The CCNY point-shaving scandal of 1951 was a college basketball point-shaving gambling scandal that officially involved seven American colleges and universities in all, with four of these schools being in the New York metropolitan area, two of them occurring in the Midwest, and one of them being in the South.[1] However, at least one other player from the Ivy League in New York would also be considered involved in the scandal retroactively (even though he was never caught in the initial scandal at the time).[2] Furthermore, it was alleged that the reach of this scandal went as far as the West Coast of the United States out in California and Oregon through attempts to fix games out there.[3] [4] While the starting point wasn't from the CCNY nor did that college have the most implicated players involved from the event, the scandal became notable and infamous during that period of time due to the number of players in the scandal being players of the collegiate dual tournament (better known as the "Grand Slam") champion 1949–50 CCNY Beavers men's basketball team. It was also seen as the biggest tipping point that threatened the integrity of college basketball's very existence at the time.
The earliest reported attempt at cheating involved with a college basketball game occurred on January 21, 1927 with Wabash College's athletic director at the time, Harry Scholler, reporting that a professional gambler attempted to bribe their star player, Benjamin "Benny" Devol, before their game against Franklin College of Indianapolis began.[5] However, not only did Devol reject the offer, but he would finish the game with more points scored than the entire Franklin College team in Wabash College's 47–32 win that night.[6] [7] Another reported attempt to bribe a player happened in early March 1931, when the Brooklyn Eagle reported that one of St. John's University's "Wonder Five" in Max Posnack was offered $3,000 (equivalent to over $62,000 in 2024 and more than twice the average annual income for a U.S. worker at the time) to rig a game against Manhattan College at the Madison Square Garden, which later caught the attention of the New York Herald Tribune due to the attention the gamblers brought onto the collegiate sport.[8] However, no further reports of attempted fixing with college basketball would be reported until the early-to-mid-1940s (despite reports later coming up involving that period of time), partially because any players that had sought to fix games at the time with professional gamblers and bookmakers would rarely memorialize their gambling activities in the first place during the 1920s and 1930s and partially because people hoped the problem would eventually disappear on its own accord.[9] By contrast to the typical gangsters of that era, the illegal bookies of that era barely differed from those that worked as neighborhood barbers or had restaurants or bars at the time, with many of them starting out as bootleggers and then expanding into gambling and prostitution rings following the Prohibition and Great Depression periods. Ironically, bookies became law enforcement's first line of defense during this time for sports bribery since the bookmakers needed to grow an honest reputation by quickly paying off winning betters, seek protection from reform-minded political administrations, and even hold a keen eye to see rigged games in order to avoid potential bankruptcy on their end.
By 1944, the gambling and fixing problems would start to become more widespread and serious for the sport, despite initial hopes that the problems would go away on their own accord.[10] On the day before the championship game of the 1944 NCAA basketball tournament, University of Utah head coach Vadal Peterson was reported to have a gambler approach him and ask how much would it take for Utah to lose to Dartmouth College before responding with a quick right punch to him.[11] (Utah would later win that championship game 42–40 in overtime, completing an improbable appearance made by unfortunate circumstances that year.) Months later, in October 1944, University of Kansas coach Phog Allen warned of an upcoming gambling incident "that would stink to high heaven",[12] as well as cited an incident that also happened in 1944 where two Philadelphia Textile Institute (now Thomas Jefferson University) students agreed to rig a game for $1,000 (equivalent to $17,850 in 2024) at first, but both of them became scared and tried to return the money back, with one of them later going to the United States Navy and the other becoming sick and dropping out of basketball altogether.[13] During the 1944–45 season, the City College of New York (CCNY) saw one player of theirs in Lenny Hassman, who was reported to be a dumper, try to bribe another player of theirs in star player Paul Schmones, though Schmones would report the offer to head coach Nat Holman, who immediately removed Hassman from the team and reported the finding to the university's chairman of the Department of Hygiene, Frank S. Lloyd, though neither would go any further than keeping the incident a secret.[14] CCNY also saw another player of theirs during that season in William Levine get approached by gamblers during the season before playing a game against the University of Syracuse, though like Red Holzman, the team's captain for the 1941–42 season, had done so multiple times beforehand, Levine declined the gamblers' offers to rig games as well.[15] During the month of January 1945, Arthur Daley of the New York Times had heard rumors of college basketball games being thrown for around 15 years, with him even recalling certain games that had the final results being questioned at the time.[16]
The most infamous case of this up until the CCNY scandal came to light occurred on January 29, 1945 when five Brooklyn College players in Bernard Barnett, Jerome Green, Robert Leder, Larry Pearlstein, and Stanley Simon all were arrested and confessed to accepting $1,000 each from multiple gamblers, with an extra $2,000 (equivalent to over $34,900 in 2024) included to dump their scheduled game against the Municipal University of Akron (now just the University of Akron) at the Boston Garden (which ultimately was never played[17]), as well as an extra game planned to be fixed later on against St. Francis College at the third iteration of the Madison Square Garden. This notably came by accident when two detectives were watching the home of Henry Rosen, suspected for being a fence for teenage panty thieves, before they noticed Barnett and Pearlstein (the latter being revealed by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to be a war veteran to have never even attended Brooklyn College directly, but did wear the school's colors for a year) come and go, which later saw them go to gambler Harvey Stemmer's house and subsequently led to the players' arrest and later expulsion from the college, which led to one of the players questioning why the expulsions are happening in Brooklyn while also claiming that every college in the city was fixing games.[18] Both Rosen and Stemmer alongside a third individual known only as "Danny" would later be indicted for their involvement as well, with Stemmer later being involved with bribing New York Giants players before the 1946 NFL Championship Game happened while he was in prison. Manhattan assemblyman William J. A. Glancy later brought up the possibility of "dummy students" (i.e., students that joined teams despite not meeting admission and scholastic requirements) being planted by gamblers for teams like CCNY, with Jack Laub from CCNY being considered another player similar to that of Pearlstein.[19] This scandal later led to the New York State Legislature passing the 1945 Wilson-Moritt Bill on April 9, which made it a felony to extend or accept a bribe to throw a game in a wide number of amateur sports, including basketball.[20] Despite all that, it wouldn't become the major scandal that was warned about in question for college basketball.
