Bookmakers could only watch on night UNLV won national title
It was one of those unforgettable nights. It was April 2, 1990, so while it was not the Super Bowl, it was Las Vegas’ version of it. From his point of view, Jimmy Vaccaro witnessed a standing-room-only crowd.
“I remember that night,” said Vaccaro, sports book director at The Mirage at the time. “It was jam packed and everybody was in there watching.”
Jerry Tarkanian, chewing a towel, was on one bench, with Mike Krzyzewski on the other. The UNLV-Duke showdown in the NCAA championship game in Denver was the headline show on the Strip. All eyes were fixed on the big screens.
The waitresses were busy serving drinks, but the bookmakers were spectators. The books were out of business that night.
“People were there watching the game even though they couldn’t bet on it,” Vaccaro said.
It was an era of prohibition. Nevada sports books were banned from posting lines and taking action on the Rebels, so the biggest college basketball game in UNLV history remains only a footnote in the history of sports betting.
“Twenty-five years later,” said Nick Bogdanovich, then a bookmaker at Binion’s Horseshoe, “I can’t remember what the spread was in that game.”
The Rebels, the No. 1 seed out of the West, were favored over the Blue Devils, the No. 3 seed from the East. The line was 3, 3½ or 4 — that’s one detail no one remembers for certain — and it was made by illegal bookmakers.
Bernie Fratto, now an ESPN Radio host in Las Vegas, lived in Anaheim, Calif., where he bet the game through a bookie. He parlayed UNLV with the total.
“The total was 171, and I bet it over,” said Fratto, who listened to Cawood Ledford, the longtime Kentucky play-by-play announcer, call the final five minutes on radio.
The Rebels drilled Duke 103-73 in the most lopsided title game in history. Vaccaro said “bedlam” broke loose in the book, even though no tickets were being cashed.
In the mid-1970s, when Vaccaro arrived, Las Vegas was a dusty frontier town. There were few rules and no corporations.
“A completely different world,” he said. “It was the wild, wild West. It was fun, too.”
The movie “Casino” was a realistic depiction of that era. Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal ran the Stardust, and the sports books were far less sophisticated. In the pre-ESPN years, few games were on live TV and score updates were tough to find.
“We were hand-grading tickets back then,” Bogdanovich said. “A lot of times you would post a score, and the next morning it was a totally different score.”
Bettors constantly called a man who ran a score phone out of the Burger Hut on the corner of Paradise and Flamingo roads. Bookmakers would sit in back rooms and wait for scores — sent from a ticker in New York — to come across a printer.
Sports betting, at that time, was perceived by the majority as “evil or taboo,” Bogdanovich said. In the 1980s and early ’90s, before offshore books grew in popularity, the only outlet to bet UNLV games was through underground bookies.
“I would say there were maybe four or five local bookies that I knew of that were taking action,” said Ron Boyles, a professional sports bettor in Las Vegas since the ’80s. “I don’t think the average fan was betting. The wiseguys were betting.”
During a dominant two-year run, the Rebels went 69-6. Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, Greg Anthony and Anderson Hunt led arguably the nation’s most popular team.
“When you’re the No. 1 team in the country, I guarantee they wrote a lot of illegal action on those games,” Bogdanovich said.
Art Manteris, then the director of the Las Vegas Hilton sports book, had a connection for courtside seats at the Thomas & Mack Center.
“The fun part for me is we were able to run over there and go to the games,” Manteris said. “The Rebels did provide a kind of excitement we’ve never seen before or since.
“It was kind of deflating to see the crowds and not be able to take business. In retrospect, it was probably the greatest thing to happen for Las Vegas sports book operators because we would have gotten killed. I’m sure the Rebels covered a high percentage of the time.”
Robert White, a frequent visitor to Las Vegas who ran an underground book in Maine, can attest to that. He remains a UNLV basketball fan despite the beatings he took.
“I certainly remember dreading each night the Rebels played,” White said. “I would wait for the phone to ring … ‘Got a line on UNLV?’ Well, since no line was on them and no Internet, I would have to call a 900 number and get an outlaw line.
“Sure enough, UNLV minus-36 over San Jose State. I moved the line three, four, five points. It didn’t matter, because they kept betting them and I kept getting killed. The Rebels didn’t cover them all, but it sure seemed like they did. It was painful, but the truth.”
After UNLV’s blowout of Duke, the lines were even more inflated. The Rebels opened the 1990-91 season with a 109-68 victory over Alabama-Birmingham, a 131-81 road victory over UNR and a 20-point victory over Michigan State at Pontiac, Mich.
“The year after the Rebels won it, they were between 25- and 35-point favorites in every home game,” Boyles said. “I went to every home game that year, and it was like the varsity playing the junior varsity. Turnover, dunk, turnover, dunk.”
In the 1991 Final Four semifinals in Indianapolis, the Rebels were 8½-point favorites in a stunning 79-77 loss to the Blue Devils.
In the late ’90s, there was a federal push to ban all college wagering. A study headed by Roxy Roxborough of Las Vegas Sports Consultants showed less than 0.01 percent of college games booked over a 10-year period were tainted by any kind of questionable activity.
“In those years, the NCAA sent their representative out to meet with us and we embraced the guy. We opened the door to the NCAA at that time,” Manteris said. “It was almost 49 states to one in favor of banning college wagering. We felt very betrayed, obviously, by what had transpired. It was amazing to me that we prevailed.”
Bookmakers and state gaming regulators decided the time to lift the ban on UNLV wagering was overdue. The Rebels’ games were posted at Las Vegas books in 2001, and Manteris said there have been no issues since.
As for UNLV basketball 25 years ago, Manteris said, “It was the hottest ticket in town.”
But there were no betting tickets. The action, unfortunately, was hidden underground.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports betting columnist Matt Youmans can be reached at myoumans@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2907. He co-hosts “The Las Vegas Sportsline” weekdays at 2 p.m. on ESPN Radio (1100 AM). Follow him on Twitter: @mattyoumans247.