Rozelle Read online

  The books had made the Colts a three- and- a- half- point favor-

  ite. On the game- winning drive in overtime when Johnny Uni-

  tas threw on second down, although an easy winning field goal

  was within reach, it triggered a nasty rumor. Carroll Rosenbloom,

  who owned the Colts, was a man who loved to gamble— cards . . .

  fights . . . perhaps even football. Rumors spread that he had bet on

  his Colts and needed a four- point spread to win that bet. A field

  goal would not have provided that. The Colts, instead, played for

  the touchdown.

  When Unitas was challenged by the media afterward about

  the play he responded with: “It’s not dangerous. If you know what

  you’re doing, you don’t get intercepted.” And his long string of suc-

  cesses is evidence enough to prove that he knew what he was doing.

  Despite that Rosenbloom’s reputation as a gambling man was

  still alive when Rozelle had to consider the first major crisis of

  his tenure. On January 3, 1961, George Halas requested a formal

  investigation by Rozelle into what he termed betting by a mem-

  ber of a “midwestern franchise.” The player to whom Halas had

  secretly alluded was Paul Hornung, the so- called golden boy of

  the Green Bay Packers. The investigation would open a Pandora’s

  box of serious problems. Before it was finished, it would indict the

  entire management conduct of the Detroit Lions, uncover more

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  67

  players who bet, and result in the suspension’s of Hornung and the Lions’ Alex Karras. Only by a stroke of luck, lack of aggression by

  the hoodlum fringe, and Rozelle’s pr brilliance was Rozelle able

  to wipe out the long- range impact of a scandal that could have

  threatened the league’s very existence.

  The Rozelle probe generated fifty- two interviews with persons

  connected with eight of what were then fourteen teams. The scope

  could be this effective because of a growing relationship between

  the league, first with Bell, and then on into the Rozelle years with

  law enforcement officials.

  What had begun with Bell in 1949 and the 1950s, checking

  with local Philly bookmakers about “erratic action,” had become

  an effective intelligence- gathering operation. Pete began to have

  relationships with law officers and ultimately even staffed hir-

  ings in his security department from among former fbi agents

  and police officials.

  In 1956 Hornung, a Notre Dame senior, was invited to play in

  the East- West Shrine Game in San Francisco. That week he met

  a young California businessman, and the two hit it off so well that

  when Hornung returned home, he promised to keep in touch.

  Over the next three years of occasional meetings and phone calls

  between the two, the recurring theme was the friend’s desire for

  information about this player or that and this game or that.

  By the summer of 1959 Hornung was an established member

  of the Green Bay Packers, and the friend’s questions about “this

  game” had evolved into “these games.” The telephone calls had

  become weekly, and Hornung was now placing his own bets on

  college and pro games through his friend. The bets were usually

  one or two hundred dollars but occasionally were as high as five

  hundred dollars.

  The betting continued on into 1962, when for some unexplained

  reason it suddenly stopped. But by Hornung’s own reckoning in

  his later talks with Rozelle, he generally broke even, although he

  did recall that one year he had made about fifteen hundred dol-

  lars. None of his pro bets involved the Packers.

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  How Do You Tell Vince?

  Among other pieces of Hornung information that reached Rozelle through law enforcement sources was the anecdotal recounting

  of a harmless chance meeting with a Kansas City mafioso whose

  ties were unknown to Hornung. But it illustrates what Rozelle

  perceived to be the potential danger to the league’s reputation.

  In 1959, even before Rozelle became commissioner, Hornung’s

  name appeared in an fbi report through no fault of his own. Hor-

  nung had been in a bar when a friend of a friend approached him

  and told him there was a guy who would like to meet him. The

  next thing he knew, Hornung was having a drink with a guy the

  feds call Needle Nose, whom he had never heard of and to whom

  he was obviously introduced by his square name.

  He bought Hornung a drink and told him how much he enjoyed

  seeing him play and how much he admired the Packers. That was

  the end of the sports talk. After that they probably talked about

  broads and drinks and the weather, and it was over so fast that

  Hornung probably doesn’t even remember it today.

  The feds had no interest in Hornung, but the reason the story

  eventually reached Rozelle was that they knew enough about Nee-

  dle Nose to put a permanent tail on him. That agent reported to

  his boss the next day that Needle Nose “had met with a profes-

  sional football player at a bar, bought him a drink, and discussed

  subjects unknown.”

  It was Rozelle’s belief that nfl players had to be so far above

  reproach in their social dealings as to make Caesar’s wife look

  like a Las Vegas hooker. The possible impact, he told me, of law

  enforcement reports like what he called “the Needle Nose Papers”

  was serious if they became public knowledge.

