When Did Physician Involved in Delivering Babies? By Leifer Gloria

When the Saints lost to the Vikings in the NFL wild-card round in January 2020, it marked a disappointing end to a flavor that started with swollen hopes. It signified another lost opportunity for Drew Brees to win a second Super Basin. It also meant that Hall of Famer Paul Hornung had lost a bet he'd placed at the kickoff of the flavor.

Man Makes Wager On the NFL is not exactly a news flash, given that NFL games come swaddled with ads for betting apps and websites and operators, and millions of Americans take action on football game each week. Only when, in 2019, Hornung cut the ribbon on a new sportsbook in Indiana and, for a ceremonial first bet, picked the Saints to win the Lombardi Trophy, it marked a significant moving of the cultural chains.

Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated

In April 1963 the NFL suspended Hornung, the Packers halfback, for the exact same act: wagering on football. And he wasn't the only star actor exiled for an indefinite catamenia with the possibility of reinstatement after a yr. The league's best defensive player, Lions tackle Alex Karras, suffered the same fate. This would be the equivalent of, say, Aaron Rodgers and J.J. Watt both getting pounded with sixteen-game  suspensions for a "sin" . . . that would later go every bit much a part of the NFL tableau equally tailgating and the Super Bowl halftime show.

For Hornung, it was always Saturday night and never Sun forenoon. Almost comically versatile, he played 4 positions at Flaget High in Louisville: quarterback, running back, receiver and kicker. Carry Bryant recruited Hornung to Kentucky and might have stayed at the school had he landed him. Only to win favor with his Cosmic mother Hornung chose Notre Dame, where, on business relationship of his athletic pedigree and blond mane, he earned the nickname Golden Boy. Hornung won the Heisman Trophy in 1956; the following twelvemonth Green Bay drafted him with the No. 1 selection.

When the team hired Vince Lombardi equally its new autobus in 1959, Hornung'due south pro career blossomed. He led the NFL in scoring in each of the next three seasons and was named MVP in '61. In the NFL title game that yr, Hornung scored nineteen points—a rushing touchdown, four actress points and three field goals—in a 37–0 win over the Giants, a record that stood for 56 years.

"You know what made him smashing inside the 5-yard line?" Lombardi once asked rhetorically. "He loved the glory. He loved the glory like no player I've e'er coached."

Hornung'due south abilities playing football game were rivaled past what might charitably be called his aptitude for cavorting. When he wasn't drinking or seeking female person companionship, he was gambling. Built-in in Louisville in 1935, Hornung was 14 when he hitched a ride to Churchill Downs for his starting time visit. He was seduced. Shortly, he was working at the joint, first every bit a teenage conductor, then on construction. A non-insignificant portion of his wages went toward wagering. "All I did, really," Hornung recalled in his 2004 autobiography, Golden Male child, "was seek out fun wherever I could discover information technology. Everything was all tied in together—the drinking, the womanizing, the partying, the traveling, the gambling. And, of class, football game made information technology all possible."

Weeks later on Hornung led Light-green Bay to the 1962 title, commissioner Pete Rozelle issued the suspension. For years the league had worried that high rollers and criminal types might undermine the integrity of the sport, and it prohibited employees from betting on any NFL game or event. That flavor Rozelle had launched an investigation into players' ties to bettors. As he put it to Sports Illustrated at the time of the ban: "This sport has grown so quickly and gained so much of the approval of the American public that the only way it can be hurt is through gambling."

In the last game he would play before his exile, Hornung helped the Packers crush the Giants 16–7 and win their second straight title.

Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated

Hornung admitted to betting on horses, betting on college and NFL games, even betting on the Packers (though just to win). Starting in 1959, he placed wagers with a gambler in San Francisco that went equally loftier as $500—at the time, more than than the median monthly household income. When Rozelle and his gumshoes confronted him, Hornung denied zero. Rozelle then summoned Lombardi to New York City to lay out both the NFL's position and its trove of evidence.

"What are y'all going to do?" Lombardi asked.

Rozelle explained that a ban of at least one full season was in order.

"Yous have no selection, practise you?" Lombardi asked.