While football became the biggest sport of interest for colleges following the conclusion of World War II, basketball would not only be considered an alternative primary revenue resource for college instead, but it can provide more modest operating costs by comparison to football and can potentially provide greater results for a college or university with the right recruitment of an outstanding player or two resulting in a postseason playoff appearance (or push if they go far enough), a potentially high rating in national press polls, free publicity, and greater profits for them.[21] With a successful basketball program also providing lesser-known smaller colleges a relatively inexpensive way to attract national attention, basketball coaches would be hired for both their coaching and recruiting abilities, such as with Long Island University (later separated into LIU Brooklyn by 1951) head coach Clair Bee acquiring future involved fixer Eddie Gard, who had both served with the Merchant Marines and studied in night school until he had high enough grades to be considered eligible for proper eligibility with the university as a student-athlete.[22] Following the end of World War II, college basketball would become more popular when more newspapers and magazines would start covering the sport in syndicated columns, with most writers depending on the coaches and athletic administrations on stories for teams, players, and other coaches.[23] However, this also led to stories that were rarely critical of moments that felt like fixing was going on within the games at hand, with the rare stories in question that were critical noting a select few teams like the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds that felt like they were routinely working with gamblers or that they had betting suspended on them due to "unusual money" coming in too often on the LIU Brooklyn team in particular.[24] Regardless, things with college basketball and gambling were considered relatively calm following the Brooklyn College situation until 1948.
During a weekly sportswriters' meeting in 1948, CCNY head coach Nat Holman wrote that he believed that another scandal similar to the one at Brooklyn College would break out during the current season. Furthermore, on January 14 that same year, Leonard Cohen of the New York Post reported that an attempt was made to fix a game between CCNY and the University of Syracuse at Madison Square Garden, but those that bet on Syracuse winning ended up losing $50,000 (equivalent to $651,815 in 2024) instead, with CCNY athletic director Sam Winograd admitting not to comment to the press on the reported receipt of the telegram warning him of the fix in mind.[25] Later in the year, Maude Stewart, the New York Board of Education's director of information services, wrote to CCNY president Harry N. Wright about suggestions in mind to the nefarious gambling influences at the Madison Square Garden, though Wright considered Stewart's suggestions to be unacceptable at the time, in part due to the results of the Brooklyn College aftermath.[26] The NCAA would try to address some of the concerns during that period of time by creating the Principles for the Conduct of Intercollegiate Athletics, also known colloquially as the Sanity Code, though it ultimately proved to not address any gambling concerns efficiently.[27] A report released by the Brooklyn Eagle in February 1951 revealed that the New York City Police Department had suppressed around forty different recordings of telephone conversations made before, during, and even after the 1949–50 NCAA men's basketball season that detailed accounts of a substantial fix involving players from every big-time college both in and around New York City.[28] Around this same period of time, city police were being manipulated by bookie Harry Gross and his brother Frank Gross, with Harry's case eventually resulting in the resignation of Mayor William O'Dwyer, police commissioner William O'Brien, and various other police officers that were bribed by the Grosses, as well as led to numerous police reforms, though they didn't affect the gambling sector immediately.[29] By the end of the 1940s, according to author Stanley Cohen, even kids and casual spectators of college basketball were starting to suspect corruption was happening from within the collegiate game.[30]
One incident on January 4, 1949 that appeared to be isolated on the surface saw New York City District Attorney Frank Hogan arrest four men for attempting to bribe 25-year-old war hero turned law student-athlete David Shapiro, a co-captain for George Washington University that was also on the G.I. Bill at the time, to fix a game against Manhattan College at the Madison Square Garden (which failed with George Washington winning 71–63). It was discovered that one of the four men in question, Joseph Aronowitz, originally approached Shapiro during the previous summer, but Shapiro insisted upon an advance payment first, which led to the conspirators (Aronowitz, Phillip Klein, Jack Levy, and William Rivlin) trying to pay an uncle of his on game night to get the fix done, but the gamblers in question would get arrested when Max Rumack of the district attorney's staff would receive the envelope by pretending to be the uncle in question; Shapiro ultimately played very few minutes during that night, potentially due to nervousness at hand via getting caught himself. While law enforcement didn't see it as part of a wider conspiracy at the time, players would later admit that they would fail to report bribes that they had been offered by gamblers themselves because they feared for the safety of themselves or that of their family members.[31] The apex of cheating would occur on a double-header night at the Madison Square Garden on December 28, 1950, with CCNY (who needed to win by less than 6 points for jeweler turned gambler Salvatore T. Sollazzo to share his profits with some of the CCNY guys and former LIU Brooklyn player turned associate Eddie Gard) ultimately doing everything in their power to eventually lose to an underdog University of Arizona team by a 41–38 score and LIU Brooklyn double-crossing Solazzo and winning over Western Kentucky University by only 7 points instead of over the initial spread of 11 points with Western Kentucky scoring 13 unanswered points in the final two minutes of the game. The crowds for those games left furious in the end, claiming that the games felt like "slot machines on wheels", not knowing how damaging the reach would truly be only weeks later.[32]
The cheating relating to this case actually began with the arrests of two players from Manhattan College. However, their arrests would be overshadowed by the revelation of players from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and National Invitation Tournament (NIT) champion City College of New York (CCNY) being involved. CCNY had won both the 1950 National Invitation Tournament and the 1950 NCAA basketball tournament over Bradley University (the NIT match being 69–61 and the NCAA rematch being 71–68), being the first and only team to win the "Grand Slam" honor. The scandal involved CCNY, Manhattan and at least five other schools, including two others in the New York City area: New York University (NYU) and Long Island University (LIU Brooklyn), before spreading out to the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio; Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois; and the 1951 NCAA basketball tournament champion University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, involving 35 players in all, as well as a disgraced NBA referee and members of organized crime. CCNY was eventually banned from playing at Madison Square Garden following the scandal, although both head coach Nat Holman and assistant coach Albert Litschqi were cleared of any wrongdoing themselves.[33] [34]
The first sports reporter to have taken the investigation of the point-shaving scandal seriously was sports editor Max Kase of the New York Journal-American. While he was not a basketball fan and had never seen a college basketball game, after hearing rumors of widespread corruption involving the sport during the late 1940s, Kase assigned a crime reporter during the 1948–49 NCAA men's basketball season to obtain evidence about fixed games there. Another reporter would be added onto the case during the following season afterward before the season after that resulted in further intensified investigations. Kase later presented his evidence that the Journal-American's investigation team collected to Frank Hogan on January 10, 1951, though Hogan asked Kase to wait a bit until he broke his story through. One reason for the delayed response for the publishing of Kase's findings was because New York County would spend the following month wiretapping and surveilling certain individuals related to the case.
