Original Sin: The Rise and Fall of the CCNY Basketball Team

Summary

---

Campus Files: Scandals, Secrets & Crimes at American Universities

Episode: Original Sin: The Rise and Fall of the CCNY Basketball Team

Release Date: April 22, 2026
Host: Margot Gray
Guests: Matthew Goodman (author of "The City Game"), Ian Mont (producer, historian)

---

Overview

This gripping episode of "Campus Files" examines the exhilarating rise and devastating fall of the 1949–50 City College of New York (CCNY) basketball team—a story woven with themes of American dream, race, class, unlikely triumph, and one of the darkest scandals in sports history. The episode relives CCNY’s unprecedented double championship run and explores the point-shaving scandal that shattered their legacy and changed college basketball forever.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: 1950s New York Basketball Fever

• New York City was the epicenter of college basketball, rivaling the Yankees and Dodgers for popularity.
  • "Madison Square Garden... March 1950. The air is hazy with cigarette smoke. Almost 19,000 fans fill the arena shoulder to shoulder. It's the NCAA championship game, and this year's matchup feels electric." (Margot Gray, 01:33)
  • College basketball was elevated in New York unlike today—hosting five nationally-ranked teams.

2. CCNY’s Unlikely Ascent

• The Makeup of the Team

  • Uniquely, the Beavers had a roster of Jewish and Black players: “Every single member of the 15 players on that team were either Jewish or African American. Every single one of them.” (Ian Mont, 09:24)
  • In an era of entrenched racism and quotas, CCNY embodied diversity and meritocracy.

• Coach Nat Holman’s Leadership

  • Considered “Mr. Basketball,” Holman was a city legend and tactical innovator: “He was really the first celebrity coach in college basketball.” (Ian Mont, 07:57)

3. Historic Championship Run

• CCNY entered both the NIT and NCAA tournaments as underdogs.
  • Their stunning victory over University of Kentucky (favored and segregated) was a social and athletic upset.
    • “It was a clash not just of basketball teams, but of value systems.” (Ian Mont, 15:19)
  • CCNY became the only team ever to win both the NIT and NCAA in a single season—a feat no longer possible after a rule change.

Notable Moments

• Jackie Robinson’s Locker Room Visit (02:39–03:12, 17:19)

  • A symbol of integration and hope; Robinson’s presence underscored the historic nature of CCNY’s team.
  • “The idea that they were really something special... this was really a special game.” (Matthew Goodman, 03:01)

• Victory Over Kentucky (14:09–16:45)

  • “By halftime, CCNY led 45–20. With 10 minutes left, they were up by 30.”
  • Kentucky’s coach’s defeat was so devastating that “the state legislature actually considered lowering the flag to half-mast.” (Margot Gray, 15:31)
  • Following the win: “One of the players told me later that... they could have run for president and won.” (Ian Mont, 16:13)

• After Double Championship: “They were the toast of the town.” (16:45, 19:05–19:33)

  • “It’s not that they did it for us, it’s that they were us and they did it. There’s a difference.” (Student recollected by Ian Mont, 19:08)

4. The Scandal Unfolds: Mobsters and the Point Spread

• Huge illegal gambling market in 1950s New York

  • “Bookmaking was a major business in New York City at that time. It was illegal, of course, but... there were thousands of bookmakers.” (Ian Mont, 21:23)

• The Point Spread Transforms the Game

  • The invention of "the point spread" led to a surge in betting—and set the stage for widespread point-shaving.
  • “With the point spread, players didn’t have to throw games anymore. They just had to win by a little less than predicted.” (Margot Gray, 22:56)

• How Players Got Involved

  • Fixers befriended players during summer jobs in the Catskills, where the NCAA’s amateur rules were skirted.
    • “That was where a lot of these basketball players learned how to control the score of a game.... the point shaving scandal was born in the Catskill mountains.” (Matthew Goodman, 25:36)
  • “Throughout the 1950–51 season, several CCNY players accepted bribes in exchange for point shaving.” (Margot Gray, 25:58)

• Failed Shaving Attempts and Raised Suspicions

  • “They ended up losing all of the games in which they were shaving points, unintentionally losing.... the whole machine went haywire.” (Matthew Goodman, 26:22)
  • Questions arose: “Did the coach know?... I can’t say this for sure, but the weight of the evidence leads me to believe that he must have at least suspected.” (Matthew Goodman, 26:56)

5. Investigation & Fallout

• The Sting and Arrests (28:20–29:21)
  • DA’s office coordinated with Holman to arrest players quietly on a train home.
  • “By the time the sun came up, City College students had heard the news. Their heroes had taken bribes from the mob.... [It was] betrayal at a biblical level.” (Margot Gray, 28:44)
  • The scandal did not include the championship games, but “that didn’t matter. The scandal tainted everything.” (Margot Gray, 28:56)

