgh Steelers play-off game at the Orange Bowl in Miami Beach. They were accompanied by Tony Zerilli and Tony Corrado. The Lions won the game, 17-10.
The Miami police had learned that the four Mafia figures were registered at a local hotel under assumed names. However, while tailing them in traffic, the police twice lost the mobsters’ rented Cadillac. Although there were no known contacts between the Mafia figures and Lions players during that trip, the Detroit gangsters were observed meeting with Joseph Massei, the gambling overlord of the Miami area.
On the Sunday before the game, Rozelle—who had been notified of the surveillance prior to the mobsters’ arrival in Miami—met with NFL player representatives and reportedly gave them a stern lecture about associating with gamblers and betting on NFL games. The Lions’ representative and co-captain, Joe Schmidt, did not attend. Asked by reporters about the continuing gambling investigation, Schmidt replied, “I don’t think there’s any foundation to it at all.”
On January 7, the day after the Lions-Steelers play-off game, the Detroit police interviewed Wayne Walker. Specifically, he was questioned about any knowledge he had about “shaving points, gambling on football games, or throwing ball games.” According to the police report, Walker replied that he had “no knowledge of any extensive gambling engaged in by members of the Detroit Lions.” He added that he personally “occasionally played a football card” and had bet on a football game on only one occasion—on a game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. He said that he had made the bet with “a close personal friend” who played with the Packers. Walker did not identify the player.
Walker admitted to having become acquainted with mobsters Tony and Vito Giacalone, Dominic and Tony Corrado, Peter Vitale, and Odus Tincher through bar owner Butsicaris. Walker said that even after learning that these men were “gamblers,” he did not stay away from them. He insisted that he simply “would run into them at the Grecian Gardens.”
The Lions, Walker said, occasionally “had a ‘spirit party’ in the back hall of the Grecian Gardens which was hosted by Dominic Corrado” at which all food and drinks were free. Walker described the “spirit parties” as being like “pep rallies” and said that they had been arranged by Karras. Walker added that he once had a drink alone with Vito Giacalone at another bar but denied any other association with him. He reported that a former member of the Lions, Howard “Hopalong” Cassady, was a business associate of the Giacalones, which was confirmed through an independent police investigation.
Walker also admitted that he had been on Odus Tincher’s bus en route from Chicago to Detroit after a 1961 game between the Lions and the Bears. He added that he had been on the bus that one time because Jimmy Butsicaris had taken Walker’s father along as a guest. Others on the bus during this trip included Vito Giacalone, Dominic, Peter, and Tony Corrado, as well as Karras and Lions end Glenn Davis.
However, Walker denied to the police that he had been either at the Grecian Gardens or driving his station wagon during the August 18 trip to Cleveland. Upon hearing that, the police report continued, “Walker was confronted by the following officers who had observed him during the early morning hours of August 18, 1962: Sergeants William DePugh and Joseph Areeda who had observed him at the Grecian Gardens and Patrolman Eugene Caviston who had observed him at the Bunk House Cafe.
“After the confrontation, Walker stated that it could be possible that he was at the Grecian Gardens on the above-mentioned date, but that he could not have been at the Bunk House Restaurant.” Walker offered to take a polygraph test, insisting that he had loaned his car to Butsicaris.
Walker was not confronted with the fact that he had been identified as the driver of the station wagon by the Ohio Highway Patrol. The reason? The Ohio patrolman who had stopped the bus and the station wagon on August 18 had developed amnesia when questioned by the Detroit police and could not remember the identity of the driver of Walker’s car. Also, their notepads containing the information had been lost. And the dispatcher who had received the information from the officers had since been fired “because of inefficiency.”
Even though the Detroit police officers refused to retract their earlier reports, Rozelle and the NFL believed Walker. In his final report on the matter, Rozelle made no specific mention of the details of the Lions’ associations with members of the Detroit Mafia or whether Walker or any of the Lions players were ever polygraphed.
How widespread had gambling been within the Lions team? Vincent Piersante, then a top official in the Detroit Police Department who was directly involved in the Lions betting case, told me, “I recall an incident in which a bunch of Lions players got their noses out of joint because they were winning the game by one point but had given the three-point spread. There were less than thirty seconds left in the game, and they had an opportunity to score. But instead of driving for the touchdown or field goal, the quarterback Milt Plum decided, ‘We’ve got the game won. There’s no sense in taking a chance.’ So instead of going for the score, he just sat on the ball to secure the game. Plum was obviously not betting. One of the reasons Milt Plum was not the effective leader some thought he could’ve been was because he didn’t care about the point spread and that wasn’t in the tradition of some previous Lions quarterbacks.”
