Interference Read Free

success.
    Today, NFL games are rarely, if ever, fixed. The mechanics of bribing a team member or a referee who can guarantee the outcome of a game without raising suspicion are so intricate that the risk far outweighs the return. Seemingly everyone, from the NFL commissioner’s office to the highest echelon of the organized-crime syndicate, appears to be concerned about maintaining the integrity of the game.
    When I asked Jack Danahy whether there had been attempts to fix NFL games while he headed the league’s security unit from 1968 to 1980, he replied, “I’m sure there were. I think that in ninety percent of the cases, the ballplayer didn’t even bother to report it. He didn’t want to go through the hassle. It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Look, you bastard, I’ll hit you in the mouth if you don’t get lost.’
    â€œApproaches are very, very subtle. A guy isn’t going to walk right up to a player, and say, ‘Here’s ten grand. And I want you to drop that key pass at the crucial moment in the game on Sunday.’ In some instances, the player probably didn’t even realize that he was being approached.
    â€œThat’s the danger of drugs. They can potentially compromise the players. Thomas ‘Hollywood’ Henderson [a former Dallas Cowboys star linebacker] would’ve been an ideal situation. There’s a guy who played a hell of a Super Bowl. Of course, he was a colorful guy. He was attracting as much attention as the restof the team put together. Within a year after that, he confessed that he had a terrible habit, and that he had shot something like a hundred and sixty thousand dollars on cocaine. That’s a dangerous situation—because the potential was there for him to be compromised by his dealer.”
    Despite the fact that organized crime has always enjoyed a financial bonanza through its control of gambling on NFL football games, local, state, and federal governments have done little to stop it. Professional football has become a sacred cow, seemingly immune to anything more than incomplete probes by law-enforcement agencies. This book will document numerous examples of collapsed and even suppressed investigations.
    Much of this material has never before been published. With the help of my associate, William Scott Malone, I have uncovered a wealth of government documents and conducted dozens of public records searches, as well as over two hundred interviews. Because former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle and the NFL team owners refused to be interviewed for this book, I have been forced to use selected statements made by them that have been obtained by other reporters with whom they have cooperated. In those cases in which previous reporting has been done, I have been scrupulous in crediting those who were responsible for it. And when describing a previously reported situation, I have attempted to advance the current state of evidence.
    I am a crime reporter, not a sportswriter. My job is not contingent on maintaining access to and the goodwill of the personnel of any particular team or sports institution. Friends of mine who do write about sports have expressed the need “to behave” and admit that they have willingly become a part of the NFL’s sophisticated public-relations machine on occasion in order to maintain their sources of information. I believe that the need for this professional access and goodwill has prevented a fair and responsible analysis of the relationship between professional sports and organized crime by all forms of the sports media.
    Punitive action has been the norm against those who cover sports and are critical of their local team management. One close friend, Washington reporter and author Robert Pack, wrote an article critical of Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke and was banned from the Redskins’ front office, locker room, and even the stadium, which is paid for by public