Notable Quotes and Emotional Reflections

• “One student said… he did not experience that sense of collective grief again until the assassination of President Kennedy.” (Ian Mont, 29:21)
• “They had become villains... the most devastating sports corruption story since the Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series.” (Margot Gray, 29:47)

6. Deeper Context: Morality, Inequality, and Aftermath

• Players’ Motives Were Complex, Not Greed

  • “Eddie Roman... wanted to give [money] to his parents so they could pay off the mortgage. Another, Floyd Lane, said no three times before... he realized all the other guys on the team were doing it.” (Ian Mont, 30:23)
  • “By the time Floyd Lane was arrested, he'd spent just $110 out of the nearly $3,000 he'd been given. He used it to buy a washing machine for his mom.” (Margot Gray, 30:51)

• The Players Paid, Others Didn’t

  • Seven CCNY players charged; over 30 total players, across seven schools, were implicated—yet one powerful team, St. John’s, escaped punishment due to cozy ties with the (Irish Catholic) police leadership. (32:30–33:20)

• The Death of New York College Basketball

  • “The other New York schools, the damage was irreparable. Their basketball programs never recovered. And New York City itself lost its status as the capital of college basketball.” (Margot Gray, 33:20–33:31)
  • “That was really the birth of big time basketball in North Carolina.” (Ian Mont, 33:31)

• Systemic Inequality: Seeds for Future Scandals

  • “You just can’t have a situation in which there’s more millions of dollars flowing through the game, and these kids, most of whom are coming from poor backgrounds, are getting none of it. That condition is absolutely ripe for people taking money on the side.” (Ian Mont, 34:39)

7. Legacy and Historical Reevaluation

• From Shame to Celebrate
  • 1994: The team is inducted into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame.
  • Years later: Their achievement is recognized as “the greatest college basketball moment in Madison Square Garden history.”
  • “The 1950 Beavers remain the only team to win both tournaments in a single season—and that will always be true.” (Margot Gray, 34:57)

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Jackie Robinson’s Subtle Impact:

  • “He spoke only for a couple of minutes, and in that time he never mentioned race. Yet, the idea of racial integration seemed to underline everything he said.” (Matthew Goodman, 17:19)

• On Victory:

  • “They were us and they did it. There’s a difference.” (Student via Ian Mont, 19:08)

• On the Scandal’s Emotional Cost:

  • “He did not experience that sense of collective grief again until the assassination of President Kennedy.” (Ian Mont, 29:21)

• On Systemic Inequities:

  • “None of this would have been possible if not for your talents.” (Ian Mont, 31:19)

---

Important Timestamps

• Madison Square Garden set-up & CCNY’s diversity: 01:33–05:55
• Coach Nat Holman & team’s playing style: 07:57–09:33
• Recruitment for tournaments & ‘Subway Conference’: 09:33–10:59
• CCNY’s NIT run and Kentucky game: 13:34–16:45
• Double championship feat & Jackie Robinson’s visit: 17:06–18:50
• Post-title euphoria: 19:05–19:44
• Sports gambling, the point spread, mob influence: 21:23–23:22
• The Catskills’ role in game-fixing culture: 24:02–25:58
• Point-shaving in action & suspicion: 26:22–26:56
• Investigation, arrests, and student reaction: 28:20–29:41
• Media narrative and moral complexity: 29:47–31:19
• St. John’s impunity and city’s basketball decline: 32:30–33:31
• Shifting historical perspective and unique legacy: 34:57

---

Tone and Narrative Style

The episode skillfully combines drama, nostalgia, and critical reflection, using historic audio, personal testimonies, and expert commentary. The tone is both analytical and empathetic—transporting listeners to smoky 1950s New York, celebrating unsung social progress, and examining moral complexity. The tragedy of the scandal is handled with nuance and sensitivity to the players’ circumstances.

---

Final Thoughts

The story of the 1950 CCNY Beavers is both an iconic sports triumph and a cautionary tale about systemic inequity in college athletics. The players’ achievements—on the court and as barrier-breakers—earned a place in history that endures beyond their fall. The episode stands as a powerful reminder of how institutions shape, and sometimes betray, their most promising stars.

---

For more stories or to share tips, reach out at [e-mail].