Less than a week after Max Kase reported his findings to Frank Hogan, Junius Kellogg, a standout 6foot Manhattan College center, was offered a $1,000 bribe (equivalent to $12,800 in 2024) to shave points before a game against DePaul in order to have Manhattan win by less than 10 points on January 16.[35] Although he was working for minimum wage (which back then was 75¢ per hour) at a frozen custard shop near campus three years after last serving in an infantry during World War II, Kellogg refused to take the money and reported the solicitation to his coach, Ken Norton. Norton then sent him out 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.[36] From there, Henry "Hank" Poppe, one of the two co-conspirators for Manhattan, explained to Kellogg in great detail how the point-shaving happens, to the point where he even claimed that professional players were doing it also. Kellogg later became unnerved by the bribe offer to the point of playing sloppily during the DePaul game, which led to Charley Jennerich being a key substitution with 12 points scored through all of his shot attempts in 12 minutes of play for a 62–59 win. After the game, Poppe was arrested at his home at three in the morning, with John Byrnes, the other co-captain that conspired in the event, being arrested hours later alongside fixers Cornelius Kelleher and brothers Benjamin and Irving Schwartzberg. Kelleher would pay the two players $40 (equivalent to $528.03 in 2024) per week before the 1949–50 season, as well as $3,000 (equivalent to over $39,600 in 2024) to ensure Manhattan lost games against Siena College, Santa Clara University, and Bradley University and $2,000 (equivalent to over $26,400 in 2024) to help Manhattan exceed the point spread in games against St. Francis College in Brooklyn and New York University. Following their arrest, the two players would ask why they were being picked on when others were doing the same thing that they were doing.[37] Later on, another accomplice of Eddie Gard's, NBA referee Sol Levy, would be suspended and later arrested for arranging the outcome for fixing six different NBA games back in 1950, which led to a modification to the New York State Law of 1945 to include a provision for referees later in 1951.[38]
After CCNY beat Temple University in Philadelphia by a 91–75 score on February 17, 1951, Nat Holman and his team stopped by Camden, New Jersey from the Penn Station when two detectives in an undercover operation wanted to speak to three players that were instrumental to CCNY's NCAA & NIT championship runs the previous season (still the only such double championship team in history and destined to remain as such since teams are no longer allowed to enter both tournaments in the same season): All-American forward Ed Warner, center Ed Roman, and guard Alvin Roth.[39] The following day afterward, the scandal would officially become public when Hogan arrested six men on charges of conspiring to fix games, including the three previously mentioned CCNY players, Harvey "Connie" Schaff of New York University, former LIU Brooklyn player turned agent for Salvatore Sollazzo (and his bookie Robert Sabatini) Eddie Gard, and fixer Salvatore Sollazzo. While under arrest, the CCNY players there would later admit that the fixed games involved the ones against inferior teams like the University of Missouri, the University of Arizona, and Boston College during the most recent season at the time with cash worth $1,500 (equivalent to over $19,550 in 2024) for each player (though Roth only got $1,400 (equivalent to $18,250 in 2024) after the Boston College game due to Sollazzo apparently running out of money at the time), with $250 bonuses (equivalent to nearly $3,260 in 2024) also applying in a win against Washington State University and a loss against St. John's University as well. Indictments were sought after Roman, Roth, and Warner for accepting bribes, against Gard for giving bribes, and against Schaff for trying to offer a bribe to teammate Jim Brasco, while Sollazzo (who was also indicted alongside the other players) paid a total of $30,000 (equivalent to over $396,000 in 2024) to the players that manipulated scores for him for over two seasons; Max Kase would later earn a Pulitzer Prize in 1952 for his investigative stories revolving around the scandal, with Meyer Berger (who previously won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for local reporting) also writing a story about the situation on the New York Times himself.[40]
Three days after the first CCNY arrests were made public, three players from LIU Brooklyn in Adolph "Dolph" Bigos, Leroy Smith, and Sherman White (who had been named the Sporting News Men's College Basketball Player of the Year the day before on February 19) would admit to their own complicity in the slowly growing scandal by saying they took $18,500 (equivalent to over $244,210 in 2024) for eight total games in the two most recent seasons of action at this point in time and were subsequently arrested themselves. The 1949–50 season games they admitted to fixing involved games against North Carolina State University, the University of Cincinnati, and their opening round match of the NIT against the University of Syracuse, while the season after that would have fixed games involving Kansas State University, Western Kentucky University, the University of Denver, the University of Idaho, and Bowling Green State University.[41] The arrest of White in particular would bring great disappointment toward his father, fans of the sport expecting White to break the all-time college scoring record, and the New York Knicks, who had planned on drafting him with a territorial pick in the 1951 NBA draft before the arrest came to light.[42] A week after the LIU Brooklyn arrests, both Natie "Nat" Miller of LIU Brooklyn and Floyd Layne of CCNY were arrested by Layne admitting to accepting $3,000 (equivalent to over $39,100 in 2024) for rigged games during the most recent season and Miller being charged for rigging two games the previous season against Bowling Green and Western Kentucky for $1,500 (equivalent to $19,800 in 2024) through information given by Eddie Gard. Layne's arrest came after he scored 19 points for CCNY in a 67–48 win over Lafayette College and a game against Cincinnati was canceled.[43] On March 4, it was discovered that the people providing the point-shaving efforts would reach as far as the state of California, as USC player Ken Flower reported to head coach Forrest Twogood that a gambler tried to offer him $1,500 (equivalent to $18,125 in 2024) to throw a game against UCLA, with similar cases also following suit farther out west in the United States as well. Nearly a month following the prior two arrests, on March 26, three more CCNY champion players in Herb Cohen, Irwin Dambrot (who had been a dental student at the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine at the time), and Norm Mager (who was playing his rookie season for the original Baltimore Bullets of the NBA at the time) would be arrested and charged with fixing some games during the 1949–50 championship season by attempting to fix a game against Southern Methodist University (though failing to cover the spread), successfully manipulating a loss against UCLA, and fixing a loss to the Niagara University (all regular season games CCNY were favored in at the time), with Mager subsequently becoming the first ever NBA player to be permanently banned from the NBA due to his involvement in the scandal.
