Cheating the Spread: Gamblers, Point Shavers, and Game Fixers in College Football and Basketball

6. College Basketball’s Incurable Disease: The 1961 Basketball Scandal

six College Basketball’s Incurable Disease The 1961 Basketball Scandal Corruption in college basketball became more rather than less pervasive after the 1951 scandal as many major colleges continued with their self-imposed mandate to provide professionalized entertainment for the American public. Critics of college sports viewed the fixing of basketball games as a by-product of the corruption that had become endemic in the sport. The 1951 scandal marked the point where the public began to accept betting scandals in college sports as no different from recruiting violations or subsidizing players. When media voices asked why colleges did not reform their athletic programs, college sports’ apologists placed much of the blame on individual players and on increasingly brazen and unscrupulous gamblers. Game fixing continued unabated. 88 Chapter 6 After escaping Judge Saul S. Streit’s stinging criticism of college basketball programs implicated in the 1951 scandal, Columbia head basketball coach Lou Rossini must have felt a sense of relief. His star player, future all-American sophomore Jack Molinas, had just led the Lions to an undefeated season, and 1951–52 seemed just as promising. But during that season, Molinas would continue his career as one of the master fixers in the history of college sports. And, like Adolph Rupp, Nat Holman, and Clair Bee, Rossini would do his part, consciously or subconsciously ignoring the signs. In a February 1952 game at Holy Cross, gambler Joey Hacken, a longtime friend of Molinas’s, appeared at Columbia’s bench just before tip-off. Hacken would certainly have been noticeable, as he was usually unshaven and dressed in a long, frayed overcoat with one or two newspapers stuffed in a pocket. Hacken covertly signaled to Molinas that the spread favored Holy Cross by 2½ points. At the first timeout of the game, Molinas spotted Hacken subtly gesturing to him from the drinking fountain. Molinas left the court to get a drink and was informed by Hacken that the point spread now favored Holy Cross to win by at least 4 points. What coach allows a player to saunter away from a timeout to meet with a character like Joey Hacken? Rossini, a New York City native, would seem to have been particularly able to guess what Molinas’s unsavory friend was up to. With the score tied in the last few seconds of regulation, Rossini directed Molinas to set a screen on a teammate’s man, freeing him to shoot the possible winning field goal. As the ball left the shooter’s hand, Molinas jumped and raised his arm, slightly brushing the ball. The shot did not go in. In the timeout before the overtime began, Rossini asked, “What was that all about, Jack?” Molinas said that he turned into the man he screened and had to jump, trying to avoid being called for an offensive foul. Columbia lost by 5 points in overtime, and Molinas and Hacken each won ten thousand dollars.1 Rossini’s inaction contributed to Molinas’s increased fixing of games, which would not be discovered until 1961. If Molinas had been tailed or his phone wiretapped in 1952, his meetings and conversations with Hacken and other gamblers would likely have been uncovered. St. John’s coach Joe Lapchick faced the same predicament as Rossini. Lapchick had been one of the nation’s best players in the 1920s with the College Basketball’s Incurable Disease 89 Original Celtics and was known for his impeccable honesty, fairness, and unflinching respect for basketball. He took over as St. John’s head coach in 1936, left to coach the NBA’s New York Knicks in 1947, and returned in 1956, inheriting two seniors, Michael Parenti and William Chrystal, who had been manipulating final scores since their 1954–55 sophomore season. Lapchick had run a clean program in his first tenure at St. John’s, and he was unable to believe that two of his players were fixing games. Rated No. 8 in a preseason poll, the Redmen lost two preseason games, one to 11-point underdog Utah and another to BYU. These losses were followed by rumors that Parenti and Chrystal were fixing games with Molinas’s friend, Hacken.2 Newspaper writers and bookies confirmed to Lapchick that at least two of his players were fixing games, and Gus Alfieri, a sophomore on the team, and his teammates also reported the chicanery to the coach. And Lapchick was assuredly...