  His public relations instincts told him that there’s always a Nee-

  dle Nose trying to get close to a superstar. He may just want to buy

  a ball player a drink because he is nuts about football, and most of

  them are. He may just want a little information to help him make

  his own bet. That happens with people in all professions. Or he

  just might want something more. “Unfortunately,” Rozelle told me,

  “you can’t stop the public from jumping to that last conclusion.”

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  69

  To compound the situation in Rozelle’s mind, Hornung, who had been Player of the Year in 1961, was, to say the least, artistically erratic the following fall. He was obviously limping from

  a knee injury at the same time that strange things were happen-

  ing to the Green Bay point spreads— not for any nefarious rea-

  son but because lack of information about his injury was a major

  factor in establishing a proper line each week. “I knew the Pack-

  ers were not appearing on the betting lines some weeks in cer-

  tain cities,” Rozelle said.

  So I had people contact certain persons [euphemism for bookmak-

  ers] to find out why. The answer made perfect sense. It was twofold.

  They couldn’t tell how much Hornung could play at top speed with

  a bum knee, and what we found to be more important was the pecu-

  liar psyche of the Green Bay team. It could beat almost anyone in

  the league 49– 0 if it chose to do so, but it rarely wanted to humil-

  iate anyone. As a result there was too much guesswork involved in

  making a line on the Packers, which was the reason they occasion-

  ally did not.

  He knew that in addition to Hor
nung and Karras, there could

  be more to this story. But at no time did he say that he did what

  he had to do to prevent a larger scandal. Instead, he took a nec-

  essary pr approach. “I believe in the men in this league,” he later

  explained. “The decision to suspend Hornung and Karras was

  mine alone, and it had to be done. The main thing is that back in

  January, I reported the situation to the owners in a very general

  way without being specific, and one club owner told me, ‘There is

  no evidence of wrongdoing beyond breaking a rule against gam-

  bling. Of that I am certain. . . . No evidence of point- shaving. But

  we might have both those problems in a couple of years if we don’t

  follow this investigation all the way down the line.’”

  Rozelle already knew where it would lead. He knew of Hor-

  nung’s bets; he knew that he had documentation to prove that

  Karras had bet six times through a business associate beginning

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  How Do You Tell Vince?

  in 1958. At least one of those bets had involved the Lions against the Packers when Karras had backed his own team.

  But more important, the Karras issue had led Rozelle into a

  larger and more dangerous situation. It uncovered the fact that

  five other Lions (allegedly at Karras’s instigation) had bet on a

  Packers- Giants game along with Karras. Rozelle also came into

  possession of Detroit police reports that had been first directed to

  Lions management, warning it of players’ association with known

  local hoodlums who often obtained sideline passes or sat on the

  Lions’ bench. The Lions’ management took no action.

  And finally it led to a Detroit gin mill nicknamed the Lindell

  ac that was owned— or so it appeared— by the Butsicaris brothers.

  Its clientele was eclectic. In addition to local athletes and news-

  paper guys, it offered a group of other folks you would never find

  on the nfl’s red- carpet list. Karras, it developed, owned a piece

  of the bar, which he would later sell.

  The Lindell ac bothered Rozelle. Its co- owners, Jimmy and John

  Butsicaris, ran what may have been America’s first sports bar. It

  began in the fleabag Lindell Hotel at Cass and Bagley, when the

  area was Detroit’s skid row. It moved up the block the same year

  that Karras was suspended. Rozelle claimed his evidence indi-

  cated that the Lindell was a hotbed of illegal gambling activity and

  forced Karras to sell his share of the bar. It was across the court-

  yard from an apartment house called the Town House, where a

  bunch of Lions and assistant coaches lived in season.

  Pete Waldmeir, a terrific columnist who moved from sports to

  city side at the Detroit News, recalls the joint in its first incarnation, which was when the Lions and others among Detroit’s famous

  were first attracted to it.

  They would walk across an alley and through the back door of the

  Lindell. They partied a lot. Bookmakers used the telephone. I remem-

  ber they had hookers in the joint, and one of them used to do cross-

  words during her “downtime”— and cheat.

  But not many Mob guys hung out there. They were down in Greek-

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  71

  town at the Grecian Gardens, which was a Mob place owned by the mother of a mafioso named Dominic Corrado, whose father, Machine

  Gun Pete, had been deported to Sicily, where he died.

  The joint was just a couple of blocks away from police headquar-

  ters, and it was notorious for paying off cops to look the other way

  on assorted gambling and liquor violations. The owners couldn’t

  get a state license anyway to serve alcohol because of their criminal

  records, so they served whiskey to the regulars in coffee cups. They

  also made book on horses, football, whatever else moved, and they

  ran a Greek card game called barbut upstairs. Karras was not exactly a stranger to the joint.

