Corruption: Basketball History / MSG / NYC and Beyond

[SoonerTraveler]

The following is a good read for those of you interested in the history of college basketball, especially considering current events.


The Big Fix
Looking back at college basketball’s first great scandal, which dethroned the game from its place atop New York sports.
James Piereson / October 1, 2017

https://www.city-journal.org/html/big-fix-15466.html

[EXCERPT] ...
Athletic officials blamed the scandals on a corrupt city environment and pointed to the resort hotels as a secondary source. Many coaches and journalists across the country felt that the problem was isolated to New York City and the Garden. Adolph Rupp, the veteran coach at the University of Kentucky, declared that gamblers could not touch his players with a “ten-foot pole.”

Yet Rupp and others spoke too soon, for the betting scandal soon spread to America’s heartland. By the end of the year, 32 players from seven schools were charged with dumping games or shaving points between 1947 and 1950, including three players from Kentucky’s national championship teams of 1948 and 1949. As a result, the NCAA and the Southeastern Conference suspended Kentucky’s basketball program for the 1952–53 season. Unapologetic, Rupp remained as Kentucky’s coach until he retired in 1972.

[EXCERPT ....
The coaches fared better. Holman, Bee, Rupp, and the others denied any knowledge of their players’ illicit activities, even when their teams lost games that they should have won or squandered large leads. Like everyone else, the coaches heard rumors and accusations about fixes and payoffs but maintained that they had never believed that their own players would be involved. The New York Board of Education dismissed Holman, charging him with “neglect of duty” for failure to supervise his players and to report evidence of wrongdoing. An independent panel exonerated him, though, allowing him to continue his career (he retired in 1960). In 1977, City College named its gymnasium in his honor. McGuire, whom some saw as fortunate to escape the scandal, decamped the next year from St. John’s to the University of North Carolina, where he won the 1957 NCAA championship with a starting five recruited entirely from New York City high schools. He then lost his job in 1961 in a dispute with the chancellor over accusations of recruiting violations and rumors (subsequently proved) of point-shaving by his players.