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This was a companion piece to my article about Columbia football. Columbia Basketball Last Sunday, the National Football League playoffs were building in drama.The Indianapolis Colts were challenging the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Green Bay Packers were testing the Philadelphia Eagles. So naturally, I was at home watching football on television. Right? Wrong! Actually, I was at Levien Gym on the Columbia University campus,watching a basketball game between my alma mater and FarleighDickinson . Columbia’s basketball history began in 1900 and, by late 1903, the Lions were a powerhouse.Throw out the rebuilding season of 1907–08, and Columbia compiled an intercollegiate record of ninety-nine wins against ten losses in the nine campaigns that ended in 1912. The next half-century saw some good Columbia basketball teams and also some bad ones.The best stretch of sustained excellence came from the 1947–48 season through the 1956–57 campaign, when the Lions won 165 games and lost 68.Three players of note stood out during that time. Jack Molinas was a mainstay of the team that went undefeated during the 1950–51 regular season.Two years later, he was the Lions’ captain. Molinas was a prolific scorer and still holds the Columbia record for most rebounds in a single game. Of more dubious note, he began fixing games while in college, continued to do so as an NBA player, and was permanently barred from the league by NBA president Maurice Podoloff. Thereafter, Molinas continued his unsavory ways and ultimately received a fifteen-year prison sentence for conspiracy to fix twenty-five games involving twenty-two players at twelve colleges.After being paroled, he moved to California, where he engaged in a variety of business ventures ranging from the production of adult films to stock fraud. He was executed gangland-style in 1975. Franklin Thomas, one of the Ivy League’s first black stars, is still Columbia’s career leader in rebounds.A three-time letterman and captain of the 1955–56 Lions team, he’s best known to the public at large for THOMAS HAUSER ON SPORTS 149 having been president of the Ford Foundation from 1979 through 1996. Prior to that, Thomas served as president of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, deputy police commissioner for the NewYork City Police Department, and an assistant U.S. attorney for the United States Department of Justice. Chet Forte, the 1956–57 Lions captain, edged outWilt Chamberlain in balloting for the United Press International “Player of theYear” award in his senior season. Despite being only 5 feet, 8 inches tall, Forte set a Columbia record for most points in a season. His career scoring average of 24.8 points per game is still the Lions standard. Forte later became one of the most celebrated men in sports media as the director of ABC’s Monday Night Football. But like Molinas, he had a gambling problem. He was a compulsive gambler and, in 1990, plead guilty to charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, and income tax evasion; acts committed as part of an effort to support his gambling habit. By the time I enrolled at Columbia in September 1963, the Lions’ basketball fortunes were in decline. Home games were played in antiquated University Hall; a classic structure replete with architectural columns that blocked the view of fans and looked as though they’d been built during the Age of Pericles. Columbia had suffered through six straight losing seasons.Two more would follow. During the 1965–66 campaign, I started doing play-by-play of Columbia basketball games for WKCR (the student-run radio station). That same season, the Lions’ fortunes turned. Led by seven-foot Dave Newmark, the team posted an 18-6 record.The future looked bright. Then Newmark put his hand through a window in a freak dormitory accident and missed the entire 1966–67 season.Without him, the team went 11 and 14. Still, hopes were high. Freshmen were ineligible for varsity play in those years. But Columbia’s freshman team was led by Jim McMillian and Heyward Dotson; two of the best players ever to wear a Lions uniform. Three glorious seasons followed. Newmark was back for the 1967–68 campaign; McMillian was the greatest player in Columbia basketball history;and Dotson was superb.After three early-season losses, the Lions caught fire at the Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden. In three nights, Columbia beat West Virginia, 150 THOMAS HAUSER [3.136.154.103...

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