Interference (78 page)

2
.  Morton's partner in the restaurant was Billy Bob Harris, with whom Morton shared an apartment. In 1984, Harris, who had become a stockbroker, was charged in an SEC insider-trading case. Harris was accused of receiving $1.9 million as a result of illegal inside information provided him by Paul Thayer, then the deputy secretary of defense under President Reagan. Harris
had met Thayer through Morton, who had been dating Thayer's daughter. Others named in the SEC complaint along with Harris and Thayer were convicted gambler Malcolm B. Davis and Atlanta stockbroker William Mathis, a former fullback with the New York Jets.

Both Thayer and Harris were convicted.

3
.  The story about Scott's and Hertwig's presence in Fuqua's house was first published by M. Anthony Lednovich and Dan Christensen of
The Fort Lauderdale News/Sun-Sentinel
on August 22, 1982. The reporters wrote in a subsequent story that Jack Danahy of NFL Security had been notified of Scott's and Hertwig's association with Fuqua. They quoted Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Gary Garner as saying, “We contacted the proper authorities in the NFL and they didn't seem to care.”

In January 1973, Scott was named the Most Valuable Player in Super Bowl VII while he was with the Miami Dolphins, which defeated the Washington Redskins, 14-7.

CHAPTER 36

1
.  There was no particular loyalty between Rosenbloom and Wilson—from whom Rosenbloom later tried to steal the Bills' superstar O. J. Simpson. Rosenbloom's outburst appeared to be nothing more than just another act in defiance of Rozelle, with whom he was still warring.

2
.  Also, in 1978, the NFL went to a sixteen-game schedule.

3
.  In March 1985, the NFL decided to experiment again with the instant replay on controversial calls by game officials. The trial period was to extend over the 1985 preseason and to be used in nine, nationally televised exhibition games. This action was prompted after the Los Angeles Raiders were credited with a touchdown—in which the receiver who scored was clearly out of bounds—during their 1984 13-7 loss against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The instant replay went into effect for the 1986 regular season.

The fledgling United States Football League had been first to institutionalize the instant replay on controversial calls.

Those NFL teams voting against the use of the replay were the Houston Oilers, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Raiders, New York Giants, and New York Jets.

4
.  One reason for the delay in the surveillance was that the informant was trying to be paid for his information from at least two federal agencies: the FBI and the IRS. The IRS agent told me, “We paid him some pretty good bucks, but we told him that he wasn't entitled to two payments. We got together with the FBI and ironed that out really quick.”

CHAPTER 37

1
.  With the sale of his other sports teams, Cooke became the first NFL owner to comply with the NFL's rules prohibiting cross ownerships.

Cooke later bought the Los Angeles
Daily News
.

2
. 
Tarkanian became the head coach at Long Beach State University in 1968 and then landed the same job at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas in 1973. In the latter position, he received a $22,000 salary, plus $10,000 for his participation in a television program on basketball, $15,000 from Caesars Palace for some public-relations appearances, two new cars, a $100,000 house at cost, and many other benefits. Twice disciplined for NCAA recruiting violations, Tarkanian had also received $45,000 a year for other promotional activeties from David Bliss, the president of Las Vegas ticket-selling firm Royal Reservations, who had been linked to a federal extortion and bribery case. Tony Spilotro, who was a target in that probe, was heard on FBI wiretaps telling an associate to “take care” of Bliss, who had received immunity from prosecution and could incriminate Spilotro.

Weiss had been implicated in a 1972 recruiting violation investigation at Long Beach State, where Tarkanian was in his final year as head coach. Weiss allegedly offered $150 cash to a high school player. The player reportedly refused the money but later played for Tarkanian at UNLV.

For an excellent background story on Tarkanian, see Mary Neiswender and Mark Gladstone,
Sunday Independent Press-Telegram
(Long Beach, California), 29 July 1979.

3
.  Cooke had merged Teleprompter, which had a legacy of scandal, with his H & B American Cable Television Company in 1971. By 1973, according to reporter Bob Pack, the SEC “had halted trading in Teleprompter stock, amid allegations that the company had defrauded its stockholders and the public by failing to disclose that it had a cash-flow problem, that it had been denied additional loans by its banks, and that it had to cancel an expansion program for lack of funds.”

