Interference (50 page)

Although the D.A.'s office refused to reopen its investigation of Anderson, the NFL continued its probe. “Our role is different than that of the law-enforcement agencies who are looking for criminal violations,” Rozelle said. “We have standards for the integrity of our sport, and our requirements for evidence are not as stringent as theirs. Still, we must have sufficient information to take action.”

Surprisingly, the gambling community was cavalier about the entire Stabler incident.
The Gold Sheet
, in particular, wrote, “The Ken Stabler affair is just another example of irresponsible reporting. Using innuendos and inferences, two
New York Times
reporters intimated charges against Stabler that lacked any substance or evidence. They syllogized that because Stabler was seen associating with a known gambler—and that because a concurrent circumstance saw Stabler play below his capacity—therefore some hanky-panky might be suggested … If Stabler
were indeed involved in some nefarious act, would he not have been more discreet about the company he kept? One would hardly be so blatant as to show off these associations in public places.”
⁹

In his 1986 autobiography, Stabler was brief and nonchalant about the whole Dudich matter. “What I had done was have a few drinks over the years with a nice old guy named Nick Dudich … If Al Davis really wanted me to stop my occasional beers with Dudich, he certainly could have forced me to. I worked for Al. And when Al said jump, you jumped.”
¹⁰

While the Stabler/Anderson investigations were up in the air, NFL legend Johnny Unitas became the focus of considerable controversy after sports reporter Frederick C. Klein of
The Wall Street Journal
received a notice of a new betting tip sheet coming out of Baltimore, the
John Unitas All-Pro Football Report
. After inquiring about the publication through its toll-free number, Klein then called Unitas. “I don't gamble, but I follow the games and enjoy making the picks,” Unitas told the reporter. “As long as I'm doing it anyway, I may as well get paid for it, even though I don't need the money.”
¹¹

In his promotional literature, Unitas was touted as a football handicapper by Mike Warren, who owned the sports service. Unitas wrote, “I'm invited everywhere. I get to see teams and players and game films other people don't see. Heck, there probably isn't an important person in this game I'm not on a first-name basis with. If I plugged up my ears, I couldn't stop getting information you never read in the newspapers.” Unitas's service cost $125 a year, which the onetime star quarterback promised would be won “your very first weekend.”

Unitas, who was listed as a “special consultant” for the Baltimore Colts, then felt the wrath of Pete Rozelle, who told Colts owner Robert Irsay, “It would not be appropriate for an employee of your club to be associated with this type of business.” Reportedly, Rozelle had never called Unitas. Although not a salaried employee of the Colts, Unitas had been doing occasional public-relations work for the team and was paid on a case-by-case basis. His principal occupations were operating a Baltimore restaurant and an air-freight company.

A close friend of Unitas told me that “Johnny was paid a fee from a Baltimore handicapping firm to use his name. They asked
for his picks once a week. He didn't start the business. He didn't organize it. Johnny never owned any part of it.”

Unitas agrees with that and told me, “Mike [Warren] asked me if I would be willing to analyze two or three games a week. All I would do is, like, take Green Bay and Detroit, analyze the two different teams. And I'd say, ‘On the whole, because of injuries, Detroit could win this ball game.' I never made any point spreads or picks or anything like that.

“Commissioner Rozelle came out and made a bold statement that no one in the National Football League was allowed to talk with me—or have anything to do with me from now on. What right did he have to say that to anybody about me? I wasn't under contract then to Rozelle or the NFL. He never even picked up the telephone and talked to me about it.”

Unitas adds that he wasn't in the Colts organization at the time he was working with the handicapping service. “I had a contract [stipulating that] whenever I retired from the Colts, or retired from football, [that I would] go to work for the Colts for a ten-year period. But [Colts owner] Robert Irsay breached that contract. He traded me to San Diego [in 1973, Unitas's final season], and he never lived up to our agreement.”