Transcript

[Margot Gray]

I've been on a mission recently to be more intentional about my closet. Fewer pieces, higher quality. Quint's has become the solution. Everything's versatile, comfortable and genuinely well made. While most stuff at this price point falls apart, Quince is built to last. Their lightweight staples have been on rotation lately. Pieces like the linen blazer and cotton cashmere sweater, the kind of pieces you reach for without thinking. It's rare to find pieces that look this good without the usual markup. Refresh your everyday wardrobe with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com campus for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com campus for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com campus

[Advertisement Voice]

do you love your pets? Do you love suspense? Do you love it when your pets keep you in suspense because they ate something mysterious? And who knows what the vet visit will cost? If you answered yes twice and then no, you should protect your pet with Lemonade Pet Insurance. It can save you up to 90% on vet bills for checkups, emergencies, diagnostics, all the stuff that leaves you financially on the edge of your seat. Get a quick and Easy [e-mail] pet and get your suspense somewhere else, like from a riveting podcast.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The LIND is off. The season is on. Basketball is back, and that's big news for the fans from coast to coast.

[Margot Gray]

12,000 are out of Madison Square Garden. March 1950. The air is hazy with cigarette smoke. Almost 19,000 fans fill the arena shoulder to shoulder. It's the NCAA championship game, and this year's matchup feels one team stands on the edge of making history. The City College of New York, or ccny. They've already won the NIT tournament. Now they're one win away from something no team has ever done, landing both the NIT and NCAA championships in the same season. Of all the teams in college basketball, no one expected CCNY to be here. These were poor kids from working class neighborhoods at a time when most college teams were entirely white and the NBA hadn't even integrated. CCNY's starting lineup featured two black players and three Jewish players. The locker room is tense. The players know exactly what's at stake. And then the door swings open and in walks Jackie Robinson.

[Matthew Goodman]

Jackie Robinson had started playing for the Dodgers just a few years before, had broken the color line and was really a symbol of racial progress.

[Margot Gray]

Jackie Robinson wasn't just a great athlete, he was a barrier breaker, someone whose achievements Reached far beyond sports.

[Ian Mont]

The fact that he came, I think,

[Matthew Goodman]

further concretized in the minds of the players the idea that they were really something special and that this was really a special game.

[Margot Gray]

In that moment, City College stood at the very top of the basketball world. The players were heroes. The city was bursting with pride. That feeling wouldn't last long. Soon, news broke that their beloved team was entangled in a web of mobsters and corruption. And that triumphant team would become forever tied to one of college basketball's darkest chapters. I'm Margo Gray. This week on campus, the triumph and downfall of the City College Beavers.

[Ian Mont]

The City College of New York was founded in the 19th century and continues to be one of the great institutions

[Matthew Goodman]

in the city of New York.

[Margot Gray]

That's Matthew Goodman, author of the City Triumph, Scandal and a Legendary Basketball Team. His father attended City College of New York, or ccny. So he grew up hearing about the school and its mission, which is to

[Ian Mont]

take very bright New York City high school students who for one reason or another, are kept out of other schools and provide them free of charge and education equal to perhaps any other academic institution in the United States.

[Margot Gray]

For decades, that group was made up mostly of Jewish students who still face quotas at elite universities. In the first half of the 20th century, by some estimates, more than 80% of CCNY's student body was Jewish. The joke around town was that CCNY stood for Circumcised citizens of New York. City College was also home to a growing number of black students. As one author put it, the campus was filled with the sons of immigrants and the grandsons of slaves. But access didn't mean lowered standards. Admission was super competitive and the school held itself to the highest expectations. You could even see that in the campus architecture. Built in the collegiate gothic style.

[Ian Mont]

Buildings with great gargoyles on them, you know, stone clad buildings rising high to the sky. And I would venture to say for most of the poor and working class Jewish immigrants or children of immigrants who arrived at the gates of City College for their first day of school. It must have been like being transported to across the ocean to Cambridge or to Oxford. They would never have seen a place like this.

[Margot Gray]

The intellectual energy on campus was palpable. In the cafeteria, you could often hear students arguing about topics like Trotskyism and Stalinism over lunch.

[Ian Mont]

City College was known widely as Harvard on the Hudson. A school known for its academics, not a school known for its sports teams. In fact, it was sort of had kind of legendarily terrible sports teams.

[Margot Gray]

There was one Exception. The basketball team, the beavers. In the 1940s, they were the pride of the school.

[Ian Mont]

My father, he was a big sports fan. I was a sports fan, and over the years I would hear about this kind of legendary basketball team.

[Margot Gray]

To understand how big the basketball team was at ccny, you first have to understand how big college basketball was in New York City.

[Ian Mont]

At the time, New York City was the national center of college basketball. Today, that's sort of unthinkable. You know, college basketball is really not one of the big sports in New York today. You have to go to places like Kentucky or places like Indiana or North Carolina to find those kind of college basketball hotbeds the way that New York used to be.

[Margot Gray]

New York was home to five nationally ranked teams. These teams actually rivaled the popularity of the Yankees and the Brooklyn. Brooklyn Dodgers. And they played many of their games at Madison Square Garden.