Rozelle’s probe concluded that Alex Karras had made no fewer than “six significant bets” since 1958, including $100 on his own team in 1962 in a game with the Packers—and another $100 on the Packers that same year in its title game with the New York Giants. In the wake of these revelations, Karras said, “I haven’t done anything I’m ashamed of, and I am not guilty of anything.”
During my interview with Karras, I asked him about the players’ associations with the Detroit mobsters. Karras replied, “Games were never mentioned. They never tried to get inside information or any edge on the field. I never heard anyone get out of line and ask me any of those stupid questions, ‘Who’s going to win and by how much?’
“I’m from Gary, Indiana. And I know what betting is. I’ve been betting all my life. My association with those guys I hung around with was, number one, they were my age, and, number two, we hung around the same places, like the Grecian Gardens, and we met each other socially at the places where we hung around. It wasn’t a heavy relationship. It was a ‘same-age’ relationship. We had a lot in common. So, I never had any problem with them; and they didn’t have any problem with me.”
Karras added that the Lions’ management was fully aware of these associations between the players and the mobsters—and never did anything about them.
Rozelle’s investigation also showed that running back Paul Hornung of the Green Bay Packers, the 1956 Heisman Trophy winner from Notre Dame, had associated with lumber company owner Abe Samuels, a West Coast gambler who was part owner of the Tropicana, a Las Vegas hotel/casino. The two men had met in San Francisco prior to the 1956 East-West college football game. They struck up a social relationship and later Hornung, who personally bet as much as $300 a game, provided him with “inside information” about the Packers team.
According to a report made public by the NFL, Samuels, who wasn’t named, had “developed the habit of querying Hornung by telephone regarding his opinion of the outcome of various games.” In one season, Hornung won $1,500 from his gambling on NFL games. Samuels admitted to betting nearly $100,000 each season.
Also implicated with Samuels were both Rick Casares and Bears line coach Phil Handler, who had worked for the gambler as a salesman at his lumber company for fifteen years during the off-season. Samuels had also offered Hornung a job with his Louisville printing company. “This is a business deal and has nothing to do with Hornung as a football player,” Samuels told The Chicago American.
Casares told the newspaper, “I’ve met Abe Samuels a few times, but I knew him as a businessman. When you meet a man in a group and he is identified as a businessman, you can’t very well ask him if he gambles on football games.”
In his attempt to defend his Packers teammate, defensive end Bill Quinlan told UPI, “Take Samuels. Sure, I know the man. And so does Paul and a lot of other players. But understand this—never once did the man so much as ask any of us how we thought we were going to do in a ball game.
“It’s ridiculous. A man like Samuels, with his money, needs a Hornung or a Quinlan or a Dan Currie [a Packers linebacker] like he needs a hole in the head.”
Rozelle said that he had heard rumors about Hornung and began his investigation during the spring of 1962. It is not known whether Quinlan or Currie were also targets of the probe. However, it is clear that Hornung was not actually questioned until January 1963.
Why the long delay? “I didn’t want to confront him until we had absolute proof,” Rozelle told reporters, “and we didn’t get that proof until this past January. . . . When I told Hornung of the charges, he admitted them.”
On April 17, 1963, commissioner Rozelle indefinitely suspended Hornung and Karras. Five other Detroit players—guard John Gordy,[1] running back Gary Lowe, linebacker Joe Schmidt, linebacker/placekicker Wayne Walker, and defensive end Sam Williams—were fined $2,000 each for betting on NFL games in which they were not playing. Each had bet $50 on the December 30, 1962, NFL championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. The Packers won, 16-7.
Dick “Night Train” Lane remembers when the bets were made. “There was a place where we met,” he told me. “I was there and little Archie Stone [a close friend of Jim Butsicaris] said, ‘The guys are talking about who they’re going to bet on; they’re going to bet on the Giants.’’ I told him that I thought Green Bay was going to win. I told him, ‘They can bet anything they want. I’m going to the golf course.’”
Lane insists that he did not, per se, make a bet. Instead, he told Stone, “’Archie, if you want to bet fifty dollars, I’ll put it up for you.’ I gave him the fifty, and I left. I don’t know whether he bet it or not. I never got anything, and I wasn’t looking for anything.”
During the NFL’s investigation of Karras, Lane says Karras had fingered him as being among those who bet. “Alex told Pete Rozelle, ‘Night Train was there, and you don’t have him down. So I told Alex, ‘What are you mentioning my name for? You’re drowning, and you want to pull people down with you?’
