October 20, 1951: The College Basketball Point-Shaving Scandal

Alex Groza

October 20, 1951: Alex Groza, Ralph Beard and Dale Barnstable of the Indianapolis Olympians are arrested for taking bribes from gamblers to "shave points" while they were at the University of Kentucky. When the dust settled in 1952, they were banned from the NBA for life. UK got its 1952-53 season canceled, and was banned from competing in the NCAA Tournament and the NIT in 1954.

Ralph Beard

Barnstable allegedly took $500 ($5,700), but never confessed. Nor did Groza, whose alleged "cut" was never publicly revealed.

Dale Barnstable

Beard admitted that he took $700 -- just under $8,000 in 2022 money -- but denied that he had ever shaved points in a game. He claimed that Frank Hogan, the Manhattan District Attorney, conspired with Podoloff of the NBA and Cardinal Francis Spellman, the Archbishop of New York, to go after Midwestern players in an effort to protect players at Catholic colleges.

Beard may have had a point, for want of a better choice of words. The point-shaving scandal also devastated the programs at New York's 3 main non-Catholic basketball schools. City College of New York won both the NCAA Tournament and the NIT in 1950, but some of its players were accused, and the program was never the same again. Nor were their arch-rivals, New York University. Nor was the leading program in Brooklyn, Long Island University.

But the leading Catholic programs in New York? Fordham University in The Bronx wasn't targeted, but that didn't matter much, because they weren't all that successful in basketball. Same with another Bronx school, Manhattan College, a Catholic school that had, as their name suggests, once been based in Manhattan. But St. John's University, in Queens, was the only successful New York City basketball program to emerge from the scandal unscathed and still winning.

If Spellman and Hogan conspired to knock off CCNY, NYU and LIU, while protecting St. John's and Fordham, then they were doing more to "fix" entire college basketball seasons, and defraud young men out of their entire careers, than organized crime had done to fix individual games.

An aside: When John F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960, at a time when no Catholic had ever been elected to that office, he asked Spellman what he should say if someone asks him whether he believes, as Catholic doctrine says, that the Pope is infallible in matters of faith. Spellman said of the Pope at the time, Pius XII, formerly named Eugenio Pacelli and a native of Rome, "All I know is, he keeps calling me 'Spillman.'" Spellman now has high schools named after him in The Bronx, and in Brockton, Massachusetts, hometown of champion boxers Rocky Marciano and Marvelous Marvin Hagler.

Kentucky, still banned from the postseason at that point, went 25-0 in 1954, and the Helms Foundation declared them -- not NCAA Champion LaSalle or NIT Champion Holy Cross -- the National Champions.

Groza, brother of Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Lou Groza, would later coach in college and in the ABA. Beard tried to play professional baseball, but his gambling connection got him banned from that sport as well. He became a scout for the ABA's Kentucky Colonels, and worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Barnstable wasn't playing in the pros anyway, but had gotten a job as a high school coach in Louisville, and was fired from that job as a result of the scandal. He later became a successful seller of air filters, and won senior golf tournaments. But none of the 3 were were ever involved in the NBA again, as their bans were never lifted.

Groza died in 1995, Beard in 2007, Barnstable in 2019. Though Groza's Number 15 and Beard's Number 12 were both retired by their school, and each lived to see the honor, neither has ever been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Barnstable's Number 18 has not been retired.

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October 20, 1951 was a Saturday. It was also the date of the Johnny Bright Incident, for which I have a separate entry. Drake University of Des Moines, Iowa played football against Oklahoma A&M – the name was changed to Oklahoma State in 1958 – at Lewis Field in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Drake quarterback Johnny Bright, one of the 1st black players to receive serious consideration for the Heisman Trophy, was assaulted by white A&M defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith. Smith knocked Bright unconscious 3 times in the 1st 7 minutes of the game, the last time breaking his jaw. A&M won the game, 27-14. It was Drake's 1st loss of the season.

The biggest game of the day came at California Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, where Number 11 USC upset Number 1 California, 21-14. Number 2 Tennessee beat Alabama, 27-13 at Legion Field in Birmingham. (The Vols winning this traditional 3rd Saturday in October game wasn't so rare back then.) Tennessee would remain undefeated until blowing the National Championship by losing to Maryland in the Sugar Bowl.

Number 3 Michigan State beat Penn State, 32-21 at old Beaver Field in State College, Pennsylvania. Number 4 Texas was shocked by Arkansas, 16-14 at Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.

Notre Dame beat the University of Pittsburgh, 33-0 at Pitt Stadium. Harvard beat Army, 22-21 at Harvard Stadium in Boston. The University of San Francisco, putting together an undefeated season that would nonetheless see them end with a ranking of only Number 14, beat fellow Catholic school Fordham, 32-26 at Randall's Island Stadium (later Downing Stadium) in the East River.

New York University lost to Holy Cross, 53-6 at Fitton Field in Worcester, Massachusetts. NYU played one more season of football, winning just 2 more games, and dropped their program. Columbia lost to Penn, 28-13 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.

Princeton, with the aforementioned Heisman winner Kazmaier, went undefeated, finishing as the Number 5 team in the country. On October 20, they beat Lafayette, 60-7 at Palmer Stadium. And Rutgers lost to Lehigh, 21-6 at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway, New Jersey.

The baseball season had ended 10 days earlier, with the New York Yankees beating the New York Giants in Game 6 of the World Series. The NBA season didn't begin until November 1. Only 2 NHL games were played:

* The New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Nick Mickoski scored the winner for the Broadway Blueshirts with 3:15 left, to beat the defending Stanley Cup Champions.

* And the Detroit Red Wings beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. This would be repeated in that season's Stanley Cup Finals, as the Wings swept the Habs.

Also, Arsenal beat Charlton Athletic, 3-1 at The Valley in Southeast London. Also in English soccer, Claudio Ranieri, the Italian manager who led Leicester City to the 2016 Premier League title, was born.