[Narrator/Announcer]

At New York's Madison Square Garden, kusas City College quintet faces five fast and fancy web feet from the University of Oregon. It's the opening contest.

[Ian Mont]

The thing that people remember about the

[Matthew Goodman]

games at Madison Square Garden was the smoke, the cigarette smoke. Everybody smoked.

[Margot Gray]

One sports writer said that watching a game from the upper levels of MSG was like trying to see the ground from an airplane through the clouds. The smoke was so thick that to prepare for it, one out of state coach actually set off smoke bombs in his own gym during practice. But CCNY fans didn't care about the haze. They came to see their Beavers play. And the team delivered, thanks in large part to one man, head coach Nat Holman.

[Ian Mont]

Nat Holman might well have been the first celebrity coach in college basketball. He was known by people who were not necessarily basketball fans fans.

[Margot Gray]

Nat Holman called himself Mr. Basketball. Boastful, sure, but he wasn't wrong. When he played for the original Celtics, he was considered one of the best players of his generation. Converse even wanted him to be the face of their new sneaker. When he declined, they turned to another professional player, someone whose name you might recognize. Chuck Taylor.

[Ian Mont]

Natman. He had grown up in New York, had learned the game in the settlement houses of the lower east side where they had very low ceilings and so you couldn't have high arching shots and so forth. That was where he learned the kind of motion offense that he brought to City College. The players were constantly in motion at all times, and it was really kind of a beautiful game to watch.

[Margot Gray]

Holman had been coaching at CCNY for 30 years and he had an impressive record of 359 wins. But despite the success, the team had never come close to winning a national championship in either of the major tournaments, the NIT or the NCAA. There was hope that might change. During the 1949-1950 season, Holman and his assistant coach had recruited an all star lineup. It was a team that looked nothing like the other premier programs around the country.

[Ian Mont]

Every single member of the 15 players on that team were either Jewish or African American. Every single one of them.

[Margot Gray]

The Jewish players weren't unusual for the time. In fact, in the first half of the 20th century, basketball was often called a Jewish sport. But a team that included black basketball players was highly unusual. At the time, only about 10% of college basketball programs recruited black players. This was only two years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier and still four years before the Supreme Court would rule on Brown v. Board of Education.

[Ian Mont]

The starting five comprised three Jewish players and two African American players. The coach of the team, Nat Holman,

[Matthew Goodman]

was Jewish, as was his assistant coach.

[Margot Gray]

Both coaches knew they had something special that season. A team unlike any they'd coached before. But making the postseason tournaments was far from guaranteed. Unlike today, teams didn't automatically qualify based on their record. It was invite only, hand selected by committee. And the Beavers knew the deal. If they had any hope of getting in, they'd have to beat every other New York team that season.

[Ian Mont]

They usually reserved one slot for the winner of the so called Subway Conference, which didn't really exist. It was an imaginary idea. But whatever local New York team had the best record would be given a slot. And CCNY was the leader of the Subway Conference that year. And so they received their invitation to the National Invitation Tournament.

[Margot Gray]

CCNY had barely made the cut. They were the last of the 12 teams to be invited, and they were widely viewed as the least likely contender. So when the games began, no one expected much. But this is an underdog story, and you can probably guess what happens next.

[Advertisement Voice]

We all belong outside. We're drawn to nature. Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes, nature makes all of our lives, well, better. Despite all this, we often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With Alltrails, you can discover trails nearby and explore confidently with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app today and make the most of your summer with Alltrails.

[Margot Gray]

As a listener of campus files, you already know that the truth is rarely as simple as it seems. Every story has layers, whether it's what we're told publicly or the private histories passed down through our own families. And sometimes the version we inherit isn't the full picture. That's exactly where the new podcast Family Lore comes in. Each episode looks at a story that a family has always believed about itself and starts to pull at the edges, not to tear it apart, but to understand it and uncover the hidden histories and nuances that may have been lost over time. Family Lore is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Stick around until the end of this episode for a preview.

[Advertisement Voice]

Do you have $10,000 or more in credit card debt? Maybe you're even barely getting by by making minimum payments. With credit card debt hitting record highs, National Debt Relief offers real debt relief solutions for people struggling to keep up. These options may reduce a large portion of credit card debt for those who qualify. You don't need to declare bankruptcy, and you may be able to pay back less than you owe regardless of your credit. National Debt Relief has already reduced the credit card debt for more than 550,000 consumers, so don't wait. If you owe 10, 20, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, you can now take advantage of this financial debt relief as the cost of living increases. To find out how much you could save, Visit National Debt Relief.com that's NationalDebtRelief.com.

