March 28, 1950: City College's Double

March 28, 1950: City College of New York defeats Bradley University, of Peoria, Illinois, 71-68 at Madison Square Garden in New York, to win the NCAA Basketball Tournament. They are the 1st team based in New York City to do so.

On March 18, also at The Garden -- "the Old Garden," at 49th Street and 8th Avenue, replaced in 1968 by "the New Garden," at 32nd Street and 7th Avenue -- they won the Final of the National Invitation Tournament, beating Bradley in that game as well, 69-61. This made them the 1st team ever to win the NCAA and the NIT in the same season.

From its founding in 1938 until 2022, the NIT was played entirely at Madison Square Garden. As a result, in the 1949-50 season, CCNY played 20 of their 29 games at The Garden, going 24-5.

A little over 6 months later, the Yankees won the World Series. This marked the 1st time a city had both the NCAA Champions and the World Series winners in the same calendar year. It's only happened one other time since: Los Angeles in 1965, with UCLA and the Dodgers.

CCNY was coached by Nat Holman, himself a great player in the 1920s, with one of the earliest great professional teams, the Original Celtics. Longtime St. John's University coach Joe Lapchick was a teammate. Aside from the Celtics name, the Boston team that was founded with the NBA in 1946 has no connection to them.

The leading players on the 1950 CCNY team were center Ed Roman, forwards Irwin Dambrot and Ed Warner, and guards Floyd Layne and Alvin Roth. They were a multiracial, multiethnic, multifaith team, truly representative of what was good about New York.

Unfortunately, they were also a part of the seamier side of the City. The following season, they were enmeshed in a point-shaving scandal that could have ruined college basketball, and pretty much wrecked it in New York.

As a result of the scandal, CCNY were banned from ever playing at The Garden again. And the NCAA ruled that teams could only play in the NCAA or the NIT, not both. CCNY's double will remain the only one, forever. And any pretensions the NIT still had to being the bigger of the 2 tournaments were shattered.

CCNY, and their arch-rivals, New York University (NYU, also based in Manhattan), cancelled their programs, only to come back later as NCAA Division III teams. Long Island University (LIU, in Downtown Brooklyn) and Fordham (The Bronx) came back to Division I, but have never really been the same. St. John's (Jamaica, Queens) took about a decade to recover, before Lapchick put together one more good team in the mid-1960s, and Lou Carnesecca brought them back to the national spotlight in the 1980s.

NYU made what would now be called the Final Four in 1960, and St. John's in 1985. These remain, through 2022, the last 2 Final Four berths by New York City teams. From the New York side of New Jersey, Princeton made it in 1965, Rutgers in 1976, and Seton Hall in 1989.

For the record, the following schools have won the NCAA and the NIT, but not in the same season:

* Utah: NCAA 1944; NIT 1947.

* Kentucky: NIT 1946, 1976; NCAA 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1978, 1996, 1998, 2012.

* Holy Cross: NCAA 1947, NIT 1954.

* La Salle: NIT 1952; NCAA 1954.

* University of San Francisco: NIT 1949; NCAA 1955, 1956.

* North Carolina: NCAA 1957, 1982, 1993, 2005, 2009, 2017; NIT 1971.

* Indiana: NCAA 1940, 1953, 1976, 1981, 1987; NIT 1979.

* Louisville: NIT 1956; NCAA 1980, 1986, 2013.

* UCLA: NCAA 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1995; NIT 1985.

* Ohio State: NCAA 1960; NIT 1986, 2008.

* Michigan: NIT 1984, 1997, 2004; NCAA 1989.

* Stanford: NCAA 1942; NIT 1991, 2012, 2015.

* Villanova: NCAA 1985, 2016, 2018; NCAA 1994.

* Connecticut: NIT 1988; NCAA 1999, 2004, 2011, 2014.

* Maryland: NIT 1972; NCAA 2002.

* Virginia: NIT 1980, 1992; NCAA 2019.

* Baylor: NIT 2013; NCAA 2021.

Holman called Dambrot "the greatest player I ever coached." But Dambrot was 1 of 7 players caught up in the scandal in 1951, all pleading guilty to misdemeanor conspiracy charges, and all (including Dambrot) except one receiving suspended sentences.

Dambrot became a dentist, and most of the guilty players also went on to careers that provided some sort of service to their communities, which speaks to the true measure of their character, as well as to Holman's teaching. As of March 28, 2022, Layne and Ron Nadell are still alive. (UPDATE: Layne died in 2024, leaving Nadell as the last survivor.)

An interesting postscript: In 1954, Bradley got back into the NCAA Final, but lost to La Salle University. So now, they had lost to the first team from New York and the first team from Philadelphia to win the NCAA title.

One more note: Later in 1950, the New York Yankees won the World Series. This made New York the 1st city to win the NCAA Tournament and a major league championship in the same calendar year.

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March 28, 1950 was a Tuesday. Major League Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was in the off-season. There were 2 games played in the NBA that night. The Minneapolis Lakers beat the Fort Wayne Pistons, 89-82 at the gymnasium of North Side High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And the Indianapolis Olympians beat the Anderson Packers, another Indiana team, 77-74 at the Butler Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. (It's now named the Hinkle Fieldhouse.)

