You would be shocked to really know how much point shaving really does go on! It isn't as prevalent in pro sports anymore but college athletics is a different story! ......Below is a copy of an email that my friend sent me to look at a while back!
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Here are some interesting articles on the subject of "the fix" in the NFL (some articles are posted below in their entirety due to problems encountered with creating a link). Read with an open, objective, mind, please:
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id1634/pg1/
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Below are two articles (and a brief review of Moldea's book) containing information put together by investigative journalist, Dan E. Moldea -- author of Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football.
A brief review of Mr. Moldea's book:
Moldea, Dan E. Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football. New York: William Morrow, 1989. 512 pages.
If football is the American religion, and the NFL its Vatican, then Dan Moldea is a heretic and excommunication is already in progress. Moldea is fighting back with a $10 million libel suit against the New York Times for its review of this book by sportswriter Gerald Eskenazi, an NFL mouthpiece.
Moldea chronicles the long-standing relationship between the NFL and organized crime, which has resulted in no fewer than 26 past and present NFL team owners with documented ties to either gambling or the syndicate, evidence of 70 fixed professional games, and the suppression of at least 50 law enforcement investigations of NFL corruption. This book also offers an introduction to the world of betting lines, oddsmakers and handicappers, bookmakers, and high-stakes gambling.
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Game-fixing in the NFL
by Dan E. Moldea
In my January 1988 article about the NFL and the mob for Regardie's, I had concentrated 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 concentrate 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.
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.
Of course, I had taped this conversation.
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. [More on this below - Cyde]
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More Game-fixing
By Dan E. Moldea
The most controversial allegation in my 1989 book, Interference: How Organized Crime Influences Professional Football (William Morrow), is that over seventy NFL games have been fixed. Despite the evidence, league officials have long claimed that no professional football game has ever been successfully fixed since the creation of the NFL in 1920. Of course, any admission to the contrary would jeopardize the public's perception of "the integrity of the game." The following is the untold story of how I developed the information about eight of these allegedly fixed games:
Several years ago, I received a copy of an FBI-302 report, which detailed the FBI's investigation of NFL referees and game officials. The report stated that "two or three referees" had been paid $100,000 by a New York Mafia figure for their participation in each of eight allegedly fixed games--which I list on page 308 of Interference. The referees' alleged job was to ensure that the unnamed mob figure covered the spread and, thus, won his bets. The referees' names were not mentioned in the FBI report.
As I state in my book, the FBI eventually dropped its probe, because the evidence of game-fixing was, supposedly, inconclusive. In addition, the bureau's principal informant was caught trying to sell the same information to the IRS.
During my own interview with the informant, who had passed a polygraph test, he identified the two referees.
Even though I had the FBI report, the results of the informant's polygraph examination, and the names of the two game officials, I decided not to publish this material without further corroboration. My FBI sources, who had provided a considerable amount of help to me during my research for Interference, refused to comment about this particular game-fixing investigation for my book. I never fully understood why.
Subsequently, I contacted nationally-known oddsmaker, Bobby Martin, who said that he had had similar game-fixing suspicions about at least one NFL game official, whom he named. This referee was one of the two identified by the informant. Martin told me that he had also shared this information with Las Vegas gambler Lem Banker, who confirmed to me both Martin's personal investigation of the referee, as well as his name. Both Martin and Banker told me that they could prove that unnatural money had shown up on the referee's games--but they could not prove that any of the games had been actually fixed.
I then contacted Leo Halper, who was involved in Project Layoff, which included the IRS's investigation of game-fixing in the NFL. He told me that the FBI informant, who had also sold his information to the IRS, had given him the outcomes of the eight fixed games, along with the names of the two referees, in advance of the games being played. [Now this, IMO, is VERY damning evidence -- Cyde]
Halper added that the referees had made their own bets on the eight fixed games through beards in Las Vegas. The initial IRS probe included surveillance on one of the beards, who reportedly bet so much money on these games that the betting line actually moved in response to the vast amount of money wagered. According to Halper, this wagering activity occurred at the Barbary Coast's sports book on the Las Vegas Strip.
Also, during my research, I received a correspondence from one of the beards involved with the two NFL referees. He confirmed, in writing, the fixes and named the same two referees.
But the IRS probe, according to the Halper, collapsed when agency chiefs--despite the reliability of the informant's information--refused to authorize a full-scale federal investigation, even though the IRS had concluded that the games had, indeed, been fixed. [Cyde to Alice - "How deep does this rabbitt hole really go?"] (Rumors persist that agency officials--who had received the outcomes of NFL games in advance of the contests--were scoring their own betting coups.)