[Margot Gray]

CCNY had made it to the NIT tournament, but barely. No one expected them to make it past the first round. Their opening game was against the defending NIT champions, the University of San Francisco. But to everyone's surprise, CCNY blew past their opponent and made it to the next round. Two days later, they were back on the court. CCNY fans were thrilled, but also anxious. Waiting for them was one of the best teams in the country, the powerhouse of college basketball, the University of Kentucky.

[Ian Mont]

Kentucky was overwhelmingly favored. Kentucky was to college basketball what the New York Yankees were to Major League Baseball. They were the team who was always favored. They were building a huge stadium. They traveled by jetliner, which was unheard of in those days.

[Margot Gray]

Ccny, on the other hand, was a tuition free college. They didn't have fancy training facilities or huge travel budgets. But the differences between the two schools went even deeper.

[Ian Mont]

Kentucky represented the Old South. It represented sort of everything that City College was not. The University of Kentucky had not a single African American among its thousands of undergraduates. There would not be a black player on the University of Kentucky Wildcats for another 20 years.

[Margot Gray]

The Kentucky coach had made his views on integration clear. He Once said, if the good Lord had intended black boys and white boys to play together, he wouldn't have painted them different colors. Now the coach was facing a team that embodied everything he opposed, a lineup made up entirely of black and Jewish players.

[Ian Mont]

It was a clash not just of basketball teams, but of value systems, in a sense. And so that was sort of the stage that was set for this game.

[Margot Gray]

If this were a sports movie, CCNY would start out behind and come storming back in the fourth quarter for the win. But that's not what happened. Ten minutes in, the score was 28 9, CCNY in the lead. By halftime, CCNY led 45, 20. With 10 minutes left, the Beavers were up by 30. By the final buzzer, CCNY had won in a blowout. It was the Kentucky coach's worst defeat ever. So devastating that the state legislature actually considered lowering the flag to half mast. For CCNY's players, that victory over Kentucky would become one of the most unforgettable games of their lives.

[Ian Mont]

The day after the victory, Nat Homan brought them to Broadway to celebrate. And apparently before the show started, a voice came over the PA system to let the audience know that the City College team was in the audience. And apparently the entire theater stood and cheered for their team. One of the players told me later that he felt that at that moment they all could have run for president and won. So they were really the toast of the town.

[Margot Gray]

With the Kentucky victory behind them, City College cruised through the rest of the tournament. In the championship game, The Beavers, ranked 27th in the nation, faced off against Bradley University, ranked number one. On paper, it shouldn't have been close, but CCNY flipped the odds. And for the first time in school history, they brought home the NIT title.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The big story in basketball was written in capital letters by the Beavers of City College. The speedy, sharpshooting Cagers from New York set the blood pressure of their fans soaring as they swept to victory over the top teams of the nation.

[Margot Gray]

CCNY had done the unimaginable. Now the question was, could they do the impossible? No team had ever won both the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year. And for ccny, it didn't look promising. But fresh off their NIT victory, the City College Beavers kept rolling. They beat Ohio State, then NC State, and suddenly the underdogs were back in Madison Square Garden, facing Bradley once again for the national title. This brings us back to the moment when Jackie Robinson appeared at the locker room. Matthew writes about Jackie Robinson's visit in the City game, saying, quote, he spoke only for a couple of minutes, and in that time he never mentioned race. Yet the idea of racial integration seemed to underline everything he said. In other words, there was more at stake that night than just a basketball title.

[Narrator/Announcer]

New York City College, already victor over Bradley's Braves in the invitation tourney, takes them on again in the NCAA final. Jumps into the lead as big Ed Rolman sinks one from the corner.

[Margot Gray]

The game came down to the wire with seconds remaining. CCNY was leading by just two points, but they held their lead. When the buzzer sounded, the Beavers had done it. The final score was 71 to 68.

[Narrator/Announcer]

The Beavers won the National Invitation Tournament to hit a jackpot unprecedented in basketball. 1950 will long be remembered by coach Nat Holman and his eager Beavers from ccny.

[Margot Gray]

As the New York Times put it, the Beavers were out of basketball worlds to conquer. The Associated Press called it one of the most amazing sagas in college basketball. And in the days after the championship, coach Nat Holman appeared on the Ed Sullivan show to a standing ovation.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Have a big show lined up for you tonight.

[Ian Mont]

They represented all of the qualities that New York wanted to believe about itself. Diversity, the triumph of the immigrants, civic virtue. One of the students said to me later about the importance of this championship. He said, it's not that they did it for us, it's that they were us and they did it. There's a difference.

[Margot Gray]

The mayor of New York called them our athletes, the city's own champions. And for the next 10 months, the Beavers really were the pride of New York.

