3. Game-fixing in the NFL
Copyright © 2000 by Dan E. Moldea
(Also see: "More game-fixing evidence")
In my January 1988 article about the NFL and the mob for Regardie's, I had focused on the suppressed and killed investigations of NFL corruption. But I had no evidence of game-fixing and received a considerable amount of criticism from the media for making such a fuss about corruption in the NFL without getting it. So, for my book, I concentrated most of my resources on proving that NFL games had been fixed.
The NFL and its commissioner, Pete Rozelle, had claimed that no game in its history--since the formation of the league in 1920--had ever been fixed. However, the NFL did acknowledge two unsuccessful attempts to fix NFL games: the 1946 NFL Championship Game between the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears and a 1971 NFL game between the Houston Oilers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Nevertheless, even before the January 1983 Frontline broadcast, several people had made allegations of NFL game-fixing, and I began working to confirm or reject those charges based on my own investigation.
For instance, Bubba Smith, a defensive lineman for the Baltimore Colts, had told Playboy that the 1969 Super Bowl, featuring the heroics of New York Jets' quarterback Joe Namath, had been fixed; that Carroll Rosenbloom, then the owner of the Colts, had bet against his own team.
Not true, according to my own investigation, which included a statement from the bookmaker who had actually handled Rosenbloom's bet--which was placed on his own team.
However, my research--which included interviews with the top bookmakers, oddsmakers, and gamblers in the country--revealed that no fewer than 70 NFL games had been fixed.
In 1983, when I began my preliminary work for the NFL book in the wake of the Frontline program, I contacted Vincent Piersante, the head of the organized-crime division of the Michigan state attorney general's office. Piersante, who had been helpful to me during my research for The Hoffa Wars, told me that if I wanted to write about game-fixing in the NFL, I would have to investigate Donald Dawson, a top bookmaker from Detroit.
Piersante told me that Dawson had been involved with members of the Detroit Lions and other NFL teams during the 1950s, 1960s, an 1970s. "Professional football, we had cold," Piersante said. "It was clear to us that games had been fixed by players [who were] shaving points in cooperation with several organized-crime connected bookmakers."
Piersante added that Dawson was among those bookmakers who were financing the players' game-fixing schemes.
After speaking with Piersante, I then went to other law-enforcement officials, including a former top official with the Criminal Intelligence Division of the Internal Revenue Service. This IRS official had coordinated the agency's 1969-1970 investigation of Dawson.
During the IRS probe, several NFL players were proven to have been in regular contact with and provided inside information to Dawson, who was later convicted and sentenced to prison for his bookmaking activities.
And numerous other law-enforcement officials, whom I also interviewed, agreed with Piersante and the IRS in their assessment of Dawson's activities.
At this point in my investigation, I had enough evidence to print that, according to state and federal law enforcement officials, as well as several former NFL players whom I had also interviewed, Don Dawson had allegedly engaged in game-fixing.
But, wanting more, I went after Dawson and found him living in Las Vegas. He had never been interviewed by any reporter and, at first, tried to blow me off, but I wouldn't let him. I kept prodding him, playing to his enormous ego. When that didn't work, I started to recount what my law-enforcement sources had told me about him. That placed Dawson on the defensive, forcing him to reply to each charge in detail.
After finally getting Dawson to admit for the first time that he had been involved in NFL game-fixing, I asked him to explain the mechanics. Dawson replied, "A player, usually a quarterback, 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.'"
Naming names and teams, Dawson continued:
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.Of course, I had taped this conversation.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.
In another game-fixing conspiracy, the head of Project Layoff, an IRS gambling investigation in Nevada, provided me with evidence, indicating that two referees had allegedly participated in the fixing of no fewer than eight additional NFL games.