The CCNY point-shaving scandal of 1950–51 was a

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

point-shaving gambling scandal that involved seven American schools in all, with four in the

New York metropolitan area The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass, at , and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. The vast metropolitan area ...

, two in the

Midwest The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. ...

, and one in the South. However, most of the key players in the scandal were players of the 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team.

Background

The cheating began with the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athlete, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic sports, ...

(NCAA) and

National Invitation Tournament The National Invitational Tournament (NIT) is a men's college basketball tournament operated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Played at regional sites and traditionally at Madison Square Garden (Final Four) in New York City ...

(NIT) champion

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

(CCNY). CCNY had won the

1950 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament The 1950 NCAA basketball tournament involved 8 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA college basketball. It began on March 23, 1950, and ended with the championship game on March 28 in Ne ...

and the 1950 National Invitation Tournament over Bradley University. The scandal involved CCNY and at least six other schools, including three others in the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

area:

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, ...

, Long Island University (LIU) and

Manhattan College Manhattan College is a private, Catholic, liberal arts university in the Bronx, New York City. Originally established in 1853 by the Brothers of the Christian Schools (De La Salle Christian Brothers) as an academy for day students, it was ...

, spreading to Bradley University in Peoria,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...

; the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a public land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the university is one of the state's ...

and the

University of Toledo The University of Toledo (UToledo or UT) is a public research university in Toledo, Ohio. It is the northernmost campus of the University System of Ohio. The university also operates a Health Science campus, which includes the University of ...

, involving 33 players in all, as well as

organized crime Organized crime (or organised crime) is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for profit. While organized crime is generally tho ...

. CCNY was eventually banned from playing at

Madison Square Garden Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsyl ...

although the coach, Nat Holman, was cleared of any wrongdoing.''Nat Holman: The Man, His Legacy and CCNY''
"The 1951 Basketball Scandal"
- The City College Library -

Goldstein, Joe
"Explosion: 1951 scandals threaten college hoops"
-

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

- November 19, 2003

Discovery of the scandal

Junius Kellogg, a standout Manhattan College center, was offered a $1,000

bribe Bribery is the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official, or other person, in charge of a public or legal duty. With regard to governmental operations, essentially, bribery is "Corru ...

to shave points before a game against DePaul. Although he was working for

minimum wage A minimum wage is the lowest remuneration that employers can legally pay their employees—the price floor below which employees may not sell their labor. Most countries had introduced minimum wage legislation by the end of the 20th century. B ...

(then 75¢ per hour) at a frozen custard shop near campus, Kellogg refused to take the money and reported the solicitation to his coach, Ken Norton. Norton sent him to New York City District Attorney Frank Hogan. To obtain evidence about the corruption, Kellogg wore a wire when he was again approached in a nearby bar.Junius Kellogg is dead at 71 Refused bribe in '50s scandal
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', Frank Litsky, September 18, 1998. Retrieved 2 February 2017. The scandal first became public when Hogan arrested seven men on charges of conspiring to fix games on February 18, 1951. Among those taken into custody were All-America forward

Ed Warner Edward Emory Warner (June 20, 1889 – February 5, 1954) was a Major League Baseball pitcher who played in with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He batted right-handed and threw left-handed. He was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and died in New York ...

, center

Ed Roman Edward Roman (June 2, 1930 – March 1, 1988) was an American college basketball player. He was the leading scorer of the 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team, the only team to win both the NCAA tournament and the National Invitation Tou ...

, and guard Al Roth, the three stars of CCNY's five that won both the NIT and NCAA tournaments, still the only such double championship in history (and destined to remain such, since teams are no longer allowed to enter both tournaments in the same year). The police had set up an undercover operation. The arrests were made in Penn Station when the players returned from

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, after CCNY had defeated

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptists, Baptist minister Russell Conwell an ...

, 95–71. In all, 32 players from seven colleges admitted to taking bribes between 1947 and 1950 to fix 86 games in 17 states.