Cooke, as chairman of the board, then removed Teleprompter's president Raymond P. Shafer, the former governor of Pennsylvania. After the collapse of the company's stock, Cooke began to rebuild Teleprompter. Cooke finally sold the company to Westinghouse in 1980, after yet another suspension of trading by the SEC in 1977.

4
.  While living in Las Vegas, Cooke met and fell in love with Jeanne Williams Wilson, an employee of the Sands hotel/casino on the Strip. They were married in late October 1980 but were divorced within ten months.

Also, there was no great love between Cooke and Pete Rozelle, who had married Carrie Cooke, the ex-wife of Cooke's son Ralph Cooke, in 1973. Rozelle and his second wife had been married at the New York home of Herbert J. Siegel, the owner of Chris-Craft Industries. Rozelle was a member of Siegel's board of directors. Like Gene Klein's National General Corporation, Chris-Craft had attempted but failed to take over Warner Brothers-Seven Arts in 1968, losing out to National Kinney.

In 1984, Siegel became a major stockholder in Warner Communications and a member of its board of directors.

5
.  Williams had actually begun negotiating the purchase of the Orioles on behalf of a syndicate of prospective buyers headed by former treasury secretary William Simon in 1978. When the two sides could not come to terms and the negotiations collapsed, Williams stepped into the breach the following year and bought the Orioles for a mere $12 million. The move proved to be a face-saving
device for Williams, who realized that he was being moved out as president of the Redskins by Cooke. After his purchase of the Orioles, he resigned as president of the football team, claiming that he was obeying the NFL's rarely enforced rules prohibiting cross ownership of professional sports teams.

Williams's Orioles won the 1983 World Series, defeating the Philadelphia Phillies in five games, the same year that the Redskins, in which Williams had retained his 14.7 percent interest, defeated the Miami Dolphins, 27-17, in Super Bowl XVII.

6
.  Fifty-seven-year-old Geraldine Cutter was killed when her new Thunderbird rolled from their driveway through a twelve-foot retaining wall and over a seventy-five-foot cliff. She was found dead, barefoot, and in her housecoat. Soon after his wife's death, Cutter reportedly began driving in a bulletproof car and traveled with bodyguards. Cutter married a Las Vegas show girl at Caesars Palace in February 1980.

CHAPTER 38

1
.  Rosenbloom's biggest coaching dispute was with Chuck Knox, an outstanding head coach who had achieved a phenomenal record while with the Rams. In 1973, he was 12-2, 10-4 in 1974, 12-2 in 1975, 10-3-1 in 1976, and 10-4 in 1977. After the falling out, Knox, who went with the Buffalo Bills, was replaced by George Allen, who only lasted a few months, reportedly because of problems with Rosenbloom and his son Steve. The head coach during the Rams' 1978 season, Rosenbloom's last, was Ray Malavasi, whom Rosenbloom had lured away from Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders. Malavasi finished the season 12-4 and won the NFC West but lost the divisional play-off. Rosenbloom had also earlier caused friction with Cleveland Browns owner Art Modell after he “stole” a Browns assistant coach, Ray Prochaska.

2
.  At first, Rosenbloom wanted to move to Inglewood, just south of Los Angeles, and build a stadium in cooperation with the owners of the Hollywood Park racetrack.

3
.  U.S. Congress, Senate, Testimony of Howard Cosell, “Professional Sports Antitrust Immunity,” Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary on S. 2784 and S. 2821, United States Senate, 97th Cong., 2d sess., September 16, 1982, pp. 235-36.

4
.  In August 1976, Cowan had been subpoenaed to testify before a Florida grand jury in Dade County, which was investigating a major statewide gambling operation. Cowan was never charged with any wrongdoing. During my interview with him, Cowan said, “I appeared once in my life before a grand jury. I don't think they asked me any questions about gambling. And if it had anything to do with gambling, I wouldn't have known about it. The only questions I recall were about who may or may not have frequented my hotel.”

5
.  There were four other people who were near the scene at the time of Rosenbloom's drowning: Rosa Lee Scott, Grace Rotelli, Theresa Politzer, and her husband Hugo Politzer. None of them saw any evidence of foul play. After seeing Rosenbloom struggling in the water, Scott called the rescue squad.

6
.  Howard Cosell with Peter Bonventre, I
Never Played the Game
(New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1985), p. 22.

