Interference (59 page)

Ignoring the union the week before the beginning of the 1988 season, Rozelle suspended Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants for thirty days after his second offense. Also suspended were Terry Taylor of the Seattle Seahawks, Emanuel King and Darryl Smith of the Cincinnati Bengals, Bruce Smith of the Buffalo Bills, and John Taylor of the San Francisco 49ers.

On September 7, two Chicago bears were suspended: Richard Dent, who refused to take the drug test and was later reinstated in the midst of a lawsuit challenging the suspension; and Calvin Thomas, who claimed that he had never been informed of failing a first test; as well as Charles White of the Los Angeles Rams, who was nailed for alcohol abuse, which can be used against a player when it occurs as a step-two offense. White, the 1979 Heisman Trophy winner, had been arrested the previous summer for being under the influence of a controlled substance which was believed to be cocaine.

On September 13, Antonio Gibson of the New Orleans Saints and Leonard Mitchell of the Atlanta Falcons were also suspended for substance abuse. Soon after, Mike Bell of the Kansas City Chiefs was also suspended.

In the wake of the 1988 Olympic Games and the controversy over the use of steroids by participating athletes, particularly Ben Johnson who was stripped of his gold medal after his world-record time in the hundred meters, the NFL announced that it would punish league players who tested positive for steroids. The penalties for steroid use, including a thirty-day suspension for first-time offenders, were to go into effect in the summer of 1989. Rozelle said that 6 percent of all NFL players had tested positive for steroids in 1987.

On November 9, there were two more players suspended for thirty days for drug use: Doug Smith of the Houston Oilers and Hal Garner of the Buffalo Bills. And, on November 30, Mark Duper of the Miami Dolphins
⁶
and Victor Scott of the Dallas Cowboys were suspended for substance abuse as well.

Just the previous month, on October 10, twenty-nine-year-old David Croudip, a reserve cornerback in his fourth season with the Atlanta Falcons, died at his home in Lawrenceville, Georgia, after he drank a concoction of fruit juice with a load of cocaine mixed in. During his college career at San Diego State, Croudip had acknowledged a cocaine problem and sought counseling. His death is still under investigation.

On the night before Super Bowl XXIII between the Cincinnati Bengals and the seven-point-favorite San Francisco 49ers on January 22, 1989, Bengals running back Stanley Wilson, who had already been suspended twice for cocaine use and was being tested three times a week, was found in the bathroom of his hotel room in a “disoriented state” by a team official. Cocaine was reportedly found nearby. While Wilson was being taken to a hospital, he bolted from members of the Bengals management and ran down a fire escape and into the night. Wilson, who missed the Super Bowl, did not resurface until the following Tuesday.

After the Wilson situation became public, questions were raised as to the whereabouts of the proof of drug use found in Wilson's hotel room. Soon after, it was discovered that all the evidence at the scene had been confiscated by Cincinnati chief of police Lawrence Whalen, who also headed the Bengals' security
team during the week of the Super Bowl. However, instead of turning the evidence over to a law-enforcement agency, Whalen gave it to NFL Security. Whalen was reprimanded for his actions by Cincinnati officials.

For years, suspicions had abounded and charges made that NFL players' agents were supplying their clients with drugs. Pete Rozelle made such a charge during his testimony before a committee of the New York state legislature in May 1984. “We have information that leads us to believe agents are involved in the problem.” Rozelle did not get specific and the issue passed.

As the Screen Actors Guild does in Hollywood, the NFL Players Association establishes guidelines for agents representing its membership. The NFLPA's oversight of players' agents was contained in the collective-bargaining agreement negotiated at the conclusion of the fifty-seven-day NFL players strike in 1982. Anyone wishing to represent a player coming into the pros or negotiating a veteran's contract must be approved and certified by the union. A newly certified agent is automatically subjected to a one-year probationary period.

Consequently, Ed Garvey, the union's former executive director, had been accused by the players' agents of initiating a “system of socialism.” Garvey had described agents as “a group of people who have no ethical standards,” who operated “for the total exploitation of young men.” A natural alliance between some agents and some NFL team owners resulted, with both attempting to break the back of the NFLPA.
⁷
In one instance, players' agent Jerry Argovitz, a former Houston dentist, had openly tried to have Garvey ousted as the union's leader. In 1984, Argovitz became a co-owner of the Houston Gamblers of the USFL.