Jack Molinas Jacob Louis Molinas (October 31, 1931 – August 3, 1975) was an American professional basketball player and a key figure in one of the most wide-reaching point shaving scandals in college basketball. Early life Molinas grew up in Brook ...

was not caught in 1951, but after he was suspended for

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of Value (economics), value ("the stakes") on a Event (probability theory), random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy (ga ...

by the

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball sports league, league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues i ...

(NBA) he was linked back to the 1951 scandal by bets placed on his then-college team,

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

.Goldstein, Joe
"Explosion II: The Molinas period"
-

- November 19, 2003

Aftermath

The scandal had long-lasting effects for some of the individuals involved, as well as

itself. Long after the scandal was over, coaches would warn their players what could happen to their lives if they chose to make some "fast money". While Kentucky was forced to cancel one season of play (1952–53), it was the only program that was not permanently hobbled by the scandal. To date, Bradley is the only other affected school to have appeared in a final major media poll. However, none of the programs would suffer more than CCNY and LIU. Following the discovery of several other irregularities, CCNY deemphasized its athletic program and dropped down to what is now Division III. LIU shut down its entire athletic program from 1951 to 1957, and did not return to Division I until the 1980s.

Documentaries

In 1998, George Roy and Steven Hilliard Stern, Black Canyon Productions, and HBO Sports made a documentary film about the CCNY Point Shaving Scandal, ''City Dump: The Story of the 1951 CCNY Basketball Scandal'', that appeared on HBO.''City Dump: The Story of the 1951 CCNY Basketball Scandal''
-

IMDb IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, p ...

The story is also detailed in '' The First Basket'', a 2008 documentary covering the history of Jewish players in basketball.

Pop culture references

The scandal is referenced in the HBO series ''

The Sopranos ''The Sopranos'' is an American Crime film#Crime drama, crime drama television series created by David Chase. The story revolves around Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey-based American Mafia, Italian-American mobster, portraying h ...

'' during the episode "

Rat Pack The Rat Pack was an informal group of entertainers, the second iteration of which ultimately made films and appeared together in Las Vegas casino venues. They originated in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a group of A-list show business frie ...

", which was the second episode of the fifth season, first broadcast on March 14, 2004. After learning of the death of New York mob boss Carmine Lupertazzi, Corrado "Junior" Soprano confirms that Lupertazzi invented point shaving for "CCNY versus Kentucky, 1951. Nobody beat the spread. I bought a black Fleetwood." Jay Neugeboren's 1966 novel ''Big Man'' is based on what happens to an All-American African American basketball star five years after he was caught in this scandal. A 1951 movie, ''

The Basketball Fix ''The Basketball Fix'' is a 1951 noir sports drama film directed by Felix E. Feist and starring John Ireland, Marshall Thompson and Vanessa Brown. The film is also known by the alternative title ''The Big Decision'' in the United Kingdom. It is ...

'', was based on the scandal.

References

External links

"Whereabouts Of The 1950 City College Of New York Team, NIT and NCAA Champs (Part I)"

Lost Lettermen Lost Lettermen was a sports weblog and database, which was launched by Jim Weber in March 2009. It was dedicated to former college football and basketball players. It regularly interviewed former college stars such as Tee Martin, Charlie Ward, Ki-Ja ...

. March 11, 2010. * Berkow, Ira (March 29, 1996)
1998 "Final Four: A Look Back; Scandal, the Unwanted Scar of Triumph"
''New York Times''. {{NYU Violets men's basketball navbox 1950–51 NCAA men's basketball season 1950 in New York City 1951 in New York City Academic scandals Bradley Braves men's basketball College basketball controversies in the United States Match fixing CCNY Beavers men's basketball History of college basketball in the United States Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds men's basketball Manhattan Jaspers basketball NCAA sanctions NYU Violets men's basketball Sports betting scandals Toledo Rockets men's basketball 1950s crimes in New York City