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

1. Creating a Game for Gamblers: The Rise of College Basketball

one Creating a Game for Gamblers The Rise of College Basketball After its invention by James Naismith in 1891 at the Springfield, Massachusetts , YMCA, basketball quickly became popular with young men and women, especially in urban areas that lacked space to play games such as baseball and football.1 Sensing its appeal to young people, high schools and colleges quickly incorporated the sport into their physical education and competitive athletics programs. By the early 1900s, many colleges sponsored teams that competed against YMCA, club, and professional teams.2 Because colleges during this period did not subsidize the sport at the same level as football, college basketball players often competed in professional leagues, where they consorted with gamblers, even walking among the spectators to place bets on upcoming games.3 As basketball’s popularity increased, colleges began to view the sport as a source of income. Large gymnasiums and field houses appeared on campuses, and with more spectators and more money, more gambling appeared.4 In an early instance of gambling on the college game, Harry 2 Chapter 1 Scholler, Wabash College’s athletic director, reported that a professional gambler from Crawfordsville, Indiana, had attempted to bribe Benny Devol , a Wabash College player, before a 31 January 1927 game with Franklin College of Indianapolis; Devol scored more points than the entire Franklin team in a 47–32 Wabash victory.5 If gamblers were attempting to rig games in rural Indiana, they might have been doing so anywhere basketball was played. Yet court documents, newspapers, sports history books, magazines, personal memoirs, and other sources show little evidence of fixing in college basketball games until the mid-1940s. Professional gamblers, bookmakers, and players rarely memorialize their illegal gambling activities . However, the individuals who comprised most of the illegal bookie population between the two world wars were not the stereotypical gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s. Since bookmaking success required good business sense, most bookies differed little from the owners of neighborhood barbershops, bars, or restaurants. Because of the Great Depression and the anti-Prohibition sentiment of the period, many bookies began as bootleggers and expanded their businesses into gambling and prostitution . Needing a reputation for honesty, the money to quickly pay off winning bettors, protection from reform-minded political administrations , and the ability to spot rigged games to avoid bankruptcy, bookies ironically became law enforcement’s first line of defense in combating sports bribery.6 In 1936, as college football and professional baseball suffered an economic downturn, John L. Griffith, editor of the coaches’ magazine Athletic Journal, noted basketball’s “ascendancy to the ranks of the elite,” with more players participating and more spectators attending games.7 Several factors were responsible for the meteoric rise of the indoor game. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s public works programs and various state agencies constructed new civic auditoriums, college field houses, and high school gymnasiums, and by 1937, the Works Progress Administration had budgeted about $500 million for new recreational facilities, including outdoor neighborhood basketball courts.8 Seeking to fill the increased number of seats, college basketball rule makers aimed at creating “point-a-minute teams” by introducing a number of changes. The ball had to be advanced to the midcourt line in ten Creating a Game for Gamblers 3 seconds, and the number of timeouts, personal fouls, and substitutions were increased. The ball was made two and half inches smaller in circumference and two ounces lighter, and its laces were removed, making it easier to handle. The three-second rule was introduced to allow more play in the lane, and the center jump after each basket was discarded in 1937 to force both teams to play hard the entire game.9 The size of the court was increased to ninety-four by fifty feet, encouraging the fast break popularized by Purdue coach Ward “Piggy” Lambert and executed by allAmerican John Wooden.10 Teams soon were scoring more than a point a minute: Rhode Island State’s racehorse offense averaged an unheard-of 81 points per game in 1945. Teams also discarded the two-handed set shot, which featured one player holding the ball with both hands and planting both feet firmly on the floor behind a screen of as many as three men. Players such as Jumping Johnny Adams at the University of Arkansas were using the jump shot, as was Jumpin’ Joe Fulks from Murray State, who became the NBA’s first outstanding...