Two other agents, fifty-eight-year-old Norby Walters and twenty-nine-year-old Lloyd Bloom, were even greedier. Indicted in Chicago on August 24, 1988, under the RICO statute for racketeering, mail and wire fraud, and extortion after a seventeen-month investigation, the two New York sports agents, according to federal prosecutors, had offered cash, cars, and other gifts to star college athletes in return for exclusive representation contracts, some of which were postdated. Walters and Bloom pleaded not guilty.

Forty-three players had signed up with these agents, who
operated Walters' World Sports & Entertainment, Inc. of New York. They included, among others, John Clay of the San Diego Chargers, Doug DuBose of the San Francisco 49ers (who was among those players suspended during the 1988 preseason for substance abuse), Chuck Faucette of the San Diego Chargers, Terrance Flagler of the San Francisco 49ers, Brent Fullwood of the Green Bay Packers, Everett Gay of the Dallas Cowboys, Ronnie Harmon of the Buffalo Bills, Mark Ingram of the New York Giants, Tim McGee of the Cincinnati Bengals, Devon Mitchell of the Detroit Lions, Ron Morris of the Chicago Bears, Paul Palmer of the Kansas City Chiefs,
⁸
Robert Perryman of the New England Patriots, Tim Smith of the Washington Redskins, George Swarn of the St. Louis Cardinals, Tony Woods of the Seattle Seahawks, and Rod Woodson of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Some players who considered breaking their contracts with Walters and Bloom, the government says, were threatened with a visit by New York Colombo crime family member Michael Franzese, who was later convicted of RICO violations in a separate case and is serving a ten-year sentence.
⁹
Franzese had allegedly given Walters $50,000 to start up his sports agency. The mobster was named as an unindicted coconspirator and cooperated with federal prosecutors.

Franzese, in an interview with Bruce Selcraig, a reporter with
Sports Illustrated
,
¹⁰
said, “Look, we were business associates. I'm not going to lie and say we weren't. But to say I had anything to do with his sports business, that I controlled it or called the shots, is ridiculous. If I gave it [the $50,000] to him I don't see a problem in telling you. There's nothing illegal about it. But at this point I'm not going to confirm it … Truthfully, it wasn't a whole lot of money to me, but that's beside the point.”

Franzese, along with Walters and Bloom, was also charged with using threats while attempting to obtain a representation contract for Michael Jackson's Victory Tour in 1984—which was being operated by Chuck Sullivan of the New England Patriots. Franzese later testified that he had tried to muscle the Jackson's manager, Ronald Weisner. “We decided that Norby would make it known who I was and who I was associated with … and I would do my best to convince them that they should do the tour with Norby.

“I explained to him [Weisner] that if Norby wasn't involved in the tour in some manner there wasn't going to be a tour.”

The forty-three players who cooperated agreed to be available to testify against Walters and Bloom, a former bouncer at New York's Studio 54 discotheque, who has been rumored to be associated with drug dealers. The government agreed to clear the players' records—if they made restitution to their schools for their scholarship violations, performed community service work, and generally stayed out of trouble.

A third man indicted was former Heisman Trophy candidate Cris Carter of the Philadelphia Eagles, the all-time leading receiver at Ohio State, who had accepted $5,000 to sign with another agent, Dave Lueddeke of Pro-Line Sports of Sherman Oaks, California. Lueddeke also was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice and pleaded guilty. He also cooperated with the prosecution.

Among the players, Carter was singled out for indictment because he had concealed the payment from the federal grand jury investigating the case. Three weeks after his indictment, Carter pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. He told the court, “I am cooperating fully … and can only say that I regret my past mistakes.” He had been facing ten years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Harry Gamble, the president of the Eagles, issued a statement after Carter's plea, saying, “[The] Philadelphia Eagles firmly believe that Cris was one of many college athletes who were victimized by a system that permitted unscrupulous agents to take advantage of young men.” Carter went on to star for the Eagles during the 1988 season.

