The Betting Bowl

Like millions of armchair sportsmen, Robert L. Martin spent the final Sunday of 1973 in front of his TV set. Ensconced in the den of his Las Vegas home, he watched the Minnesota Vikings systematically destroy the Dallas Cowboys. Then he switched channels to see the Miami Dolphins take apart the Oakland Raiders. Unlike his fellow fans, though, Martin was actually hard at work all the time he was staring at the tube. Soon after the final gun sounded, he received a call from the Churchill Downs bookie parlor across town and announced his initial betting line for the Super Bowl: "Miami by six." Within seconds Martin's pick, subject to later change, was being posted at Churchill Downs. Within minutes the point spread was being flashed to bookies across the country as the most authoritative gambling line for this Sunday's championship game.

The quick, confident calculations of Las Vegas' top football odds maker will be the make-or-break guidepost for millions of Americans who are likely to wind up wagering as much as $200 million. 'The action for the Super Bowl is tremendous," says a federal official who monitors nationwide gambling patterns. "The bettors go for broke. Those who lost during the regular season try to recoup. The winners dream of doubling their money." For all its size, Super Bowl betting is just the tip of an illegal pro football betting business, run by bookies and betting syndicates, that handles as much as $15 billion a year. Law enforcement authorities believe the Mafia has sizeable interests in the betting business. A Louis Harris poll conducted last year indicated that 31 million Americans bet regularly on pro football games.

Bookies' Vigorish. For every one of them, the crucial number is the point spread. Bets on most other sports are based on traditional odds. Football books always quote a point spread designed to be large enough to attract some bettors to the underdog, yet tight enough to be a hedge for the bookies if the favorite has had a bad day. For the Super Bowl, Dolphin fans who put down their bets early will collect only if their team wins by six points or more. A Viking bet will pay off if Minnesota manages to lose by fewer than six points--or, of course, if Minnesota wins. Where betting is illegal, losers forfeit their bet plus the 10% commission, or "vigorish," for the bookie. In Las Vegas the vigorish is accompanied by a 10% excise tax that must be paid with every bet, win or lose.

Determination of the point spread is a fine, intuitive art practiced by an elite group of Las Vegas odds makers. Though Martin, 54, has officially retired from the Churchill Downs Sports Book, he remains the chief prophet of the establishment known as "the Church." More-publicized experts, such as Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder, have been known to check their picks against Martin's. "There's nothing mysterious about setting the line," Martin insists. During the regular season, when spreads are selected for the 13 games each weekend, Martin watches games on TV, consults the U.P.I, sports wire at Churchill Downs for news of injuries, and reads newspapers flown in from N.F.L. home-team cities.

For inside information on teams he uses a network of underground informants called "readers," who have contacts with coaches, players, owners, even locker-room attendants. Their job is to collect material about players' physical conditions, troubles with girl friends or wives, and other dicey dope. These "friends," as Martin calls them, funnel their findings to Las Vegas several times a week. This is an expensive intelligence operation.

Red-Blooded Impatience. Once he has a firm idea of how teams compare, Martin takes the leap. "You've got to have a lot of nerve," he says. "Sometimes I don't really know why I picked a certain team until the next morning." Before the line is posted during the regular season, Martin runs it by some experienced Las Vegas bettors to see how they react. At this stage it is known as the outlaw line--one that will not necessarily be available to ordinary bettors. If the "wise guys" bet as Martin expects, the line goes up.

The line is posted at noon each Tuesday during the season. Up to and including the posting, everything is legal, because gambling is legitimate in Las Vegas. When the line is official, though, spotters congregated at Churchill Downs scramble to flash the figures to their bookie bosses across the U.S., usually through a network of pay phones. At that point, because it is a federal offense to transmit gambling information across state lines, professional football betting becomes the nation's most prominent interstate illegality.

Martin's deliberate routine is speeded up for the Super Bowl because, as he says, "every red-blooded American has an opinion on that game--and wants to put down his bet--the minute the conference championships end." More than a hundred people were waiting at the Church after the Miami-Oakland game for Martin and his colleague, Frank Hall, to set the spread.

"Halfway through the Oakland game," Martin explains, "I began to think about the Super Bowl." He immediately gave Miami a three-point edge because of its overall strength: "They have Larry Csonka powering up the middle. Mercury Morris is unstoppable around the ends, plus you've got Bob Griese at quarterback and Paul Warfield as wide receiver. And you've got that great offensive line. It's a smooth machine." On defense, Martin thinks "Miami is the toughest in the league." Indeed, they have allowed opponents only 11 points per game this season. Figures Martin: "I just don't think Minnesota, even with Fran Tarkenton mixing up plays and scrambling, can consistently move the ball against Miami."

Martin gave Miami a fourth point because "the Dolphins' greatest offensive strength, their running game, is aimed at Minnesota's defensive weakness: the running defense." Though other experts might argue that Minnesota's defense has no weakness, Martin concludes: "Miami's game is to control the ball on the ground, and they can do that against the Vikings."

Inflated Price. The fifth and sixth points in Miami's favor were added to attract bettors to Minnesota. "Miami's become so popular with the public," says Martin, "that you have to inflate the price so some people will bet against them." As the six-point line was posted, Martin guessed that it would edge higher as the game approached. "If we get heavy public support for Miami," he predicted, "the spread may move to 6% or 7. That will give Viking bettors an extra point, and I think then the professional bettors will put up their Minnesota money." Indeed, by the end of last week Miami was favored by 6 1/2 in Las Vegas.

Putting his prognosis on the line is nothing new for Bobby Martin. He has been betting and setting odds since the days he wagered on high school football games in Brooklyn, where he grew up. Martin has been gambling for a living since he left the Army in 1945. After operating in New York and Washington, he moved to Las Vegas in 1962 following a run-in with the law.

In a lifetime of betting, Martin has made his share of mistakes. "In the 1970 World Series," he concedes, "I picked Cincinnati as six to five favorites over Baltimore. We took a bath on that." In a 1967 football fumble he would like to forget, Martin chose the Chicago Bears, with Gale Sayers, as heavy favorites over the Cleveland Browns. Unfortunately, Sayers, hobbled by an unpublicized injury, did not play, and the Bears lost. Martin fears no such fate for his current Super Bowl line. "I can't see any flaws," he says. "No matter which team wins, we've got the spread to make a profit." Which means that bettors will take their customary collective shearing.

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