Basketball point-shaving scandal
The Basketball point-shaving scandal of the early 1950s involved college athletes engaging in game-fixing to manipulate point spreads for gambling purposes. As college basketball gained popularity, particularly in venues like Madison Square Garden, the surge in fan interest also attracted illegal betting activities. Players were approached by gamblers who offered bribes to influence the outcomes of games without necessarily losing—just ensuring the results fell within specific point spreads. The scandal came to light when Junius Kellogg, a player at Manhattan College, reported a bribery attempt, prompting investigations that revealed numerous players from various colleges, including City College of New York and Long Island University, had participated in point-shaving schemes. Several players received significant sums for their involvement, leading to multiple arrests and subsequent jail sentences for both players and the gamblers involved. The fallout from the scandal had far-reaching consequences, severely impacting the careers of those involved and highlighting vulnerabilities in college athletics to exploitation. Despite the crackdown, the incident underscored ongoing issues with gambling in college sports, which would resurface again in the following decade.
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Basketball point-shaving scandal
The Event Criminal activity involving point fixing by college basketball players
Date 1951
The point-shaving scandal of 1951 exposed an illegal component to the game of college basketball and resulted in the arrest and jail sentencing of several players.
By the 1950’s, college basketball was emerging as a major sport attraction. College basketball games were drawing more than ten thousand fans per game, and more than sixteen thousand fans regularly filled New York City’s Madison Square Garden, which had become the arena for college basketball programming. However, the game’s appeal prompted a heightened interest in gambling on game results, and the number of illegal bookies increased steadily during this era.
During the early 1940’s, gamblers began to use the point spread as a means to attract gambling on games. To achieve an advantage, gamblers tried to influence college basketball players to “fix” games to the advantage of gamblers. The point spread allowed basketball players not to lose a game necessarily but to make the game close enough in order to meet the point spread.
In January, 1951, Junius Kellogg, a Manhattan College basketball player, was offered $1,000 to fix a game with DePaul University. Hank Poppe, who was a co-captain of Manhattan College during the 1949-1950 season, made the offer. Kellogg reported the bribe offer to the authorities, and Poppe was arrested.
Arrests Increase
Following the arrest of Poppe, District Attorney Frank Hogan of New York began further investigations into point shaving. On February 18, 1951, he announced the arrests of Ed Roman, Alvin Roth, and Ed Warner, players on the basketball team of City College of New York (CCNY). These players had been instrumental in helping CCNY win both major national basketball tournaments in 1950. Connie Schaff of New York University (NYU) and Eddie Gard, a former Long Island University (LIU) player, were also arrested. Gard was accused of being the middleman between players and Salvatorre Sallazzo, a New York jeweler and gambler. The CCNY players admitted to losing three games deliberately during the 1950-1951 season. Each player received $1,000 or more for each of the three games. Further arrests were made involving CCNY players. Floyd Layne admitted to accepting $3,000 to fix three games, while teammates Irwin Dambrot, Norm Mager, and Herb Cohen were also charged with fixing games during the 1949-1950 season.
After the arrests of the CCNY players, three players from LIU were arrested: Sherman White, Adolf Bigos, and Leroy Smith, all of whom confessed to receiving $18,500 to shave points in seven games during the 1949-1950 and 1950-1951 seasons.
The scandal was not isolated to teams located in the New York City area. It extended to players at the University of Toledo, where three players admitted to shaving points during the 1950 game against Niagara. At Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, three players were found guilty of point shaving in 1949 during a National Invitational Tournament (NIT) game against Bowling Green at Madison Square Garden. At the University of Kentucky, Ralph Beard, Alex Groza, and Dale Barnstable were discovered to have thrown Kentucky’s first-round NIT game against Loyola at Madison Square Garden in 1949. Evidence indicated that eleven of Kentucky’s games were fixed during the 1948-1949 season.
In November of 1951, Judge Saul Streit began sentencing the first indicted players and gamblers, including the CCNY, NYU, and LIU players, along with Sallazzo and Gard. Players Warner, Roth, White, and Schaff received jail sentences. Gard received a jail term of up to three years, and Sallazzo received a sentence of eight to sixteen years.
Impact
The 1951 point-shaving scandal clearly identified the exploitation of college athletics. Many of the athletes who were arrested lost their opportunities to pursue a professional career in basketball: The National Basketball Association refused to draft any of the players who were arrested. In light of the scandal, it would seem that strict guidelines would have been implemented to avoid future gambling activities. However, this would not be the case, as a new scandal in college basketball surfaced in 1961.
Bibliography
Figone, Albert J. “Gambling and College Basketball: The Scandal of 1951.” Journal of Sport History 16, no. 1 (1989): 44-61. Chronicles the events of the scandal as well as its impact.
Rosen, Charles. Scandals of ’51: How the Gamblers Almost Killed College Basketball. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978. Details how the point-shaving scandal was accomplished and by whom.