On the basis of the overwhelming evidence--the FBI report, my interviews with Martin and Banker, statements made to me by the IRS agent in charge of the investigation, the letter from the beard allegedly involved with the officials, and the statements made by the FBI/IRS informant, who had passed a polygraph examination--I published the material about the eight fixed games in Interference, hoping that a subsequent official investigation would answer the lingering questions about this matter. However, upon the advice of my personal attorney, I decided not to publish the names of the two referees.
On August 23, 1989, after the publication of Interference, I was contacted by an intermediary, who told me that NFL league officials wanted to know, among other things, the names of the two referees. On August 25, I met with Warren Welsh, the director of NFL Security, in Las Vegas. I provided him with: a) the FBI report, b) the names of the two NFL referees, and c) the names of all but one of my confidential sources during this particular investigation. The exception was the beard, who asked that his name not be disclosed. The other sources had given me permission to reveal their names and information to Welsh.
On ABC's Nightline on September 11, which was hosted by Jeff Greenfield and focused on gambling in the NFL, I appeared on the program along with Warren Welsh and Las Vegas oddsmaker Michael Roxborough. The question of these eight allegedly fixed games was raised during the program.
According to the official Nightline transcript, the exchange between Welsh and me was precipitated after I claimed that there was evidence that no fewer than 70 NFL games had been fixed. The transcript states:
Greenfield: . . . I can't forbear from picking up on the point you [Moldea] said earlier. Are you talking about games that have been fixed within recent history, recent NFL history, last 10 years or so?
Moldea: I'm saying that the last games I have where there's allegations of fixed games were 10 years ago. There were eight games that were allegedly fixed by two referees who were paid $100,000 each for each game by a New York Mafia guy, and their job was to basically make sure that that Mafia guy covered the spread.
Greenfield: Mr. Welsh, quickly, what do you have to say about those allegations? Have you looked at Mr. Moldea's book? Can you respond to them?
Welsh: I have, and I would like to say that in contact with law enforcement sources, that the informant that Mr. Moldea refers to is term a pathological liar by the FBI.
Moldea: Well, the IRS has a different feeling about him, Warren, and basically they viewed him as being credible, and that--the IRS believed that the investigation itself concluded that the games were indeed fixed. They had the information in advance of the games on those eight fixed games.
In 1992, Halper of the IRS sat down for a sworn deposition during a separate investigation of game-fixing in the NFL, which had developed in the midst of a civil litigation. Halper was specifically questioned about the accuracy of what I had written in my book:
Question: So you say you knew Dan. That is Dan Moldea?
Halper: Yes.
Question: Where did you know him from?
Halper: He had contacted me when he was doing research for his book. That's how I knew him. . .
Question: Did you read his book?
Halper: I have read most of it.
Question: What did you think of his book from a professional point of view?
Halper: I thought it was well done. . . .
Question: Does he mention in the book the 1979 football season, the games that were fixed?
Halper: Yes.
Question: Did you read that particular component in the book?
Halper: Yes.
Question: Is the book accurate in its detailing or referring to the events of the 1979 football season?
Answer: Yes.
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[Ram fans & Niner-Haters should find this next article particularly appealing <G> -- Cyde]:
http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium/moldea.html
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From a 1996 The Dallas Morning News article titled, "Sports history marred by bizarre, high-profile criminal scandals":
"There was the mysterious 1979 death of Carroll Rosenbloom, who owned the Los Angeles Rams.
Rosenbloom died off the Florida coast, apparently the victim of drowning. His death was investigated at the request of the California attorney general because of allegations that organized crime figures had fixed a dozen National Football Leagues games between 1968 and 1970.
A television documentary about the NFL strongly implied that Rosenbloom was held underwater until he died by someone in a wet suit."
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From a 7/2002 article:
By columnist Barry Horn of The Dallas Morning News
"If you believe former wise-guy-turned-youth-league-baseball-coach Michael Franzese, organized crime has had its tentacles deep into some of America's most cherished sports institutions.
Franzese, a former captain in New York's Colombo crime family, drops names such as the Yankees, the Rose Bowl and the NFL during a conversation with HBO's Real Sports at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
When correspondent Bernard Goldberg repeats
Franzese's accusations to a former FBI agent and asks if they can be true, the ex-agent says, "I would believe him." As for those who might refuse to believe Franzese's stories, George Randolph, the ex-FBI agent says they are "naive."
Franzese, who has been to prison for racketeering and tax conspiracy, now coaches his son's Little League team in suburban Los Angeles."