The final arrests relating to players in New York colleges and universities would happen days after the last CCNY players were arrested. On March 30, four days after the arrests of Cohen, Dambrot, and Mager took place, former LIU Brooklyn high scorer Louis "Lou" Lipman was arrested for admitting to fixing the game against Duquesne University that took place on January 1, 1949. Then on April 13, a teammate of Lipman's in Richard "Dick" Fuertado would be arrested for admitting that he fixed not only one game in the 1948–49 season, but also three games in the following season afterward also. Over two weeks after Fuertado's arrest, another gambler that would be involved with fixing some of CCNY's games in Eli "Kaye" Klukofsky would be arrested on April 28. However, the biggest player arrest of them all from the New York area would happen months later on July 22 when a formerly talented LIU Brooklyn and professional basketball player turned fixer for the mob named Jackie Goldsmith was arrested and reported to be the "master fixer" of the scandal and "the sum of all that has been wrong in the basketball picture in recent years" in question.[44] After Goldsmith decided not to play in his senior year at LIU Brooklyn for unknown reasons, he had grown intimate with the gambling mob world of sorts and at the time was described as someone that was "responsible for the corruption of more college basketball games than any other single person" despite him playing for professional basketball teams like the Toledo Jeeps of the NBL, the Portland Indians of the PCPBL, and the Brooklyn Gothams of the original ABL early on in his career. Goldsmith had reportedly developed a source of income by advising gamblers that certain games were fixed and if games weren't as he sold them to be as such, he would plead his innocence to them by saying a double-cross happened. Both Goldsmith and William Rivlin were also later convicted of bribing Fuertado, Gard, Lipman, and Miller to fix the LIU Brooklyn game against Duquesne three days before the planned fix between George Washington and Manhattan occurred. Goldsmith's apparent mob connections would ultimately influence him to not reveal anything with his involvement in the scandal and to tear up his black book that listed players that fixed games and gamblers that he represented. Despite that, the rest of the players who were arrested before Goldsmith's arrest would see judge Saul S. Streit, with most of the players outside of Gard changing their pleas to guilty for conspiracy to avoid greater prison sentences for bribery, with those same players outside of Gard also testifying against Salvatore Sollazzo in the process. Eddie Gard, however, would still plead innocent to indictments on accepting bribes and conspiring with other players to fix games, though he was released pending his trial period.[45]
Getting a sense that the scandal was not over and that some players from outside of New York were also taking part in rigging college basketball games, Frank Hogan would turn his sights farther out west in the United States for more information and insight on potential suspects at hand relating to the case. On July 20, months after gambler Eli "Kaye" Klukofsky was the last reported arrest at the time, four players from the University of Toledo (who had recruited several players from New York City at the time) in Jack Feeman, Bob McDonald, Carlos Muzi, and Bill Walker were arrested in relation to point-shaving allegations that occurred within the New York area. Local bookmakers had tipped Hogan off that gamblers were frequenting Toledo's home games and they had noticed some of Toledo's own players were involved with both wagering and fixing a December 14, 1950 game against Niagara University (with Toledo winning 73–70). While local law enforcement, urged on by the university in question, previously raided Toledo, Ohio gambling establishments to little permanent effect following the initial backlash of the scandal, it was surveillance on Jacob "Jack" Rubinstein, a bookie from Brooklyn that was also a friend of Toledo freshman player Joe Massa, that would lead the New York officers out to Toledo. Massa had previously worked out with Bill Walker in the Catskills region and introduced him to Eli "Kaye" Klukofsky, who not only offered Walker $250 (equivalent to nearly $3,260 in 2024) to fix games, but also offered an additional $250 for every player he could recruit to join in, which turned out to be Muzi, McDonald, and Feeman. Rubinstein and three of the four players implicated Massa, but shielded Feeman before his complicity was later reported on by an intercollegiate investigatory committee headed by Toledo's own President in Asa S. Knowles. Feeman then claimed he didn't know about the fix with the Niagara game, but he was complicit and did know about fixed games with the other players in matches against Bowling Green State University and Xavier University during that season.[46] However, the Toledo players would all be acquitted by the end of the trial, partially due to Klukofsky dying by a heart attack before the end of his case.
On July 24, four days after the arrests in Toledo and two days after Jackie Goldsmith's arrest, detectives from Frank Hogan's offices would travel to Peoria, Illinois to arrest Mike Chianakas, Bill Mann, and All-American point guard and #1 pick of the 1951 NBA draft Gene Melchiorre (who was also considered the contact man of the group) for fixing Bradley University's 1949 NIT consolation game against Bowling Green State University at Madison Square Garden (though the gamblers in question would ultimately lose their bets with Bowling Green winning 82–77[47]). During that time, the three players alongside Charles "Bud" Grover, Jim Kelly, Aaron Preece, and Fred Schlictman would all admit that they also fixed games against Texas Christian University, Washington State University, St. Joseph's University, and Oregon State University during the 1949–50 season. However, because the NIT consolation game was held in New York, indictments would be obtained against the Bradley University players alongside gamblers like brothers Nick & Tony Englisis of Brooklyn, Marvin Mansberg, Jacob "Jack" Rubinstein, Joseph "Joe" Benintende of Kansas City, Missouri (who was also known to deal with narcotics and was considered a suspect at the time for the murders of Democratic leader Charles Binaggio and top muscleman Charles Gargotta), and Jack "Zip" West (who had also been questioned in 1947 for an alleged $100,000 bribe offer (equivalent to $1,408,856.50 in 2024) to boxer Rocky Graziano) on August 27 (though only the Englisis brothers, Benintende, and West were the only official arrests primarily in relation to this scandal in question since no charges were formally filed for the other two gamblers in question). The Bradley case in particular helped law enforcement out with understanding how some gamblers helped ensure themselves that players that initially entered into their offers didn't back out later on, such as threats of physical violence to a Bradley player and his wife if he didn't fix any games for them or even gamblers threatening death on others if they tried something shady along the way, like with West on one of the Englisis brothers.[48] However, the players themselves would also offer to sell games to gamblers by contacting them before games as well, to the point where some games had players attempt to fix games in opposite directions, like with a Bradley match against Manhattan where Klukofsky offered Melchiorre $500 (equivalent to nearly $6,520 in 2024) if Bradley won by less than a five-point spread, while Byrnes and Poppe accepted money to lose by more than the five-point spread instead (the match in question ended with Bradley winning 89–67, well over the spread in question[49]).[50] By early October, Chianakos, Mann, and Melchiorre would plead guilty to a misdemeanor before Judge Saul S. Streit, while the rest of the Bradley players would find themselves acquitted in the case.
