Thursday, January 31, 2008
The Official Line vs. The Betting Line Each year at Super Bowl time, N.F.L. executives go to great lengths to distance the league from the estimated $10 billion in gambling that it generates, not only in Las Vegas, but also in offshore betting shops, office and bar pools and among illegal bookies. They were not only friends and founding fathers of the N.F.L., but Art Rooney and Tim Mara were also gamblers, proud ones. In 1936, Rooney, whose family still owns the Pittsburgh Steelers, famously turned two prescient days at the racetrack into $300,000. In 1925, Mara, a bookmaker in the days when that profession was not only legal but honourable, paid $500 for the New York Giants