Now, on to that bizarre SB XXXVI "victory" by the New England Patriots over the substantially superior, 14 point-favorite St. Louis Rams:
http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/%22Super+Bowl%22+AND+%22fixed%22/1/T=1027663507/F=cb98193484533f49c9c152c10332a6cc/*http://www.standupsports.com/closer/109.shtml
http://www.uwrf.edu/student-voice/issues/2002/2002feb07/20020207sh.html
http://www.mcguffin.org/2002/0204.shtml
http://www.ptmarion.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=8&topic=5
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I Guarantee It
By James Bonn.
Anyone watching the AFC Championship game between The Oakland Raiders and the New England Patriots, with half a brain in their head, was probably as suspicious of the end of the game as I was and I definitely have half a brain in my head. Only I am well beyond suspicion, I am sure of it. I have been convinced for a long time that professional sports, on any given Sunday, may be as fixed as playing football against your eight-year-old big brother in the backyard.
Seeing Marv Levy storm off the field at half time, in the 1992 Super Bowl, Buffalo Bills vs. Washington Redskins, yelling at the officials, ... "you’ve been bought, you’ve been ****ing bought"... over and over and over was the last straw and the last Super Bore I’ve watched, real time. Well, the last half a game. The circumstantial evidence was certainly there. An election year, where it would be advantageous for the incumbent, Washington representative if you will, the President of the United States to win, would be a powerful message for the upcoming election, "Washington Triumphs!" The first half of the game itself was an officiating joke culminating prior to half time in a play that was the catalyst for Marv Levy’s tirade. Andre Reed had his helmet ripped off his head in as blatant as a pass interference foul as you’ll ever see and yet not only wasn’t the Washington defensive back penalized but the Buffalo wide receiver was, for throwing his helmet. I did eventually watch the second half later and it was without incident but the damage was done. The lead Washington had was too great and even as Buffalo narrowed the gap in what was a clear demonstration of how easily they would have vanquished the inferior Redskins in a fairly officiated game, Washington won, the game. Curiously, they lost that presidential election and we got stuck with the Clintons.
Ridiculous, you say? Well let me ask you, do you really think the last sports fix was the 1919 World Series? (The "Black Sox") With the big money flying around today? Be serious. Prior to 1919 it was routine for fans to hold out dollar bills so that the nearby outfielder would drop the ball. True. The emergence of Babe Ruth as a major star was a timely distraction, so spectacular, that it was able to outshine the gamblers and in effect scrub the league clean. This along with then Commissioner of Baseball, Mountain Judge Landis’ banishment for life all the culprits in the 1919 fix. A broad sweep the Mountain did make for he punished the innocent as well as the guilty. Hence Joe Jackson unfairly was banished also, which was known at the time but the judge felt it important to demonstrate how serious the league was and let no one go unpunished.
How about the 1968 Super Bowl? The one guaranteed by Joe Namath prior. The NFL’s Green Bay Packers dominated the previous two Super Bowls. How interesting would this game continue to be if the NFL continued to kill the AFL? Especially this year’s because it was already announced that the leagues would merge after the 1969 Super Bowl and the AFL would become the AFC and the NFL the NFC with the whole league being the NFL (Cleveland, Baltimore and Pittsburgh moving to the AFC also). Who wants to merge with a loser? So it was imperative for the AFL to win one of the next two and preferably this one, 1968. Nowadays the fix seems to go through the referees because the players make too much damned money and they can’t be reached as easily. Not to mention that they’re too damn stupid to keep a secret the way the refs can (did you know that a referee/official, in all the major leagues, cannot be interviewed or questioned and if someone says anything critical of them they are fined, heavily? Sounds fishy to me or communist). But back then the players didn’t make as much and they could be gotten to. How else do you explain NFL MVP Earl Morrall going 5-15 with 3 interceptions after the first half? Even then the press was curious especially after his own teammates were amazed by the "Jimmy Orr" play just prior to the first half ending. The play was a flea flicker that was purposely designed to go to #28 Jimmy Orr on the left side of the field. It was executed perfectly and Orr was wide open waving his arms near the endzone. A Baltimore score would tie it 7-7 at the half. Instead Morrall throws an interception to #22 Jim Hudson. "I heard Jimmy screaming, as we headed for the locker room," said Morrall. "He was screaming, ‘didn’t you see me Earl? Didn’t you see me?’ I told him ‘No, Jimmy I didn’t.’ I had to turn to my right in order to take the pass from Matte and when I looked up, Jimmy wasn’t in my line of vision. Jerry Hill was, so I went to him." Non-sense. These guys prepare for a Super Bowl big-time. The play was designed to go to Orr and even his teammates knew it. Baltimore dominated the first half, except for a lame quarterback performance they would have easily won the game.
