Big Shot: Confessions of a Campus Bookie
Moyher's good boy Benny Silman from Brooklyn becomes an economics student at Arizona State University for the sun and sexy girls- and the proximity of gambling paradise Las Vegas. Benny aces his studies, being a mathematical genius, but the one who earns money from him at sports is bookie Troy, who however recruits him as subcontractor, making a few thousand for himself. The next year Benny starts for himself, with a few dozen student vassals, and makes a hundredfold. A friend's big brother, Chicago stock-broker Joe Jr., doesn't hold Benny to a $6,000 loss but plants the idea of cheating by playing the 'spread' trough an accomplice jock, notably NBA-class college basketball player Stevin 'Hedake' Smith. Local drug lord Big Red imposes himself as second investor, but Benny manages to keep that secret for Joe's 'family'. Alas Benny also makes a single female conquest, Carolina horse rancher's daughter Callie, whose moralistic nagging not to 'waste his talent' makes working job, studies and dating simultaneously just too hard, so one day he dozes off too long to be where he should be to make it all work, in a business which rarely forgives losses. Then the FBI starts investigating suspicious statistics...
