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Las Vegas Risks Squeaky Clean League

The National Football League doesn't want to associate with Las Vegas. We're bad for their image.

In a move that reverberated nationally, the league rejected a request by the Las Vegas convention officials to place a commercial for the city during the upcoming Super Bowl broadcast. The reasoning: The NFL doesn't want to be tainted by the gambling mecca.

Forget that the spot didn't mention gambling. Never mind that Mayor Oscar Goodman is threatening a lawsuit and has had a field day attacking the league's horse-choking hypocrisy.

Try to be more understanding of the NFL. It's sensitive about its image, and with good reason.

After all, its historical ties to illegal bookmakers, racketeers and nefarious characters are just as shadowy as those who built Las Vegas.

The best book on the NFL's connection to the mob and the American gambling scene was Dan Moldea's groundbreaking "Interference." Moldea tore apart the league's papier-mache image and illustrated that, without gamblers, it would have remained on the sandlots.

Take Tim Mara, for instance. He was a major New York bookmaker who in 1925 purchased the New York Giants. Mara was connected to a bookmaking organization later known as the Genovese crime family.

And there's Charles Bidwell. He was a bootlegger and racetrack owner who bought the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals) in 1933. Among Bidwell's business associates was Scarface Al Capone, who didn't get that scar on the gridiron.

Art Rooney, who was tight with major bookmakers, in 1940 purchased the Pittsburgh Pirates (now the Steelers). Rooney's high-rolling gambling and association with underworld types was ignored by the league he helped create.

There's Bert Bell, the horse junkie and Capone pal who purchased the Frankford Yellow Jackets and later the Philadelphia Eagles. Of course, a more notorious gambling Eagles owner was Leonard Tose, whose compulsion ruined his life and, once again, bent the league's cardboard facade.

Dick Richards, who bought the Portsmouth Spartans (now the Detroit Lions) didn't hide his bets on his own team with underworld bookmakers. Give him credit for candor, a commodity sorely lacking these days.

One of my favorite stories is the tale of Mickey McBride, who bought the Cleveland Browns at a time he was partners with Chicago racket boss James Reagan in the Continental Racing Wire -- the Capone mob's link to nationwide horse betting.

Although many know that Estes Kefauver's early-1950s U.S. Senate rackets committee focused on organized crime's connection to the American gambling scene, few may remember that Bidwell and McBride were among the notorious characters mentioned with the likes of Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky.

For big-league hypocrisy, you can't beat the NFL's refusal to lift even a scolding finger to mobbed-up gambler Carroll Rosenbloom, who owned the Baltimore Colts and later the Los Angeles Rams. Rosenbloom was pals with Lansky bagman Lou Chesler and Genovese bookmaker Gil Beckley. Evidence suggests Rosenbloom participated in tainted games and associated with Mafia bookmakers all his life.

More recently, San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo was tied to a felonious gambling licensing deal linked to then-Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards. Although uncharged, DeBartolo is no longer officially associated with the team. Not even the NFL could ignore such a public link to scandal.

It's not merely that professional football has historical ties to illegal bookmakers. Fact is, the league was created in part by bookmakers and gamblers to promote betting.

Sports betting wasn't an unfortunate coincidence.

It was an intended byproduct.

Given its refusal to acknowledge its own shadowy history, the NFL would have a hard time getting a key employee casino license in modern-day Las Vegas.

The league has thrived for decades in a state of denial thanks largely to a willing press, but its gambling stance remains as phony as the smiles at a Boardwalk beauty pageant.

The real question is: Why would Las Vegas want to associate with such a historically unsavory crowd?

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