The Unitas tout sheet problem didn't end the troubles of past and present NFL players. In November 1981, two other players had trouble with associations with gamblers. Tommy Kramer, the star quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings, was admonished for demonstrating “poor judgment” but was not disciplined for making a $25.00 “friendly bet” with a local bartender on a game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Houston Oilers on Monday night, October 26.
¹²
Kramer had taken Pittsburgh and three points and won his bet. The Steelers beat the Oilers, 26-13.

Don Strock, the backup quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, was advised to sever his relationship with the management of Club Top Draw, a restaurant in North Bay Village, near Miami, which was known as a hangout for several top organized-crime figures. Strock and his wife had done television commercials on behalf of the restaurant. After the FBI and the NFL informed Strock about the reputation of the restaurant, he immediately asked that the commercials be pulled. Strock also returned the money he had made for his role in the advertising promotion.

Later, in February 1982, George Anderson was cleared by NFL Security but reprimanded by commissioner Rozelle for making “nonfootball events” wagers and “socializing” with bookmakers.

Bookmaker Gino Tropiano told my associate, William Scott Malone, that Anderson had “been betting with us since the late sixties and early seventies—and good size bets, betting for the Raiders and for himself.” Speaking of Dudich, Tropiano added, “Nick Dudich had three or four beauty salons in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and he used to lay off bets on the West Coast with us and other bookmakers. He would send his girls out, and someone would meet them at the airport and exchange envelopes. And that's the way they used to settle it.”

In late August, the month after Stabler was waived by the Oilers, Rozelle cleared him of all charges, warning him to avoid “undesirable elements” in the future.
¹³
Stabler immediately signed a new contract with John Mecom and the New Orleans Saints.

42 Cranking Up the Drug Problem

DESPITE THE ORGANIZED-CRIME ties of so many NFL team owners during the 1980s, the sports media concentrated on the reporting of player drug use. And nothing gave the players and the NFL Players Association more public-relations problems—and the owners more public sympathy—than the growing pattern of drug abuse among the players.

In February 1981, all-pro linebacker Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson of the Dallas Cowboys went public with details of his cocaine habit. Henderson told
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
columnist Doug Krikorian, “I started using coke in 1976. My paycheck was eight thousand dollars a week in my best days—and I used all the money to buy coke. I'd borrow the money. The dealers would give me credit. I even sold some to make ends meet.”
¹
Also that year, former Minnesota Vikings stars Carl Eller and Randy Holloway followed suit with their confessions of drug use.

And things got worse. Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick, formerly of the Miami Dolphins, who starred in Super Bowls VII and VIII, were investigated by a federal grand jury in New Orleans, which was probing marijuana smuggling in the Gulf states. Csonka reportedly took the Fifth;
²
Kiick was never subpoenaed.

The two former players had allegedly made plans to purchase a large shipment of marijuana from undercover federal agents involved in an investigation called Operation Grouper, a massive federal organized-crime drug probe that began in 1978
and had yielded 165 indictments and the seizure of 1.2 million pounds of marijuana, 831 pounds of cocaine, and three million Quaaludes. Wiretaps and videotape had been used in the Csonka-Kiick probe, but neither man was charged. Both men had reportedly backed out of the conspiracy before any crime was actually committed.
³

Then, in April 1981, NFL Security announced that for nearly five months it had been investigating several members of the Denver Broncos for cocaine use.
⁴
Subsequently, more serious questions arose when the Colorado Organized Crime Strike Force revealed that “eight to ten” Broncos players had accepted the cocaine from known Denver gamblers and bookmakers. In return, according to law-enforcement authorities, the players supplied the dealers with inside information about Denver's games.

The Rocky Mountain News
found the dealer who supplied the drugs to the players and interviewed him. He said that he had met several of the Broncos players during the pregame festivities to Super Bowl XII in January 1978, in which Denver, five-point underdogs, lost to Dallas, 27-10. The gambler/drug dealer became friendly and began meeting socially with the players. “I might get together with one or two on Monday and drink wine and snort some coke,” the dealer/gambler said. “For the players, I think it was a way to escape reality. Those players weren't taking drugs to help them in a game. It was for relaxation. The pressure on them is so intense.”
⁵
The gambler/drug dealer passed a polygraph test about his relationships with the Broncos players.