  But the thing that kind of locked the Lindell and Grecian Gar-

  dens together on Rozelle’s undesirable list was a bus trip from Gre-

  cian Gardens to Cleveland on August 18, 1962, where the Lions

  played a preseason game. “They ran the bus to away games,” Wald-

  meir told me, “and called it the Blue and Silver Bus, which were the

  Lions’ colors. Well, on this trip the passenger list included Billy

  Jack Giacalone, Dominc Corrado, Anthony Zerilli, Carl Thomas

  (a convicted murderer), Sam Giordano, Peter Vitale, the night

  manager of the Grecian Gardens and bag man for police payoffs,

  who later was a suspect in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.

  Also along were assorted members and Detroit underworld play-

  ers from the Licavoli family.”

  An hour and forty minutes later, the bus arrived at the Bunk-

  house Café in Toledo, known to law enforcement as the hub of

  gambling in Toledo and owned by local hood Ray Gentile. When

  police sought to identify the passengers, they declined to comply.

  Authorities later learned they were joined on the return trip by

  Karras, John Gordy, and Darius McCord, all of whom played for

  the Lions that day.

  “As if that wasn’t enough to jolt Rozelle,” Waldmeir said, “the

  behavior of the Lions’ coach and management raised a lot of ques-

  tions with him. On Wednesdays, Mike and Pete Larco, Mob-

  associated brothers who ran an Italian restaurant on the west side

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  How Do You Tell Vince?

  of Detroit, would just walk into the locker room after practice to deliver a huge vat of minestrone and socialize with the players.

  The Larcos and other known mobsters were issued sideline passes

  on game day. One of them once sat on the bench.”

  Rozelle had more than enough evidence on the gambling charges

  and in Karras’s case association with known felons. But in both

  cases it was clear there was no nefarious point- shaving scandal here, much to his relief. Now it was time to act. Rozelle knew there were

  risks here. For one, he would be fining the Lions’ ownership for

  its lack of attention to policing its sidelines and locker room. But

  he knew he could handle that. The players were not going to be

  able to dispute the evidence. So he knew he could handle them.

  But there was one other character in this morality play.

  He was the strongman of the National Football League. He

  could be the commissioner’s most powerful ally or his most dan-

  gerous adversary, depending on how he reacted. His name was

  Vince Lombardi. He was the creator of everything Paul Hornung

  had become on the playing field. Rozelle had no idea what Lom-

  bardi would say or do when he learned he had lost the golden boy.

  When Lombardi took over at Green Bay in 1958, he took one

  look at films of Hornung, a superstar at Notre Dame and a failure

  at Green Bay, and he shook his head. Management did not know

  what it had. Hornung was obviously a runner who could throw

  the ball, not a quarterback who could run it. So he took Hornung

  and made him into a shining star who was as versatile on the field

  as he was gifted. He put in a halfback option, as he had done for

  Frank Gifford as the Giants’ backfield coach. Hornu
ng turned it

  into a thing of beauty. He ran him in the Green Bay power sweep

  and turned him into a weapon calculated to strike terror into a

  linebacker’s heart.

  Off the field Lombardi tolerated more from Hornung than all

  of the others who dared to test his spartan rules for curfew. In

  a sense you could almost detect a touch of envy in the coach for

  Hornung’s lifestyle. He became the father vicariously watching

  the son prove that youth is not always wasted on youth after dark.

  How Do You Tell Vince?

  73

  Lombardi spoke often but in a joking way of his feelings toward Hornung, whom he tolerated at times like a wayward son who still

  managed to make him proud when it counted. Above all, the coach

  who some said threw praise around as though it were a manhole

  cover, did not hesitate to extol both Hornung’s natural talent and

  his critical role in the Packers’ offense.

  Knowing all of this, it was with great trepidation that Rozelle

  picked up his private line and called Lombardi with a request he

  knew the coach would challenge. “Will you please come to New

  York immediately? It is extremely urgent that I speak with you.”

  “I am coaching a football team,” came the response. “I don’t

  have time. What do you want?”

  “What I want,” Rozelle said, “is to see you in my office.”

  Lombardi said he would be there the next day.

  “I sat there waiting for him the next afternoon,” Rozelle told me,

  “and I kept asking myself, ‘How do I approach him? . . . What do

  I say? . . . How am I going to set him up? . . . How am I going to

  win him over?’ He was one of the most honorable men I have ever

  known, and he had a grasp of loyalty and organization. I decided

  I would sit back and let him make up his own mind.”

  When Lombardi walked through the door, Rozelle said nothing.

  He simply took a massive manila folder off his desk and handed

  it to him without comment. “I remember,” Rozelle said, “that I

  watched him read it.”

  Neither of us said a word, but I could tell he was really shaken. Then he closed it very slowly, and he looked at me and he said just four

  words: “You have no choice.”

  Here was this strong- willed man, and I knew what Paul meant to

  him . . . not only as the star of his team but as a person he had tried to guide. I didn’t know what to say, so all I did was nod my head in