The CCNY point shaving scandal of 1950-1951 was a college basketball point shaving gambling scandal that involved seven schools in all, with four in Greater New York and three in the Midwest. However, most of the key players in the scandal were players at City College of New York.
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The scandal involved the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and National Invitation Tournament (NIT) champion City College of New York (CCNY). CCNY had won the 1950 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament and the 1950 National Invitation Tournament the previous spring over Bradley University. The scandal involved the Beavers and at least six other schools, including four in the New York City area; CCNY, along with Manhattan College, New York University and Long Island University. It spread out of New York City to Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, the University of Kentucky and the University of Toledo. The scandal would spread to 33 players and involve the world of organized crime. CCNY was eventually banned from playing at Madison Square Garden, although the coach, Nat Holman, would be cleared of any wrongdoing.[1][2][3]
The scandal first came to light when New York City District Attorney Frank Hogan arrested seven men in January 1951, including All-America forward Ed Warner, center Ed Roman, and guard Al Roth, the three stars of the CCNY 1950 National Championship team, after setting up an undercover, or "sting", operation.[4]
Jack Molinas would not be caught in 1951, but after he was suspended for gambling by the NBA, he would be linked back to the 1951 scandal by betting on his then college team Columbia University.[5]
The scandal had long-lasting effects for some of the individuals involved, as well as college basketball itself. Coaches, long after the scandal was over, would warn their players what could happen to their lives if they chose to make some "fast money" now.[6] In the wake of the scandal, the NCAA canceled the Kentucky Wildcats' 1952-53 season.
Additionally, many collegiate administrators felt the atmosphere at Madison Square Garden, and New York City in general, lent itself to corruption. Largely due to fears of a repeat occurrence, the NCAA Tournament (which soon supplanted the NIT as college basketball's premier postseason tournament) would not return to metropolitan New York until 1982, when the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island hosted early-round games of the 1982 tournament. The Final Four wouldn't return to the New York area until the 1996 Final Four was held at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
While Kentucky received a one-season ban on all play, 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 didn't return to Division I until the 1980s.
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.[7][8]
The story is also detailed in The First Basket, the first and most comprehensive documentary on the history of Jews and basketball.