The last official arrests in relation to the case came on October 20 (months after University of Kentucky would win the 1951 NCAA basketball tournament and head coach Adolph Rupp claimed gamblers couldn't touch their students with a ten foot pole[51]) when former University of Kentucky players Dale Barnstable (who was working as a high school teacher in Louisville at the time of his arrest) and at the time Indianapolis Olympians players Ralph Beard and Alex Groza of the NBA were arrested due to suspicions that those three players in particular threw a 1949 first round NIT game against Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois at Madison Square Garden. The noted comments were first raised by head coach Adolph Rupp himself, when he told both assistant coach Harry Lancaster and athletic director Bernie Shively that "something was wrong with his team" after that particular game ended, with it especially being noteworthy due to them being the winningest team in college basketball post-World War II during that time with a 93% win rate. Frank Hogan and his office alleged that during the 1948–49 season, eleven different Kentucky games were being fixed up, starting with a game against St. John's University held at Madison Square Garden that Kentucky won 37–30. Hogan and his crew also believed that while they were in New York, the Englisis brothers and a former Harvard University law student named Saul Feinberg (who later got three years in prison himself) planned with the three implicated players to fix more games later on that season, though the courts would only accept the offers of the Loyola and St. John's games that were tried in court since no other games outside of the state were considered admissible in court due to state laws being different in Kentucky and other viable areas at the time.[52] Regardless, the three men would admit to rigging three games in that season with them saying that they each got $100 (equivalent to over $1,300 in 2024) for exceeding the spread against DePaul in a game in Chicago and $500 (equivalent to nearly $6,520 in 2024) for covering the spread in a game against the University of Tennessee, while only Barnstable and Beard got $500 (equivalent to $6,600 in 2024) and Groza got $1,000 (equivalent to $13,200 in 2024) for having Kentucky lose against Loyola (Illinois) in the NIT (though more games were claimed to have been rigged beyond them that season according to Russell Rice in a book focusing on Adolph Rupp and from gambler Tony Englisis in a 1952 True magazine article, such as games from the 1948–49 season against Bowling Green State University (which Kentucky won 63–61), Notre Dame University, St. John's University, Tulane University, Vanderbilt University, and a different DePaul match, though the players denied the other games claimed on Englisis' end, while the Bowling Green game was only sourced and credited by anonymous Kentucky players).[53] The discovery of Beard and Groza's involvements in particular would have immediate consequences also since the players went from signing a package deal with the Olympians franchise where they would own a 70% share of profits and ownership of the team (with an option to later buy the team outright in three years' time) to being forced to sell their shares at only 10% of its original value from their original $50,000 package (equivalent to over $604,180 in 2024) after being permanently banned by the NBA, which later led to the Olympians folding as a franchise despite making it to the NBA Playoffs in every season they existed.[54] The final players to be implicated in the scandal officially were Kentucky players Walter Hirsch, Jim Line, and Bill Spivey (the last one controversially so), with Hirsch and Line admitting to their complicity in rigging games during the 1948–49 and 1949–50 seasons, but Spivey being adamant that he never fixed a game while in Kentucky, even after Hirsch had told District Attorney Vincent A.G. O'Connor that Spivey was involved with rigging the 1950 Sugar Bowl game against St. Louis University (which Kentucky lost 43–42) and Line claimed that Spivey talked about the possibility of any arrangement of deals between December 1950 and January 1951.[55] However, no charges were ever filed against Hirsch and Line due to their rigging of games occurring in states that didn't have anti-bribery laws for amateur sports at the time, while Spivey was tried for first degree perjury with failure to truthfully testify that he received $1,000 (equivalent to nearly $13,040 in 2024) from the Sugar Bowl game by Jack West and money from games against DePaul and Notre Dame in January 1951, though his case was later dismissed also, albeit via mistrial claims.[56]
On October 27, Frank Hogan would officially close the case on what would now become the CCNY point-shaving scandal. However, some Americans still questioned why the gambling rings didn't really touch any colleges or universities in Philadelphia or why the only Catholic institution that seemingly got hit in all of this was Manhattan College, despite a book by Charley Rosen on the subject called "Barney Polan's Game" suggesting, in retrospect, that some players from St. John's University got involved with fixing games during this time period as well. Hogan would counter those remarks by stating that the main players and gamblers involved already got apprehended and that any further punishments would be given out by the legal system in order to help prevent future corruption from occurring, though he would ultimately prove to be incorrect on those claims years later.[57] In all, 35 players from seven colleges were admitted by the police to taking bribes between 1947 and 1950 to fix 86 games within 17 states, with varying results and punishments being given out to each player at hand, though they would all see permanent bannings from the NBA (with some also being banned from other professional sports leagues in general, including Minor League Baseball for one player in particular).[36] One more individual named Jack Molinas was originally not caught back in 1951, but after he was suspended and later permanently banned for gambling by the National Basketball Association (NBA) for betting on games involving his own team, the Fort Wayne Pistons, he was ultimately linked back to the 1951 scandal by bets he had also placed on his then-college team, Columbia University, working alongside another gambler that had slipped through the cracks at the time. Molinas would later create his own gambling scandal with college basketball during the 1960s.