"I don't think and then, Vinny," Rozelle replied. "Let's go get a drink."

Hornung was not the only actor suspended for gambling and "associating with undesirables" that season. Alex Karras was amongst the league's fiercest linemen. A scowling, well-nigh cartoonish fauna, he referred to opposing players as "milk drinkers." Mike Ditka, then the Bears' tight stop, remarked that there were no players tougher than Karras. "He was thought of, at the time, as the all-time defensive lineman in football," Ditka said. "I know in that location was Big Daddy Lipscomb. There were a lot of guys. But he was the best."

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Karras, the son of a Greek-built-in medico and a Canadian-built-in nurse, grew up in Gary, Ind., playing football on parking lots. Though he was expected to go to Indiana, where his older brother played, he committed to Iowa.

Smart, stubborn and equally happy matching wits equally he was flattening quarterbacks, Karras didn't have kindly to authority. When he was displeased with his playing time as a sophomore, he threw a shoe at Hawkeyes bus Woods Evashevski, then quit the team. He was reinstated just, every bit a result of his outburst, did not earn a varsity letter for that season. (Karras and Evashevski never spoke off the field.)

Karras won the Outland Trophy every bit a senior and was the 10th choice in the 1958 draft. Before long later on joining the Lions, he bought an buying stake in Lindell AC, a downtown Detroit bar that establish favor with sports fans and gamblers.

Subsequently his suspension, Karras (71) once joked to a ref who'd asked him to phone call the pregame money flip: "I'm pitiful, sir, simply I'thou not permitted to gamble."

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When Lions brass and NFL executives tried to persuade Karras to sell his piece of the bar, he explained to them the concept of free enterprise. As The New York Times once put it, Karras "deplored the way players were treated like chattel on the one hand, deployed as seen fit, and children on the other, held to restrictive behavioral standards, scolded and disciplined."

The half dozen' 2", 248-pound Karras played with such furious intensity that he sometimes turned on his teammates. In a 1962 game against Dark-green Bay, the Lions—as they ofttimes did, even back so—lost when they should take won. Leading 7–6, they needed only to run out the clock. But Milt Plum threw an interception, enabling Hornung to boot a field goal to steal the victory. In the locker room Karras allegedly chucked his helmet at Plum, narrowly missing his caput. Asked years later to draw his land of mind then, he responded, "Absolutely violent."

He was similarly enraged a few months later when Rozelle told him of his pause. Karras had placed at to the lowest degree a one-half dozen bets on the NFL, including one on Detroit for $100, in straight contravention of league policy. "I as well took into account that the violations of Hornung and Karras were continuing, not casual," Rozelle said. "They were continuing, flagrant and increasing. Both players had been informed over and over of the league rule on gambling. The rule is posted in every clubhouse in the league likewise. . . . I could merely exact from them the most astringent penalty brusque of adjournment for life."

Two of the league'southward biggest names, suspended in the primes of their careers for an entire season? Today, that would, as they say, interruption the internet. Hornung unreservedly accustomed his ban. He apologized publicly and frequently, and felt no animus toward Rozelle. At an drome once, a fellow traveler spotted Hornung and remarked, "What an due south.o.b. that Rozelle is. How could he ban a guy for betting on his own team? Worst matter he's ever done."

"No, sir, you lot're incorrect about that," Hornung replied. "Rozelle was right, and I was in the wrong. When I broke the dominion, he did what he had to do."

To Karras, the severity of the punishment was wildly out of proportion to the offense. He capitalized on his exile past taking role in a pro wrestling match confronting Dick the Bruiser, noting that the $17,000 he fabricated was more than his NFL bacon at the time. He did not hide his disdain for Rozelle, whom he once called "a buzzard."

Their reinstatement was predicated on a number of weather condition. Neither could visit Las Vegas. Hornung wasn't immune to attend the Kentucky Derby, much less bet on horses, as long every bit he was in the NFL. Karras's reinstatement came with like restrictions, including the sale of his stake in the bar. During the 1964 flavour, an official summoned Karras to midfield for a pregame money toss. "I'm sorry, sir," Karras said dryly, "only I'm non permitted to gamble."