[Ian Mont]

They were absolute heroes. Classes were canceled at the school. For the first time in the history of the school, they received the key to the city from the mayor. At City hall, there was a ticker tape parade. They were heroes. And that, of course, only made their subsequent fall all the greater. It's the Paradise Podcast.

[Margot Gray]

I am your host, Ryan Michele Bathe with my husband Sterling. What's up? Join us here on Hulu and Hulu on Disney, where we'll discuss each episode with the cast and crew of Paradise. I'll be getting all the secrets from Dan Fogelman, James Marsden, Shailene Woodley, Julianne Nicholson and Sterling Kelby Brown.

[Advertisement Voice]

Woo.

[Margot Gray]

Paradise, the official podcast, is now streaming and streaming stream. Paradise on Hulu and Hulu on Disney. A text says you're on my mind. A bouquet from 1-800-Flowers says you're my everything. Heartfelt moments belong in the real world, not just your phone. For 50 years, 1-800-Flowers has helped millions of people make memories that'll last a lifetime with gifts they'll cherish forever. Their expertly curated arrangements and gift baskets shipped nationwide with a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Don't wait for the next big moment. Make it when you visit 1-800-flowers.com Spotify today, that's 1-800-Flowers.com Spotify. In the 1950s, New York City wasn't just the capital of college basketball. It was also the capital of bookmaking, organized underground sports betting.

[Ian Mont]

Bookmaking was a major business in New York City at that time. It was illegal, of course, but having said that, there were thousands of bookmakers in the city of New York at that time.

[Margot Gray]

Before the 1940s, sports betting was simple. You just picked a winner. But that made games between uneven teams pretty dull. There's not much fun in betting on a team that's almost certain to lose. Then a Chicago bookmaker changed everything. He introduced a new system, the point spread. Now, instead of betting on who would win, gamblers could bet on whether the favored team would win by more or less than a certain number of points.

[Ian Mont]

So that allowed for a lot more betting than there would have been in a game in which one team was obviously going to win against the other team.

[Margot Gray]

This innovation transformed sports betting from a niche pastime into a mass market obsession.

[Ian Mont]

It was so widespread. I mean, millions of dollars were being wagered on college basketball at the Garden. Many of the bets were made from inside the Garden itself, from the bank of telephone booths that were right there in the lobby filled with gamblers.

[Margot Gray]

People in the stands who'd placed bets didn't even bother to hide it. In the final moments of games, when the outcome was virtually decided, you could still hear fans chanting for players to miss a free throw.

[Ian Mont]

And people who were not in the

[Matthew Goodman]

know were constantly being confused by this. Why are people getting in such an uproar about apparently meaningless foul shots?

[Margot Gray]

The point spread didn't just attract more sports bets. It also drew in mobsters looking to fix games, or in other words, control the outcome. These mobsters had always been around, but before the point spread, they had to bribe players to lose games outright. A hard sell, no matter the amount of money. With the point spread, though, everything changed. Players didn't have to throw games anymore. They just had to win by a little less than predicted.

[Ian Mont]

They were just trying to come in under the spread. So if they were favored to win by eight, they were going to try to win by fewer than eight points.

[Margot Gray]

For any of this to Happen. The fixers first had to form relationships with the players, and that's exactly what they did with our beloved beavers. It all started in the catskill mountains, a summer resort area about two hours north of New York city. At the time, the catskills were a favorite getaway for the city's Jewish families, who were excluded from other resort areas. We're going to hitchhike up to the catskills.

[Advertisement Voice]

We know the Highway Route 17.

[Matthew Goodman]

It was an extremely popular vacation resort because this was pre air conditioning and so forth. And so people would go up to the mountains to get away from the heat and the smell and whatever of the city. So there were just hundreds of resorts.

[Margot Gray]

To keep guests entertained, These resorts organized all kinds of activities, including basketball. Eventually, resorts formed their own basketball teams, and on Friday nights, they'd square off against one another, drawing big crowds. The games became so popular that hotels began recruiting top college players to join their teams.

[Matthew Goodman]

Now, the ncaa rules forbid the hotels from hiring them to play basketball because they had to keep their amateur status in order to play college ball. So what the hotels would do would

[Ian Mont]

be that they would hire them as a waiter, or they would hire them

[Matthew Goodman]

as a busboy, or they would hire them as a lifeguard. But in point of fact, the reason why they were being chosen was because they were basketball players.

[Margot Gray]

In the summer of 1950, the Catskill Resorts had their eyes on CCNY players, the hottest commodity in town, Fresh off their grand slam victory. Every resort wanted them on its roster, and so did the fixers. Betting on these resort games had become big business with real money at stake. So it's no surprise that fixers saw an opportunity to bribe players to control the outcome.

