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

8. Student-Athletes and Campus Bookies: Basketball Scandals of the 1980s and 1990s

eight Student-Athletes and Campus Bookies Basketball Scandals of the 1980s and 1990s In 1975, University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant clearly enunciated his view of the role of athletes at a major university: I used to go along with the idea that football players on scholarship were “student-athletes,” which is what the NCAA calls them. Meaning a student first, an athlete second. We were kidding ourselves, trying to make it more palatable to the academicians. We don’t have to say that and we shouldn’t. At the level we play the boy is really an athlete first and a student second. He’s there as an emissary of the school, paid with a scholarship to perform a very important function . He represents the students, the administration, the alumni, everybody. Sometimes before millions of people, the fact that he’s a student, the second part of the deal, is the only meaningful way we have to pay him.1 This view was also widespread in college basketball. As Peter Golenbock showed in Personal Fouls: The Broken Promises and Shattered Dreams Student-Athletes and Campus Bookies 129 of Big-Time Basketball at Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State, academically unqualified basketball players entering a four-year institution were thrust into an environment in which they were supposed to be like any other student but quickly realized that they had been “paid with a scholarship to perform a very important function.” Colleges recruited and paid thousands of dollars in scholarships to top players to fill arenas, win games, and advance to the NCAA tournament, appearing on television as many times as possible, on any night of the week, notwithstanding college courses, breaks, or holidays. At the same time, gambling became increasingly accepted among college students. Since wagering on college sports was illegal in all states except Nevada, shady bookmakers reaped immense sums from the public ’s interest in betting on college football and basketball. By the early 1980s, the NCAA relied on the federal, state, and local governments to enforce and prosecute gambling-related crimes because the association, along with the conferences and colleges’ athletic establishments, found it impossible to prevent game fixing. Most coaches had convinced the public that it was impossible to detect the rigging of basketball games, a viewpoint that only encouraged anyone wanting to fix games. A new generation of college student gamblers on sports would contribute to the decades-old scourge of game rigging, leading once again to federal and state investigations and prosecutions. The 1985 Tulane basketball point-shaving scandal can largely be explained by the university’s quest to return to a level of athletic prominence it had once held in the SEC. The Harvard of the South wanted to emulate colleges such as Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford, and Rice, which had earned high marks for their athletic programs without compromising their academic reputations. However, Tulane’s athletic programs were losing money, and the university could not afford to recruit nationally prominent athletes. To get the best athletes yet shield its reputation, the university reinstated physical education as a major in the University College, a continuing-studies division that was designed to serve part-time and adult students. Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores re- 130 Chapter 8 quired for acceptance in University College were 200 points lower than the campuswide average, and the college was a source of faculty resentment . Eighty percent of the university’s football and basketball players were enrolled there.2 During the 1984–85 basketball season, four of Tulane’s starters fixed two games and planned to fix a third. The players included potential first-round NBA pick John “Hot Rod” Williams, who enrolled with SAT scores close to the minimum of 200 in English and approximately 270 in math, half the average of students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.3 Other players involved included senior forwards Jon Johnson and Clyde Eads, sophomore point guard David Dominique, and senior reserve guard Bobby Thompson.4 The plan to fix games was hatched when Eads approached Tulane student Gary Krantz to purchase cocaine. Within two weeks, their conversations turned to fixing. After Krantz proposed that Eads and Johnson rig the Southern Mississippi game on 2 February, the players approached Williams, who readily agreed and recruited Dominique. Two other Tulane students, Mark Olensky and David Rothenburg, joined the scheme.5 Tulane covered the spread of 10...