Despite missing a year in his prime, Karras was back to being named an All-Pro, and, later, a member of the NFL'due south All-Decade squad for the 1960s. He played his entire 12-year career with the Lions, though they reached the playoffs just once. Likewise, Hornung played for only the Packers; in two of his final three seasons they won the NFL championship.

Hornung and Karras lived the post-NFL lives y'all might have predicted. Hornung returned to Louisville, settled down with his wife, Angela, and made good money in real estate development. He also became a fixture at the Derby. For years he was a prominent broadcaster, trading on his name and winning personality. "It's not a charity golf game tournament," Bob Knight said in 1990, "until Hornung shows up."

In 1968, Karras played himself in Newspaper Lion, the movie adaptation of George Plimpton's account of his foray into the NFL. (Karras and Plimpton stayed lifelong friends.) He got the acting problems, taking guest parts on shows like G*A*Due south*H*, The Odd Couple and Love, American Style, before taking starring roles himself. To some, Karras is best recalled for portraying George Papadapolis in Webster, starring alongside Susan Clark—his real-life wife—and Emmanuel Lewis. To others, he will be forever remembered as the dim-witted Mongo in Blazing Saddles, punching a horse and uttering the immortal line: "Mongo only pawn in game of life." From 1974 to '76, he joined Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford in the Monday Night Football booth.

Meanwhile, the NFL continued—publicly at least—to condemn gambling and projection the impression of being shocked (shocked!) that fans were wagering on games, even though handicapper Jimmy the Greek had been actualization on CBS's The NFL Today for 12 years. (When the Greek was permit go in 1988, the league did pressure level the network not to supplant him with another handicapper.) In 2003, the NFL rejected an offer from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to purchase a 30-second commercial slot during the Super Bowl. Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote a letter to the governor of Delaware in '09 condemning the state'southward effort to renew its NFL betting lottery. "By legalizing sports betting," Goodell wrote, "it will be in Delaware's involvement to create ever larger numbers of new gamblers as the state attempts to maximize whatever revenue found in this promotion. The negative social impact of additional gambling cannot be minimized in a customs."

Hornung and Karras weren't friends, but a symmetry ran between them. They were the two players suspended in 1963. They both became broadcasters and kept up their glory condition in retirement. Tragically, they each had dementia and traced the source to football. Karras joined a 2012 lawsuit brought by former players, asserting that the NFL failed to protect him against "the physical chirapsia he took." (He died months later the arrange was filed.) Hornung sued Riddell, the helmet maker, asserting that the visitor knew of the dangers of encephalon trauma more than than l years ago and failed to warn him and other players that their equipment would do nothing to forbid concussions. (He died last November.)

Maybe above all, both Hornung and Karras had to wait to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Hornung—recall: the 1961 MVP and four-time champion—was not voted in until '86, his 15th time on the election. Karras, the less remorseful of the two, had to wait 45 years for his ballot in 2020. On Sabbatum, in Canton, he'll be formally inducted equally role of a Centennial Form that had its ceremony rescheduled last summer due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2019, NFL stars Jimmy Garoppolo and Tom Brady went to the Derby, just it was off-limits to Hornung.

Michael Loccisano/Getty Images/Churchill Downs

Six decades after their suspensions, the NFL has inverse its field position on gambling. Later years of denying that it was part of the cadre NFL experience, the league now freely embraces sports betting as a revenue source. In one case a destination so forbidden it couldn't even buy ad fourth dimension during the Super Bowl, Las Vegas is not but the home of the Raiders but also a possible futurity host of the Super Bowl. Gambling revenue is also referenced in collective bargaining agreements, divide between teams and players. If sports gambling was going to exist legalized in twenty states (and counting), the NFL was going to be damn certain it wouldn't miss out on a windfall that will approach $2.iii billion.

The aforementioned league that suspended Karras for gambling? The announcement of his posthumous ballot to Canton was broken on the NFL Network—right over the Fantasy Showdown sponsored by DraftKings. Most accounts that followed contained some variation of the word finally.

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Source: https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/08/06/alex-karras-paul-hornung-nfl-gambling-daily-cover

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