[Ian Mont]

And that was where a lot of

[Matthew Goodman]

these basketball players learned how to control the score of a game. Not to win or lose intentionally, but to control the score. And in point of fact, you can really say that the point shaving scandal was born in the catskill mountains.

[Margot Gray]

When summer ended and the basketball season began, the fixers followed the players back to the city, back to madison square garden. Same proposition, but even more money to be made. Throughout the 1950-51 season, several CCNY players accepted bribes in exchange for point shaving. The problem was, once the game started, they weren't very good at it.

[Matthew Goodman]

They ended up losing all of the games in which they were shaving points, unintentionally losing. But it was just the way that they played was a team game. It was very dependent on timing and rhythm and motion. And under these kinds of circumstances, it just seemed that the whole machine went hey.

[Margot Gray]

During these games, CCNY players shot airballs, threw passes into the crowd, and looked inexplicably sloppy. People started to suspect something was wrong. They just didn't know what.

[Matthew Goodman]

And that leads to the ultimate question of did the coach know? Nat Holman was somebody who had grown up playing basketball? He had watched thousands of games of basketball in his life. He claims that he did not know that this was going on, that he had absolutely no suspicion about it whatsoever. I can't say this for sure, but the weight of the evidence leads me to believe that he must have at least suspected that this was going on. But it was in his interest and the interest of the other coaches of the other teams not to look too closely.

[Margot Gray]

But others were watching closely. Unbeknownst to the players, a massive investigation into point shaving was already underway. The Manhattan district Attorney was unraveling a deep web of corruption, one that didn't just involve the fixers, but also the cops who accepted money from the fixers to look the other way.

[Matthew Goodman]

On Fridays, New York City police officers and detectives would come in, literally to get their envelopes filled with cash. And cops were, you know, making their mortgage payments and planning vacations, et cetera, based on the money that they were getting.

[Ian Mont]

That was the level of corruption that

[Matthew Goodman]

we were talking about.

[Margot Gray]

On February 17, 1951, CCNY players boarded a train from Philadelphia to New York, York after a game against Temple University. They didn't know it yet, but detectives from the Manhattan District Attorney's office were also on board. The detectives quietly approached coach Nat Holman and told him their plan. The moment the train crossed into New York's jurisdiction, they'd arrest three of the players. Holman didn't stand in their way. He told the detectives, I have no sympathy for them if they're guilty. Around 2am the train pulled into Penn Station. Three players, handcuffed, were led quietly off the platform. By the time the sun came up, City College students had heard the news. Their heroes had taken bribes from the mob. None of the point shaving had happened during the championship run, but that didn't matter. The scandal tainted everything. One student reporter called it betrayal at a biblical level.

[Ian Mont]

One of the students said to me that he did not experience that sense of collective grief again until the assassination of President Kennedy. That's the level of shock and grief and mourning that was going on on the City College campus.

[Margot Gray]

And the story didn't stay contained to campus. It spread fast through New York and across the country.

[Ian Mont]

They were Arrested on Sunday morning. And by Monday morning, they had become villains. On the front page of all of the tabloid newspapers in New York, it

[Margot Gray]

was being described as the most devastating sports corruption story since the Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series. Matthew says that in the hundreds of newspaper stories he read from that period, the narrative was the same. Players were immoral crooks, willing to sell out their team, their school, even their city for a quick buck. But Matthew doesn't see the players as villains. He believes the reality is more complicated.

[Ian Mont]

None of them were doing it simply to get rich. For one of the guys that I wrote about, Eddie Roman, he wanted to give it later to his parents so they could pay off the mortgage on their house. Another guy who I wrote about extensively in the book, a guy named Floyd Lane, really didn't want to take the money. He said no three times before. Before he finally agreed to do it. And he only agreed to do it when he realized that all of the other guys on the team were doing it.

[Margot Gray]

By the time Floyd Lane was arrested, he'd spent just $110 out of the nearly 3,000 he'd been given. He used it to buy a washing machine for his mom. She was a domestic servant who'd spent her life washing other people's clothes.

[Ian Mont]

It would be very easy for us, looking at the headlines in the newspapers, to say, oh, I wouldn't have done that. I'm a good person. I'm a moral person. I would not have accepted the money.

[Matthew Goodman]

And perhaps that's true.

[Ian Mont]

But if you were one of these players and someone offered you more money than you had ever seen before, not to lose a game, but simply to change the score of a game. And you saw that your parents were fretting every night at the kitchen table because they were afraid they were going to get thrown out of their house. And you knew that everyone in the arena that night was making money that night except for you, and they were making that money because of your labor, none of this would have been possible if not for your talents.