The following sentences or punishments that were given out to those involved in the case were implemented primarily by Judge Saul S. Streit, unless stated otherwise.
| Name | Role(s) | Sentences/Punishments | |
|---|---|---|---|
| [58] | Manhattan player | Placed on three years' probation by Judge James M. Barrett. Was later permanently banned from the NBA and other professional basketball leagues alongside his teammate Poppe in response to the case. | |
| [59] | Manhattan player | Placed on three years' probation by Judge James M. Barrett. Was later permanently banned from the NBA and other professional basketball leagues alongside his teammate Byrnes in response to the case. | |
| Fixer | Sentenced to one year in prison by Judge James M. Barrett. | ||
| Fixer | Sentenced to one year in prison alongside his brother Irving by Judge James M. Barrett. | ||
| Fixer | Sentenced to one year in prison alongside his brother Benjamin by Judge James M. Barrett. | ||
| NBA referee & Accomplice of Eddie Gard | Received a suspended sentence for arranging the outcome of "fixing" six NBA games in 1950 by calling nonexistent fouls on certain players. Was later fired from his position as a referee from the NBA, if not permanently banned from the NBA and other basketball leagues altogether, for what he had done as a referee. Was originally given a three year prison sentence for his work in fixing six NBA games,[60] but ultimately spent a year in prison before being free via appeal due to a technicality at the time. Was later found to have been killed for not withholding his own end of his bargain despite already fixing multiple NBA games, with New York District Attorney Frank Hogan speculating that Levy did not come through for at least three more NBA games he was involved with at the time. | ||
| CCNY player | Sentenced to six months in a workhouse, though his sentence was suspended when Judge Saul S. Streit approved of Roth's decision to enter the United States Army as a private for two years instead. Was later permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other CCNY players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| CCNY player | Was sentenced to six months in prison before receiving a suspended sentence instead for joining the United States Army and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other CCNY players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| CCNY player | Was sentenced to six months in Rikers Island before later being permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other CCNY players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| [61] | NYU player | Received a six-month suspended sentence before Schaff was permanently banned from playing in the NBA. | |
| Fixer | Received an eight to sixteen year long sentence in a state prison for being a key figure in the scandal, though ultimately served twelve years in prison. | ||
| Agent of Salvatore Sollazzo & LIU Brooklyn player | Originally received an indeterminate sentence of up to three years in prison for two counts of conspiracy, but only served nine months in prison and received praise from Assistant District Attorney Vincent A.G. O'Connor for his cooperation in the case. Was later permanently banned from the NBA himself for his direct involvement with the scandal alongside other LIU Brooklyn players that were involved at the time, regardless of whether they were in the school by that time or not like Gard no longer was by the time of his arrest. | ||
| [62] | LIU Brooklyn player | Received a suspended sentence and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other LIU Brooklyn players that were directly involved in the scandal. | |
| LIU Brooklyn player | Received a suspended sentence and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other LIU Brooklyn players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| LIU Brooklyn player | Was sentenced to one year in prison by Judge Saul S. Streit, but only served close to nine months in Rikers Island instead. He was also permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other LIU Brooklyn players that were directly involved in the scandal. Questions of racism were implied to have occurred with him due to his harsher punishment when compared to most other players involved at the time. During the time of the scandal, the New York Knicks were interested in selecting him in the 1951 NBA draft with a territorial pick at hand before his sentencing ultimately barred him from the draft and play in the NBA. | ||
| CCNY player | Received a suspended sentence and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other CCNY players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| [63] | LIU Brooklyn player | Received a suspended sentence and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other LIU Brooklyn players that were directly involved in the scandal. | |
| CCNY player | Was sentenced to six months in prison before receiving a suspended sentence instead for joining the United States Army and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other CCNY players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| CCNY player | Was given a suspended sentence for "realizing the enormity of his misstep" while being a graduate student and dental student at the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine at the time. While it was highly unlikely he would have considered a professional basketball career at the time due to his new career path in dentistry at the time, he was still nevertheless permanently banned from the NBA due to his involvement in the scandal alongside the other CCNY players that were directly involved in this case, especially since he was drafted by the New York Knicks as the seventh overall pick of the 1950 NBA draft before the scandal came to light. | ||
| CCNY player* | Received a suspended sentence and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other CCNY players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| LIU Brooklyn player | Received a suspended sentence due to his previous military service he had and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other LIU Brooklyn players that were directly involved in the scandal. | ||
| [64] | LIU Brooklyn player | Received a suspended sentence and was later permanently banned from playing in the NBA alongside the other LIU Brooklyn players that were directly involved in the scandal. | |
| Fixer | Suffered a fatal heart attack while awaiting his trial and verdict. Was associated with mobdom and potentially could have implicated more mobsters in his trial before his heart attack happened. | ||
| [65] | Toledo player | Feeman was originally shielded from arrests at first, but he ultimately joined his other teammates from the University of Toledo due to his complicity being revealed during the case. Charges against him were ultimately dropped alongside the other Toledo players involved due to Eli "Kaye" Klukofsky's fatal heart attack. However, Feeman and the other University of Toledo players were still permanently banned from the NBA despite the dropped charges due to them still being implicated in the case earlier on. | |
| Toledo player | Charges against him were dropped alongside the other Toledo players involved due to Eli "Kaye" Klukofsky's fatal heart attack. However, McDonald and the other University of Toledo players were still permanently banned from the NBA despite the dropped charges due to them still being implicated in the case earlier on. | ||
| [66] | Toledo player | Charges against him were dropped alongside the other Toledo players involved due to Eli "Kaye" Klukofsky's fatal heart attack. However, Muzi and the other University of Toledo players were still permanently banned from the NBA despite the dropped charges due to them still being implicated in the case earlier on. | |
| [67] | Toledo player | Charges against him were dropped alongside the other Toledo players involved due to Eli "Kaye" Klukofsky's fatal heart attack. However, Walker and the other University of Toledo players were still permanently banned from the NBA despite the dropped charges due to them still being implicated in the case earlier on. | |
| Fixer & LIU Brooklyn player | Sentenced to around two-and-a-half to four years in prison for fixing games involving not just LIU Brooklyn, but also Manhattan College as well. Despite not playing professional basketball since 1949 back in his brief time with the Brooklyn Gothams in the American Basketball League (a one-time rivaling league to what eventually became the NBA),[68] Goldsmith was still considered a player to be permanently banned from the NBA alongside other LIU Brooklyn players that were involved with the scandal at the time, regardless of whether they were in the school at the time or not like Goldsmith no longer was by the time of his arrest. | ||