During the trial of Walters and Bloom, the prosecutor told the jury, “I want to be blunt. The student athletes that we asked to testify in the case are not heroes … Norby Walters and Lloyd Bloom have no record of any of the cash paid to [them]. It's not surprising … when you take the mob's money … you don't give and you don't get receipts.”

On April 13, 1989, the jury found Walters and Bloom guilty of racketeering and conspiracy. However, on September 17, 1990, their federal racketeering convictions were tossed out by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago.

51 Crime and Punishment

AN IMPORTANT THIRTY-TWO-PAGE special report on gambling was featured in the March 10, 1986, issue of
Sports Illustrated
.

The report made several specific disclosures about NFL personnel, which included

• charges that John Shaw, the vice president of finance of the Los Angeles Rams and a close confidant of Georgia Frontiere, had “gambled excessively over the last several years” with major Southern California bookmakers. This statement was corroborated by other sources. But Shaw denied any wrongdoing, and no action against him was taken by the NFL.
¹

• a statement from a former NFL Security consultant that “several Cleveland Browns players received drugs in the early 1980s from Frank Sumpter and his son Michael. Frank, who died in 1983, was … a major bookmaker and gambler. Michael is now serving a thirty-year federal prison sentence for drug trafficking. He is also said by authorities to have been a heavy gambler.”

• a confession from former Miami Dolphins defensive back Lloyd Mumphord, who revealed that while he was an active player during the 1970s he established a relationship with a convicted felon Raymond L. Capri. Mumphord told
SI
that he and several other Dolphins “parried at Capri's house and that they were supplied cocaine by Capri. [Mumphord said] that Capri
listened to the players discuss team injuries and that [Mumphord] believed that Capri passed this information along to gamblers.” Confronted by
SI
, Capri admitted giving coke to the players and listening to their injury reports; however, he denied ever using the information for gambling purposes.

The SI story even ran a short sidebar about the Computer group. Thomas Noble of Las Vegas, the FBI's agent in charge of the Computer investigation, said that the case “is not going to go away. It's big and the federal government moves slowly.” However, after the
SI
piece ran, the Computer group investigation began to go awry. Noble was reassigned to Chicago. The slowness of the government had turned into total paralysis.

Special agent Charlie Parsons, formerly of the Las Vegas office, told me, “Noble was right out of Quantico [the FBI academy]. He was a brand-new agent. Because of the [Computer case], the normal rotation was held up for Tom until he could bring that case to its conclusion.”

However, another source close to the investigation says that the case was nowhere near completion when Noble was transferred. “This whole thing started out as being an investigation of some computer guys making some bets on some college and professional football games,” the Justice Department source told me. “The problem is that the Justice Department knows it's an organized-crime operation, with some embarrassing links to major celebrities in the worlds of sports, politics, and entertainment. This whole investigation has been stalled for political reasons.”

Morris Goldings of Boston—the attorney for the Computer group's mastermind, Dr. Mindlin—denied that the case was organized-crime-connected or dropped for political reasons; but Goldings refused to comment about what celebrities were involved in the Computer operation. “We were hopeful that the case was going to be dropped,” he told me, “because we persuaded the government that there was no crime. Gambling is a very widely accepted pastime that involves a lot of people.”

Among those investigated for alleged involvement in the Computer group was Mervyn Adelson, the head of Lorimar Telepictures Corporation, which has produced such television programs as
Eight Is Enough, The Waltons, Dallas, Knott's Landing
, and
Falcon Crest
, among other popular shows.
²
Adelson is also the husband of ABC News reporter Barbara Walters.

Adelson, a longtime business associate and friend of Moe Dalitz and other underworld figures, was the former co-owner of the Colonial House casino in Las Vegas, along with his partner, Irwin A. Molasky, a vice president at Lorimar. The two men had met soon after Adelson moved to Las Vegas in 1953. They were introduced to Dalitz by Allard Roen, who was then the manager of the Desert Inn, which at that time was owned by Dalitz and the Mayfield Road Gang.