This was also the day that the Stanley Cup Playoffs got underway. The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 5-0 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. But the Wings would beat the Leafs, and then the New York Rangers for the Cup, despite losing Gordie Howe to a scary head injury that could have killed him, or at least ended his career. But, 30 years later, he was still playing professional hockey. I have a separate entry for this event.

January 4, 2010: College Football's "NIT"

January 4, 2010: The Fiesta Bowl is held, at the University of Phoenix Stadium -- now named State Farm Stadium -- in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona. This game is not for college football's national championship. But there were those who believed it should have been.

Boise State University, home of Albertsons Stadium and its garish blue artificial field known as the "Smurf Turf," were the Champions of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC). They were 13-0, having beaten then-Number 16 Oregon at home, Miami University of Ohio at home, Fresno State away, Bowling Green away, the University of California at Davis at home, the University of Tulsa away, Hawaii away, San Jose State at home, Louisiana Tech away, arch-rival Idaho at home, Utah State away, Nevada at home, and New Mexico State at home.

They had risen to Number 6 in the country. However, the WAC was not one of the "Power Five Conferences" that tended to get its teams admitted to the Bowl Championship Series: The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the Big Ten Conference, the Big Twelve Conference, and the Pacific-Twelve Conference (Pac-12). And, with only 1 win over a ranked team, it was decided that the Broncos weren't worthy of the Playoff.

Texas Christian University, a.k.a. TCU, had once been a member of the Southwest Conference (SWC), one of college football's "major leagues." But that league had folded in 1996, and so the Fort Worth-based Horned Frogs moved on, eventually landing in the Mountain West Conference, a school that had grown out of the WAC.

In the 2009 season, they had beaten Virginia away, Texas State at home, Clemson away, arch-rival Southern Methodist University (SMU) at home, the Air Force Academy away, Colorado State at home, then-Number 16 Brigham Young University (BYU) away, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) at home, San Diego State away, then-Number 16 Utah at home, Wyoming away, and New Mexico at home. They had risen to Number 3, and they did have wins over 2 ranked teams, 1 more than Boise State.

There were 3 other undefeated teams heading into the bowl games. Alabama was ranked Number 1, and Texas Number 2, and so they were sent to the BCS National Championship Game, to be held in the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California. Number 3 TCU and Number 6 Boise State would have to settle for the Fiesta Bowl. The University of Cincinnati also had to settle: They faced Number 5 Florida in the Superdome in New Orleans.

Since neither the WAC nor the MWC, which grew out of the WAC, is a "Power Five" conference, this was a consolation prize: Whoever won was still going to be undefeated, but wouldn't get to be called National Champions.

It was, essentially, college football's version of college basketball's secondary tournament, the National Invitational Tournament (NIT). As far as I know, no one publicly called it it that at the time, but among the taglines used were the Separate But Equal Bowl, the Quarantine Bowl, the Fiasco Bowl, and the BCS Kids' Table.

Boise State took an early lead when Brandyn Thompson intercepted an Andy Dalton pass, and returned it 51 yards for a touchdown. Kyle Brotzman added a field goal in the 2nd quarter. In the last minute of the 1st half, Dalton threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Curtis Clay, bringing the Frogs to within 10-7. Late in the 3rd quarter, Ross Evans tied it with a 29-yard field goal.

Midway through the 4th quarter, the score was still 10-0. Boise State had 4th down on their own 33-yard line, but pulled a fake punt: Brotzman threw a 30-yard pass to Kyle Efaw. The drive continued until Doug Martin ran the ball in from 2 yards, and Boise State hung on to win, 17-10.

Despite remaining undefeated, the Broncos only rose to Number 4 in the polls. Alabama beat Texas, 37-21, and were crowned National Champions. All Boise State could do was complain.

Florida ended Cincinnati's pretentions to the National Championship, 51-24. Still, Boise State fans thought they deserved a shot at Alabama -- a team with 6 All-Americans, including the Heisman Trophy winner, running back Mark Ingram Jr. Could the Broncos have upset the Crimson Tide? College football had seen bigger upsets before, and has since. But such games considered upsets for a reason.

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January 4, 2010 was a Monday. That was the only bowl game played that day. There was no Monday Night Football game in the NFL. Baseball was out of season.

There were 4 games played in the NBA:

* The Miami Heat beat the Atlanta Hawks, 92-75 at the American Airlines Center (now the Kaseya Center) in Miami.

* The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Chicago Bulls, 98-85 at the United Center in Chicago.

* The New Orleans Hornets beat the Utah Jazz, 91-87 at the Delta Center (then known as the EnergySolutions Arena) in Salt Lake city.

* And the Los Angeles Clippers beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 105-95 at the Staples Center (now the Crypto.com Arena) in Los Angeles.

Two games were played in the NHL. In an "Original Six" matchup, the New York Rangers beat the Boston Bruins, 3-2 at Madison Square Garden. And the Los Angeles Kings beat their arch-rivals, the San Jose Sharks, 6-2 at the SAP Center in San Jose. (The Anaheim Ducks' arch-rivals are the Kings, but not vice versa.)

This was also the day that the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, shattering the record for the tallest building in the world. I have a separate entry for that event.