Scorecard

HOOKED ON BETS?

Before last season, Texas Football coach David McWilliams called his long snapper, senior Tal Elliott, "one of the most important people on our team." Those words now resound with irony. According to some current and former Longhorn athletes, Elliott, who quit the team in November for undisclosed personal reasons, was the center of widespread gambling at Texas. The athletes say that during the past three or four years, Elliott took wagers from them on pro and college football games and other sports. One football player says that Elliott also set up a minicasino in the athletic dorm.

Elliott's alleged gambling activities surfaced last October, when his name appeared on betting slips seized by Austin police in a bookmaking raid. Officer Bubba Cates says the slips indicated that Elliott "was betting $900 a month. I didn't think he had $900 a month to bet, so I told the athletic-department people that he was probably betting for other players."

Police gave the Texas athletic department a list of all 218 names that had shown up on the betting slips so the department could see if other athletes were involved. According to Jerry Slatton, a lieutenant with the Austin vice squad, the force is interested in prosecuting only bookies, not bettors. "The maximum we can get the bettors for is a Class C misdemeanor, and that's all of a $200 fine," he says.

School officials say they found no other Longhorn athletes on the list, but did confront Elliott. "We asked him several times whether other UT athletes had bet, and he said no," says athletic director DeLoss Dodds. Dodds says that Texas told the NCAA about the situation and that after Elliott quit the team, "We closed the case."

But the case didn't go away. In early February the Austin American-Statesman quoted unnamed players as saying that Elliott had placed wagers for at least 20 Longhorn athletes. In interviews with SI last week, athletes said that 20 to 40 football players placed bets with Elliott. One football player, who insisted on anonymity "because these Texas alumni can be awful rough," said he won $8,000 betting on college football games with Elliott in 1988. Says a nonathlete who claimed to have bet with Elliott, "I'm down $500 to Tal right now."

One athlete told SI that Elliott didn't allow athletes to bet on games involving their own teams; others say that Elliott didn't take bets on any sports event involving a Longhorn team. But Elliot allegedly made it easy to gamble on almost anything else. One athlete says that he had been on campus only a few weeks when Elliott came into his room and "asked if I wanted to bet. I said sure." Another told SI's John Steinbreder that he had bet with Elliott and that "you could call Tal anytime, day or night. He'd go home on weekends and make sure you had his number at home so you could reach him."

A football player says that Elliott ran his minicasino in a study lounge in the athletic dorm and that the nightly games included blackjack and craps. "Tal was honest," says the player. "He ran a legit game."

How could all of this gambling go unnoticed? "If you're a UT football player, you get away with a lot of garbage," says former Texas wide receiver Jorrick Battle. Battle and others say that supervision is lacking in the athletic dorm and that the Longhorn football team is on an especially loose rein. "This is a team that badly needs discipline," says Battle.

The Texas athletic department has begun an investigation of the gambling allegations, and last Saturday university president William Cunningham appointed Houston lawyer and former Longhorn football player Knox Nunnally to oversee the probe. Potentially most damaging are rumors that at least one assistant football coach knew of Elliott's activities. If that's true, the NCAA could also begin investigating. The NCAA takes an interest in gambling if an athlete who has eligibility remaining is soliciting bets; if an athlete is betting on sports events involving his school; or if coaches or university officials know of the gambling or are participating in it.