NFL Security chief Warren Welsh told me he was convinced, on the basis of his lengthy investigation, that no point shaving or game fixing had occurred. “The charges were never substantiated,” Welsh said.

Five alleged cocaine dealers, two of whom were major gambling figures in the Denver area, were arrested and convicted in connection with the case. No one from the Broncos team was charged. However, three players—linebacker Tom Jackson, safety Billy Thompson, and return specialist Rick Upchurch—were reprimanded in a letter from commissioner Rozelle.

Within a year after the Colorado Organized Crime Strike Force uncovered the information, it was disbanded. Robert Cantwell, the coordinator of the strike force, told reporter Jim Herre
of
The Denver Post
, “By [the NFL] not taking aggressive action … they are encouraging it [drug use]. I don't think the NFL has done enough homework, and they don't have the resources to investigate the many complaints they receive.”

During the spring of 1981, while the investigation of the Broncos wound down, another investigation of the New Orleans Saints cranked up. A federal grand jury in New Orleans probed allegations that at least ten members of the Saints team were receiving drugs from suspected gamblers. George Rogers, the 1980 Heisman Trophy winner and a rookie running back for the Saints, told the grand jury that the price for his drug use during a single season was as high as $10,000. Also testifying was Rogers's teammate rookie quarterback David Wilson, who fingered former Saints running back Mike Strachan as the team's supplier.

Strachan had earlier been indicted for cocaine trafficking. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison. His customers were listed as Rogers, Chuck Muncie of the San Diego Chargers, and Saints defensive end Frank Warren, all of whom had cooperated with the grand-jury investigation and, thus, were not charged.

Strachan later testified before the grand jury, saying that his cocaine habit began after he became a friend of Chuck Muncie, a running back for the Saints until 1980 when he joined the Chargers. “When I got to Muncie and his life-style and his friends,” Strachan told reporters, “it [cocaine] was so prevalent, I just started indulging as he did.”

Strachan also charged that Rogers supplied the black players on the Saints team, while cornerback Dave Waymer supplied the white players. Like Rogers, Waymer was given immunity to testify against Strachan.

Strachan told me that there was never any attempt to compromise his on-field performance. However, he conceded that his drug suppliers did have “a power of blackmail” over him. “They did. But that power was never exercised. Gambling wasn't widespread then. I heard about a few players who were gambling, but it just wasn't in the picture. But, I guess, anyone who is that close to a player is going to know what's going on with the team.”

San Diego Chargers owner Gene Klein told me about how he obtained Muncie from the Saints. “I walked into the office one day and someone says to me, ‘We can get Chuck Muncie for a
second-round pick.' I said, ‘Go get him. Don't waste time.' He said, ‘Our competition is the Raiders.' I said, Tick up the phone and close the deal.' He said, ‘You know there's talk about Chuck having drug problems.' I said, ‘That's talk; nothing's been proven.' And so we got Chuck for a second-round pick. He was a helluva football player. He also had a helluva drug habit, too.”

At the time of the cocaine/gambling investigations of the Broncos, Chargers, and the Saints, no fewer than five other teams were being investigated on similar charges: the Cleveland Browns, Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, San Francisco 49ers, and Washington Redskins. Although a small number of players from these teams would be prosecuted, all these investigations eventually collapsed. A few law-enforcement officials have claimed that the NFL was more concerned with damage control than informing fans about this serious problem facing the game of professional football. Once again, it was the isolated cases that made the headlines.

• In April 1982, Kirby Criswell of the St. Louis Cardinals and an associate were accused of manufacturing and distributing amphetamines. Criswell was convicted and was sentenced to five years in prison. That same month, his teammate E. J. Junior was arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana. Junior pleaded guilty.