| [69] | Bradley player | Was ultimately acquitted in his part in the scandal alongside three other Bradley University students that were implicated in the case. However, despite his acquittal, Grover was still permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other Bradley University players involved in the scandal, regardless of whether they were acquitted or not. | |
| Bradley player | Was ultimately acquitted in his part in the scandal alongside three other Bradley University students that were implicated in the case. However, despite his acquittal, Kelly was still permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other Bradley University players involved in the scandal, regardless of whether they were acquitted or not. | ||
| Bradley player | Initially faced three years in prison after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor on accepting bribes from gamblers to hold down scores to Judge Saul S. Streit before praise from Assistant District Attorney Vincent A.G. O'Connor for his cooperation in the case led to him getting a suspended statement instead. Regardless, he was still permanently banned from the NBA afterward alongside the other Bradley University players implicated in this case. Mann was originally selected as the 21st overall pick of the 1951 NBA draft by the original Baltimore Bullets NBA franchise, but never had a chance to play for Baltimore after being drafted by them.[70] | ||
| Bradley player | Initially faced three years in prison after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor on accepting bribes from gamblers to hold down scores to Judge Saul S. Streit before praise from Assistant District Attorney Vincent A.G. O'Connor for his cooperation in the case led to him getting a suspended statement instead (though he would reportedly serve probation in Peoria, Illinois). Regardless, he was still permanently banned from the NBA afterward alongside the other Bradley University players implicated in this case. Melchiorre was originally selected as the #1 pick of the 1951 NBA draft by the original Baltimore Bullets NBA franchise, but never had a chance to play for Baltimore after being drafted by them. | ||
| Bradley player | Was ultimately acquitted in his part in the scandal alongside three other Bradley University students that were implicated in the case. However, despite his acquittal, Preece was still permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other Bradley University players involved in the scandal, regardless of whether they were acquitted or not. Preece was originally selected as the 72nd pick of the 1951 NBA draft by the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (now the Atlanta Hawks), but never had a chance to play for that franchise after being drafted by them.[71] | ||
| Gambler | Was given an indeterminate sentence of up to three years in prison separate from his brother Tony.[72] | ||
| Gambler | Was sentenced to six months in prison separate from his brother Nick. | ||
| Gambler | Was sentenced to around four to seven years in prison. | ||
| Fixer | Was sentenced to around two to three years in prison. | ||
| [73] | Bradley player | Initially faced three years in prison after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor on accepting bribes from gamblers to hold down scores to Judge Saul S. Streit before praise from Assistant District Attorney Vincent A.G. O'Connor for his cooperation in the case led to him getting a suspended statement instead. Regardless, he was still permanently banned from the NBA afterward alongside the other Bradley University players implicated in this case. | |
| Bradley player | Was ultimately acquitted in his part in the scandal alongside three other Bradley University students that were implicated in the case. However, despite his acquittal, Schlictman was still permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other Bradley University players involved in the scandal, regardless of whether they were acquitted or not. | ||
| Kentucky player | Was given a suspended sentence, placed on an indefinite probation period, and was barred from all professional sports play for three years. In addition to that, he was also permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other University of Kentucky players that were implicated in the scandal. Barnstable was originally drafted by the Boston Celtics in the seventh round as the 73rd pick of the 1950 NBA draft, but he never properly played for the Celtics before the scandal broke through to catch him. | ||
| Kentucky player† | Was given a suspended sentence, placed on an indefinite probation period, and was barred from all professional sports play for three years. In addition to that, he was also permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other University of Kentucky players that were implicated in the scandal. | ||
| Kentucky player† | Was given a suspended sentence, placed on an indefinite probation period, and was barred from all professional sports play for three years. In addition to that, he was also permanently banned from the NBA alongside the other University of Kentucky players that were implicated in the scandal. | ||
| Kentucky player | After being discovered to have been another Kentucky player to have taken money to affect the outcome of several college and shave points in relation to the scandal, primarily during a tournament setting, Hirsch and another former teammate of his named Jim Line would admit to taking on bribes and shaving points while in college, as well as trying to implicate Bill Spivey in the event on March 2, 1952. Hirsch would never be formally charged in relation to his point shaving scandal case,[74] [75] but he would be permanently banned from both the NBA and minor league baseball as a first baseman once the discovery came to light.[76] | ||
| Kentucky player | On March 2, 1952, Line and former Kentucky teammate Walter Hirsch admitted to taking money to shave points and affect some games while playing in college, primarily in a tournament setting. Line would also try and implicate Bill Spivey in the case as well. Line was ultimate acquitted in his case,[77] [78] though he was still permanently banned from the NBA due to his association with the scandal. At the time of this revelation coming to light, Line was previously drafted as the 45th pick of the 1950 NBA draft by the Indianapolis Olympians, though he would never have a chance to play for them. | ||
| Kentucky player | After being barred from collegiate play on March 2, 1952 through accusations made by Kentucky teammates despite never being directly implicated in the point shaving case (which subsequently led to the University of Kentucky being suspended from basketball play during the 1952–53 NCAA basketball season), he was originally indicted for perjury by New York District Attorney Frank Hogan before his case resulted in a mistrial and was subsequently dismissed afterward. Despite the mistrial and subsequent dismissal of his situation, Spivey was ultimately permanently banned from the NBA at the time alongside the other University of Kentucky players implicated in this scandal (despite the Cincinnati Royals briefly trying to sign Spivey at one point), though unlike the other players involved, Spivey would sue the NBA and de facto commissioner Maurice Podoloff in 1960 for $800,000 (equivalent to nearly $8.5 million in 2024) before ultimately accepting a settlement of $10,000 (equivalent to $106,140 in 2024). Spivey was eventually able to technically play in the NBA by a loophole of sorts for an All-Star Game organized in Baltimore with the Baltimore Bullets (current Washington Wizards) on February 11, 1968, where he joined the Eastern Basketball League's Baltimore Bullets All-Star team that went up against the original Baltimore Bullets All-Star team. | ||
| Columbia player | While he was never caught during the initial scandal period in 1951, he would be caught during his later years when playing professional basketball for the Fort Wayne Pistons of the NBA. After he got caught gambling during the period before the 1954 NBA All-Star Game took place in January 1954, Molinas was permanently banned from the NBA as a late suspect connected to the scandal alongside him betting on games that he played for the Pistons. Years later, Molinas would be involved as a centerpiece figure in the 1961 NCAA men's basketball gambling scandal that involved 50 players from 27 colleges, including future Hall of Fame players Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown. He would later be given a 10 to 15 year sentence in relation to the 1961 scandal, though he was ultimately paroled after five years spent in prison for that event. |
† – At the time of the scandal, both Ralph Beard and Alex Groza were both playing with the Indianapolis Olympians of the NBA.
