Interference by Dan E. Moldea Page A

may have been successfully fixed. It was known that underworld figures had been wining and dining professional and college athletes at cocktail parties and in local nightclubs.
    Filchock—who denied being approached and thus was permitted to play nearly the entire game—threw two touchdown passes and six interceptions in the Giants’ losing effort, in which the bookmakers’ bets were covered. Hapes told me, “I still can’t figure out why they didn’t let me play. They let Frank play because they needed a quarterback. I was their sucker, and I’m still damn bitter about it.” Later, Filchock admitted that he had been made the bribe offer.
    Each player was to receive $2,500 to throw the game, in addition to $2,000 in bets that would have been placed on their behalf. They were also offered off-season jobs. The situation became the biggest public sports scandal since the fixing of the 1919 World Series.
    On the basis of Paris’s statements to the district attorney, East Coast gamblers David Krakauer, Harvey Stemmer, and Jerome Zarowitz were also indicted and later convicted. At their sentencing, the trial judge scolded them, saying that they had “attempted to destroy the faith and confidence of the public in American sport.”
    Stemmer had been previously convicted for offering bribes to members of the Brooklyn College basketball team.
    Within twenty-four hours of the sentencing of the conspirators, both Hapes and Filchock were suspended indefinitely by the NFL commissioner. Bell said that the two players were “guilty of actions detrimental to the welfare of the National League and of professional football.” Both Filchock and Hapes went to play in the Canadian Football League.
    Hapes says, “I’m not putting the blame on anybody. It was a screwup. Bell gave us a reprieve, but we were already going to Canada. He told us that we could go to any club we wanted. I went on to Canada anyway to play for five years.”
    In the wake of the bribery scandal, Bell received a five-year contract as commissioner from the NFL team owners, which increased his salary to $30,000 a year; and in 1954 it was extended twelve more years. Bell, who realized that gamblers had taken a major interest in the NFL, said, “Let them bet. That’s their privilege. My job is to keep it from having an influence on our game.”
    On January 23, 1947, at the NFL owners’ meeting in Chicago, Bell was given dictatorial powers designed to crush all future attempts to corrupt professional football. Specifically, Bell ordered that anyone in the league who receives “an offer directly or indirectly, by insinuation or by implication, to control or fix or accepts or bets anything of value on a professional football game in any manner whatsoever” must report to his club officials or the commissioner. Those who failed to comply with Bell’s directive could be barred from the game for life.
    He also ordered all NFL owners and personnel to stay out of gambling casinos in Las Vegas and elsewhere. Bell said that NFLpersonnel “must be not only absolutely honest; they must be above suspicion.” To ensure this, Bell later hired former law-enforcement officials as consultants in several NFL cities to monitor the behavior of the league’s players.
    But gambling continued and had already become more sophisticated.
    According to sportswriter William Barry Furlong, the point spread was invented during the early 1940s by University of Chicago-trained mathematical wizard Charles K. McNeil, who was also an obsessive sports fan. 1 This new method of handicapping attempted to attract an equal amount of betting on teams playing uncompetitive games that would otherwise draw little public interest and low-betting volume. Under this system of pricemaking, gamblers could bet on the favorite team and give points to the underdog—or take the underdog and the designated points.
    Prior to