Don’t forget two of the NFL’s biggest stars, Paul Hornung and Alex Karras had been suspended for gambling years prior. The following Super Bowl in 1969, Kansas City QB Len Dawson was questioned just days prior to the game. To quote, "Len Dawson and the Kansas City Chiefs had been the gambling route before. In 1968, rumors had drifted to Pete Rozelle’s offices...that the Chiefs were being taken ‘off the boards’ every week- meaning bookies would not accept bets on the games on the suspicion that the games were fixed. Rozelle conducted an immediate inquiry-secret, of course." Of course it’s secret. Who wants to tell the fans and kill the goose that laid the golden egg?
The egg laying goose is you and the your belief that this is on the up and up, so you continue to spend dollars. The quack is the ref who is almost always the vehicle of the modern fix. The officiating in all sports is so bad it is ridiculous. It sets the fan up to believe anything. It’s kind of like the freeway speed limit thing. No one is driving 55 MPH so they can pull over almost anyone anytime, same here. Who can tell the difference between a stupid call and a fix? They look the same and they happen constantly so who can tell? There are two major types of fixes. If the announcers comment on it then it must be a small time fix because the network hasn’t been paid off. If the announcers ignore it and there are no replays or if it is explained away by the announcers then the network is in on it too. Like the AFC Championship game.
This wasn’t a fix to get the Raiders. If the tables were turned and they were behind and it was the Raider QB who fumbled they too would’ve gotten the ball back. It was a "Network Fix" in that a fumble ends the game, an incompletion keeps it going and maybe overtime and hence a captive audience rather than a non-existent audience and more commercial minutes for all! This was a big time fix because for days after every NFL stooge was trying to explain it away with a story about as believable as OJ’s. The fact is the call on the field stands and can only be overturned by "incontrovertible evidence" to the contrary. Even viewed in the best of light the play was unclear (I am being kind, very kind), certainly not "incontrovertible" and therefore couldn’t, by their own rules, be overturned. Well, except by the network’s rules, money.
Need more? Remember last year, The New England/ Buffalo game where on forth down there was a review of a sideline catch to keep the NE drive alive. Not only wasn’t it a catch, it was out of bounds and it was over a yard short of the first down. Not only did they rule it a catch, in bounds, but somehow ruled it a first down too! After NE scored, the Bills were so disgusted that Wade Phillips led his team off the field and would not come out for the extra point, of course the league immediately fined them for this highly unusual action- the Bills that is, not the refs. Then the gamblers screamed foul because the two-point conversion, rather than the extra point screwed up the point spread.
It is such common knowledge that the home team in baseball has someone in the centerfield scoreboard stealing the opposing catcher’s signs, that it isn’t even a scandal, in fact I just read an article by ESPN’s Peter Gammons condoning it.
Lastly, how about the "immaculate reception" of Franco Harris (sent Pittsburgh to it’s first Super Bowl)? Did you know the determining factor didn’t have anything to do with the play but that the ref called the Police from the Pittsburgh Pirates Dugout phone, and ruled it a catch because he found he had only eight Police officers to escort him from the stadium? True, that’s no secret it was on an ESPN show. Granted in this example it isn’t really a fix type fix but certainly the outcome of the game was determined by factors unrelated to the game.
What is the game? To make money. This, " the athletes have a passion for the game", crap doesn’t cut it any more. It got stale after the second...third baseball strike, no wait it was the second hockey strike. Oh no, it got stale after the football replacement games, I forget. It was during one of those. It struck me as stupid and senseless and cruel at the time but it gets funnier every time I think of when the whole Pete Rose thing was going on. Right after each sanctimonious pain in the ass sports announcer would announce his little Petey story they would inevitably finish by giving the current "line". "The Browns are 2 point favorites over the Falcons, the Bears are 7 1/2 point underdogs to the Rams..." I think I am the only one, besides Pete, who got the joke. I could afford to laugh; he couldn’t. They should elect Pete Rose to the Hall of Fame not only for his play on the field but also off. He may just have been ahead of his time that’s all. It’s all as fixed as the next-door neighbor’s German Shepard that keeps humping your leg. I guarantee it.
Best of luck no matter what side you are on!
but that was not the topic here. I'm sure your's are worthy of being stared at. Please take that as a compliment and not as an insult.
