"CCNY versus Kentucky, 1951. Nobody beat the spread. I bought a black Fleetwood." - Junior Soprano, The Sopranos, crediting New York mob boss Carmine Lupertazzi with inventing point shaving
In the spring of 1950, the City College of New York Beavers did something that no team in the history of college basketball had ever done, and that no team has done since: they won both the National Invitation Tournament and the NCAA national championship in the same season. They defeated Bradley University in both finals, both held at Madison Square Garden. They beat a Kentucky team - ranked number one in the country, the previous year's national champion - whose coach Adolph Rupp refused to shake hands with them before the game. CCNY won 89-50, the worst defeat of Rupp's career. Coach Nat Holman appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Less than a year later, three of those players were arrested at Penn Station at 1:30 in the morning, returning from a road game against Temple. The charges were point-shaving. They had been paid $1,500 per player per game - equivalent to over $19,000 today - by a jeweler-gambler named Salvatore Sollazzo to keep their winning margins inside the gambling lines. They confessed.
The investigation that followed revealed that 86 games had been fixed in 23 different cities, involving 32 players from seven colleges across a three-year period. The scandal implicated Long Island University, NYU, Manhattan College, Bradley University, the University of Toledo - and the University of Kentucky, whose players had been paid to throw their NIT game against Loyola. The team that refused to shake CCNY's hands had players who had fixed a game.
The whistleblower was Junius Kellogg, a Manhattan College player who was approached with a bribe, almost accepted it, and then went to his coach and wore a wire. The investigator was District Attorney Frank Hogan. Salvatore Sollazzo received twelve years in prison.
CCNY was barred from postseason play, dropped from Division I to Division III, and banned from Madison Square Garden forever. All implicated players were banned from the NBA. Sherman White of Long Island University - who was 77 points from breaking the single-season scoring record when everything ended - never played professionally.
The scandal ended New York City's dominance of college basketball. The city that had produced the only double champion in the sport's history has not produced a major college basketball program since.
Book 4 of the Off the Court series: basketball's criminal cases told in full.