7
. 
The federal investigation of Warner stemmed from an earlier probe of an extortion scheme in Las Vegas—in which an underworld figure was picked up on a legal wiretap discussing a plan “to siphon off money from an upcoming Frank Sinatra appearance at the Westchester Theatre in New York to keep the money from bankruptcy officials,” according to an FBI affidavit.

Solomon Weiss, Warner's assistant treasurer, and Jay Emmett, a top assistant to Warner boss Steven J. Ross, were both indicted and accused of accepting bribes from the theater's management, hoping to influence Warner Communications to buy Westchester stock in 1973. Soon after, Warner bought $250,000 of stock in the theater. Emmett was represented by attorney Edward Bennett Williams. Emmett later pleaded guilty to reduced charges of signing false invoices. Weiss pleaded not guilty and was later convicted.

8
.  Cosell, I
Never Played
, p. 27.

CHAPTER 39

1
.  Within a year after leaving NFL Security, Danahy experienced an act of violence on a New York street. He told me, “In 1981, I was with Intercon. We were doing a survey for a client. I went into the office on a Sunday morning to get some paperwork done. While I was walking up Madison Avenue, I got rapped from behind by a guy with a little zippered ditty bag in which he had a can of shaving cream inside. It was like a blackjack. He hit me with that. It damn near killed me. He broke my arm, knocked me down, and he had me up against the wheel of a car. And he was kicking me—preparatory to fleece me. And so I decided that I wasn't going to be able to get up off the ground to square this guy. So I happened to be carrying a gun, and I shot him and killed him.”

2
.  Gene Klein and David Fisher,
First Down and a Billion: The Funny Business of Pro Football
(New York: William Morrow and Co., 1987), p. 77.

3
.  Georgia replaced Steve Rosenbloom with longtime Carroll Rosenbloom aide Don Klosterman as the Rams' general manager. Klosterman, a childhood friend of Pete Rozelle and a former Rams quarterback who played behind Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin for part of the 1952 season. Klosterman had also been with the Kansas City Chiefs during the mid-1960s before joining Rosenbloom and the Colts.

4
.  According to Article IV, Section 4.3, of the NFL's constitution, “[N]o member shall have any right to transfer its club or franchise to a different city outside its home territory except with the prior approval of the members of the League.” Approval required support from three quarters of the owners or twenty-one votes.

In October 1978, the NFL owners—with two owners absent from the vote—had voted unanimously to allow Rosenbloom to move the Rams thirty miles south to Anaheim. Instead of renewing the Oakland Raiders' lease with the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Commission, Davis signed an agreement with the ninety-two-thousand-seat Los Angeles Coliseum and announced that he was moving his team to L.A. In March 1980, the NFL owners voted against Davis's move four hundred miles south to Los Angeles. With Davis choosing to leave the room for the vote, there were zero votes for, twenty-two votes against, and five abstentions. Davis decided to move anyway, forcing the
NFL to file an injunction against him. Davis countered with a $213 million antitrust suit against the league.

5
.  Davis charged that Mecom and Rosenbloom had met in Los Angeles in early 1978, ostensibly to discuss a coaching situation. In fact, according to Davis, they had agreed to meet to discuss the scalping of Super Bowl tickets.

6
.  Because of the bad blood between Rozelle and Davis, high drama was present in the locker room of the Oakland Raiders after Super Bowl XV in January 1981 when Rozelle presented the Vince Lombardi Trophy to Davis. The Raiders had defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, 27-10, for the NFL championship. It was the first time that a wild card team had won the Super Bowl. During the brief presentation ceremony, the two adversaries remained civilized to the chagrin of those hungry for a memorable confrontation. The scene was repeated in January 1984 after the Los Angeles Raiders defeated the Washington Redskins, 38-9, in Super Bowl XVIII.

7
.  Steve Rosenbloom resigned as the general manager of the New Orleans Saints in January 1981.

8
.  Carroll Rosenbloom was reportedly very fond of Guiver and helped him gain financing for a shopping center. According to court documents, Rosenbloom had wanted Guiver with the Rams. To facilitate that, he wrote off the $140,000 debt Guiver owed to him. Rosenbloom also gave him a new Mercedes and the promise of a thousand Super Bowl tickets whenever the game was played in Los Angeles, regardless of whether the Rams were participating.