I know what you’re thinking. You’ve seen Goodfellas a thousand times and not once is there an instance of sports betting amid the entire 146-minute duration.
While sports betting is not a present plot element in the 1990 mafia drama directed by Martin Scorcese, the main character of Henry Hill, portrayed by actor Ray Liotta, was heavily involved in the “industry.”
The film Goodfellas was based on the 1985 true-crime best-seller Wiseguy penned by Nicolas Pileggi, who was not only the FBI agent that arrested the real-life Henry Hill, but also played himself in the film
In order to make the movie fit a reasonable runningtime, several plot elements from the book had to be excised from the final script. Arguably, the largest portions removed were extended bits about Henry’s time in prison, and his experience in the realm of betting on college basketball.
See, Henry and his associates weren’t apt to bet on March Madness unless the odds were tipped in their favor. In order to stack the NCAAB lines in a fashion that suited them best, one of Henry’s people reached out to a player on the Boston College basketball team to gauge their interest in saving a few points every now and then.
Once the player accepted, he was able to convince a teammate to join in to help. The gist of the scheme was that, when requested, players from the Boston College team would alter their play to ensure that they did not cover the spread.
This was typically done on games where the point spread for Boston College to win was massive, and keeping the margin reasonably close would go undetected.
Each player would receive a cash total of $2,500 if they were able to shave the point total enough to stay under the spread, and in late 1978, the two BC teammates began to employ their strategy.
The point-shaving lasted for several games during that season, but when Hill was arrested for cocaine trafficking and his connections to the Luftunsa Airport heist, the Boston College venture was uncovered amid the investigations.
The following trial resulted in several convictions, with a ten-year bid given to BC player Jim Kuhn that was later reduced to just over two years.
Hill avoided any jail time due to the Boston College point-shaving scandal because he was already cooperating with the feds to serve as a witness against his former cohorts that had recently become enemies.
After the trial, Hill retreated to private life under a witness protection program, but that didn’t last for long as he was back in the public eye and making appearances again by the late 1990s.
Although excised from the screenplay of Goodfellas, Henry Hill’s involvement in the fixing of NCAA Basketball games was finally committed to the screen when ESPN dedicated the topic to one of their 30 For 30 documentaries titled Playing For The Mob in 2014.
The documentary and the film serve to paint the full picture of the Henry Hill saga and completes the story of one of the greatest sports betting movies of all time.
ESPN’s Playing For The Mob, Boston Globe