“Rozelle asked me to take a lie detector test. I took it, and I passed. They asked me about a couple of guys in Las Vegas, and I told him that I hadn’t been in Vegas for years. In my earlier days, I was a gambler. I’d gamble on anything. But I never bet on pro football while I was playing.” Lane, who also admitted to knowing Detroit gambler Don Dawson and the Giacalone brothers, was not accused of any wrongdoing.
However, the Detroit team was also fined $4,000 because its head coach, George Wilson, although not personally fined, had failed to report “certain associations by members of the Detroit team,” according to the NFL.
Rozelle also announced that he had received evidence that several other players around the league had been playing football betting cards. The players involved, who were not named, were reprimanded but not fined. Neither Rick Casares nor Bob St. Clair was charged with any wrongdoing. Those other players and coaches who had also admitted relationships with Abe Samuels were not fined or reprimanded either.
After the penalties were handed down, Rozelle wrote in his final report, “There is no evidence that any NFL player has given less than his best in playing any game. There is no evidence that any player has ever bet against his own team. There is no evidence that any NFL player has sold information to gamblers.”
Rozelle interviewed fifty-two people “relating to individuals connected with eight different clubs” during his probe of the players.
Karras remains defiant about the whole matter and told me, “I put myself on the line by saying that I gambled on [NBC’s] Huntley-Brinkley Report, which was totally edited [and taken out of context]. I went on to say how I gambled and what I gambled on. ‘Do you gamble?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘That’s Alex Karras of the Detroit Lions saying that he gambles.’ That to me was a total setup. I don’t know who set me up, but whoever it was—it worked. It was probably Carroll Rosenbloom and George Halas. Because it took a lot of heat off the NFL by putting Paul Hornung and me on suspension.”
However, Hornung was completely repentant. “I made a terrible mistake,” he told reporters. “I realize this now. I am truly sorry.”[2] The suspensions of both players were lifted after one year. They were reinstated to their teams.
Meantime, NFL Players Association president Pete Retzlaff, a star end for the Philadelphia Eagles, announced that the NFL players will “police our own ranks. If the league advises us that a player is frequenting a shady establishment, we’ll have three or four of the club leaders attempt to straighten him out.” Retzlaff, who also owned a cocktail lounge, asked, “How do you recognize these creeps [gamblers who frequent bars owned by NFL personnel]? They seek us out; we don’t seek them out. If the league or the owners know who they are, let them tell us.”
After announcing the players’ punishments, Rozelle added that his investigation of Rosenbloom was continuing but, “Carroll Rosenbloom has denied the charges [of betting against the Colts in 1953] in a sworn affidavit given to the commissioner and each of the individuals making such charges has since repudiated or withdrawn the allegations in affidavits or signed statements.”[3]
In fact, of all those signing statements against Rosenbloom, only Robert McGarvey, the former Philadelphia police officer and Rosenbloom aide, actually recanted. In a complete turnabout, McGarvey said, “I did all the betting on football games. Rosenbloom to my knowledge never bet on a pro game. I thought Rosenbloom would seek me out and offer me a job or something . . . I therefore repudiate my affidavit.”
Richard Melvin and Larry Murphy—the two other Rosenbloom associates who had signed affidavits against him—never repudiated their stories in their subsequent statements to Rozelle. Larry E. Murphy added, “My statement doesn’t back down on a thing.”
McGarvey refused to be questioned about any pressure he had received to sign the repudiation—or who had applied it.
ENDNOTES
1. In 1968, John Gordy became the president of the NFL Players Association.
2. In 1986, Hornung told Sports Illustrated “that there were 10 or 12 other Green Bay Packer players who regularly wagered on NFL games in the team’s glory days . . . betting on games by players was rampant throughout the league.” See Sports Illustrated, March 20, 1986. Hornung refused to be interviewed for this book. He told me, “I feel like if I do it for one person, I should do it for everybody.”
3. Rozelle had also received a character reference for Rosenbloom from New York attorney Roy M. Cohn, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man.
In September 1963, Cohn was indicted for perjury in connection with a Desert Inn stock deal he had with Morris Dalitz and the Mayfield Road Gang in Cleveland. Rosenbloom, Chesler, and McLaney had purchased the Hotel Nacional in Cuba from Dalitz and his partners in 1958. Cohn’s first trial ended in a hung jury, but he was acquitted of the charge in July 1964.
Great work!