Upon giving out his sentences, Judge Saul S. Streit would give out scathing indictments against the roles of college officials and coaches with their corruption on not just college basketball, but also college athletics as a whole, including college football. Amongst them were comparisons of how institutions like the aforementioned Bradley University and University of Kentucky, as well as the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, and the University of Oklahoma made LIU Brooklyn look like a small-time operation by comparison due to their overreliance of commercialization of athletics.[79] When Streit sentenced the Bradley players involved in the scandal on December 7, 1951, he would also vigorously castigate Bradley University President David B. Owen, who had accompanied the team during all of their away games; blaming him and the university's booster club for openly giving money to players after games, paying for bogus jobs, and creating an atmosphere at the university "inimical to sound educational practices".[80] However, Streit would give his most damning words against Kentucky following the sentencing of Barnstable, Beard, and Groza on April 29, 1952; during that day, he would issue at 63-page report that included a 15,000-word litany of abuses against that university's basketball and football programs alike, explaining the magnitude of issues involved with the "money-mad athletics" programs in explicit detail to the courtroom. He would also label the university as "a highly systematized, professionalized, and commercialized enterprise" for a collegiate program and that they were "an acme of commercialization" that had budgets comparable to that of even professional sports franchises.[81]
The scandal had long-lasting effects for some of the individuals involved, as well as college basketball itself. The individual players that the scandal would affect the most were Sherman White by going from a potential territorial pick by the New York Knicks in 1951 and being so close to breaking the college points record at the time to spending a year in prison, Gene Melchiorre from going to a #1 pick in the 1951 NBA draft to seeing probation in the state of Illinois, Bill Spivey from losing a professional career in basketball due to being slighted by some teammates of his, and Ralph Beard and Alex Groza for both losing their professional basketball careers and potentially owning an NBA team in their futures (with said NBA team also folding in relation to the players' unique situation at hand). While Eddie Gard would later play semi-professional basketball in the summer with players like Jack Molinas and Al Seiden,[82] he would also show major regret for his involvement in the scandal later in his life, to the point where he would deny participating in documentaries relating to the event since it would open up old wounds again.[83] 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" on the side of their collegiate careers.[84] However, those warnings would only prove to be a short-term fix since the problem would still continue behind the scenes even a decade later through the 1961 NCAA University Division men's basketball gambling scandal. CCNY head coach Nat Holman later wrote in 1954 while with a gathering of New Jersey writers that gambling in college basketball was as rampant as ever before and warned that the college basketball game would once again be tainted by another scandal sooner or later.
While Kentucky was forced to cancel one season of play following the discovery of the university's involvement in the scandal and other problematic interests emphasizing sports over everything else in their program (1952–53), it was the only program that was not permanently hobbled by the scandal. The scandal would force head coach Adolph Rupp to renege on early plans to resign from coaching early in the 1950s for health reasons and continue working as a head coach until 1972, winning one more NCAA championship in 1958 in a sense of redemption for him and his university.[85] Furthermore, to date, Bradley is the only other affected school to have appeared in a final major media poll since the scandal came and went. However, none of the programs would suffer more than CCNY, LIU Brooklyn, and NYU, with Manhattan College being the only New York program to still maintain good standing as a Division I NCAA program despite them being the starting point of the scandal. Following the discovery of several other irregularities, CCNY deemphasized its athletic program entirely and eventually dropped down to what is now a Division III program. Furthermore, on the month of November 1952, the New York Board of Education's Committee on Intercollegiate Basketball made even more discoveries that would ultimately hurt the CCNY program (such as 14 fraudulent transcripts made post-World War II, creating an illegal recruiting mechanism in the Student Athletic Academic Council, and participating in plans for a South American tour that would have paid players there) and initially caused Nat Holman and assistant coach and Head Administrator of the Hygiene Department Bobby Sand to resign from their positions before ultimately bringing them back with Holman exonerated in 1954 for everything outside of bad judgment and Sand being demoted to other duties instead.[86] Meanwhile, LIU Brooklyn shut down its entire athletic program (which was once headlined by head coach Clair Bee and had its basketball program nearly continuously run under a deficit from 1933 until 1951 despite once considering trying out for the 1936 Summer Olympics before opting out due to Adolf Hitler's policies on Jewish people in Germany[87]) from 1951 to 1957 and did not return to Division I sports properly until the 1980s. Not only that, following the scandal coming to light, Bee would be fired as the university's basketball coach, with him later taking on the head coach role for the original Baltimore Bullets NBA team from 1952 until their final full season of existence in 1954 (they would play 11 more games without Bee coaching them before folding, with the NBA not officially recording that specific history directly). Starting on July 2019, Long Island University would go and rebrand the long-standing LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds team name by merging it with their Division II team held in another location under the LIU name, the LIU Post Pioneers held in Brookville, New York, to become a new Division I program unifying the two teams together to become the LIU Sharks. Finally, following a surprise Final Four appearance and a subsequent college scandal relating to New York University in the early 1960s, the Violets would disband their sports programs for financial reasons in 1971 before reinstating their programs in 1983 as a Division III operation similar to CCNY.
See main article: City Dump: The Story of the 1951 CCNY Basketball Scandal. 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.[88] [89] [90] Initially, six of the surviving point-shavers of the time and Eddie Gard were discussed to have been involved in the documentary, but they would all back out, with most of them looking for financial compensation for participating in the documentary. However, Junius Kellogg and now former Assistant District Attorney Vincent A.G. O'Connor would appear in the documentary.
The story is also detailed in The First Basket, a 2008 documentary covering the history of Jewish players in basketball.
The scandal is referenced in the HBO series The Sopranos during the episode "Rat Pack", 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, was based on the scandal.