[Margot Gray]

Regardless, it was the players who paid the price. In the end, seven CCNY players were charged with fixing games. One of them spent six months behind bars. All of their basketball careers were over. None of them would play again. And they weren't the only players caught up in the scandal. By the end of 1951, the DA had charged over 30 players from seven different schools. Among the schools were four of New York's five major basketball programs. Only one emerged. St. John's University, an Irish Catholic school.

[Ian Mont]

In Queensland, it was widely believed to be the case among everyone with whom I spoke that St John's had been equally involved in the point shaving and yet had been protected from being involved in this scandal by the New York City Police Department, which was overwhelmingly Irish Catholic, overwhelmingly fans of St. John's where the police, police commissioner was actually best friends with the coach of St. John's sat behind them on the bench and was referred to in the papers as St. John's number one fan. And to this day, St. John's University is the only one of those programs that still maintains a Top ranked Division 1 basketball program.

[Margot Gray]

the other New York schools, the damage was irreparable. Their basketball programs never recovered. And New York City itself lost its status as the capital of college basketball.

[Ian Mont]

Because what happened in the wake of the scandal was that the former big time programs like City College, like nyu, like Long Island University, canceled their programs or certainly downgraded them so that they were no longer playing in Madison Square Garden, they were no longer attracting gamblers and so forth. So you no longer had any of those big time programs. And the local players who at one time would have gone to City College or to St. John's ended up going down to North Carolina. And that was really the birth of big time basketball in North Carolina.

[Margot Gray]

The consequences were now painfully clear. Careers destroyed, programs dismantled, reputations ruined. The CCNY players would live with the stigma the rest of their lives. But for others, the lessons apparently didn't resonate. Just 10 years later, there was another massive point shaving scandal. And Matthew says, maybe that's not so surprising, not in a system where everyone profits except the players.

[Ian Mont]

You just can't have a situation in which there's more millions of dollars flowing through the game and these kids, most of whom are coming from poor backgrounds, are getting none of it. That condition is absolutely ripe for people taking money on the side.

[Margot Gray]

Back then, no one was talking about amateurism or just how uneven the system was for the players. In the years following the point shaving scandal, the 1950 Beavers were remembered primarily for their mistakes and not their achievements. But over time, the perception of them began to shift. In 1994, they were inducted into the New York City Basketball hall of Fame, the first college team ever honored there. Fifteen years later, a group of sportswriters and coaches named their double championship run the greatest college basketball moment in Madison Square Garden history. And here's the thing about their achievement. It can never be repeated. Soon after the scandal, the NCAA ruled that teams had to choose between their tournament and the nit, you couldn't play in both. That new rule sealed City College's place in history forever. The 1950 Beavers remain the only team to win both tournaments in a single season, and that will always be true. If you've got a story idea, we would love to hear about it. Send us an [e-mail] and if you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. While you're there, leave us a review and a five star rating. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast hosted by Margot Gray and East Ian Mont. Our executive producers are Leah Rhys Dennis and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont and Margot Gray. Sound design and engineering by Andy Jaskowicz and Zach Clark Legal support by Laura Berman and Melissa Jean Original music by Davy Sumner Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchison, Rose Shirley, Sean Cherry, Kirk Courtney and Lauren Vieira.

[Matthew Goodman]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone Paying Big Wireless Way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[Margot Gray]

of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] so here is what I want to understand. Yes, what made you so interested in all these ancestral lines and ancestral influences?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So I've been interested in it for so long that I can't remember when it started.

[Narrator/Announcer]

But all I can tell you, like in childhood.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Childhood?

[Margot Gray]

Did you do the DNA test?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

I've not done that. I wasn't all that interested in the statistical breakdown of my DNA. I'm more interested in the stories.

[Margot Gray]

The stories of your ancestors?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Of my ancestors and the circumstances that moved them around the planet. Every family has its stories. Your grandparents met on a blind date, or your great grandmother passed through Ellis Island. But every once in a while you'll hear something a little more unusual.

[Margot Gray]

I have a really vague memory of somebody saying, did you know your great uncle killed somebody?

[Matthew Goodman]

I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita.

[Margot Gray]

He gets a patent one month before the Wright brothers. Oh my God.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Some of these stories are hard to believe. Others are hard to imagine. And as these tall tales get passed down through the generations. They become something more than a family story. They become family lore. My name is Lloyd Lockridge, and in this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell stories about their families. And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true.

[Ian Mont]

To go into the archive and find what you think is, like, not just the secret of your family's life, but the explanatory secret of your family's life. Wow. You know, maybe this old family story that I overheard in my grandmother's kitchen is true.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

This is Family Lore, a new series from Odyssey Podcasts.

[Ian Mont]

You're always wondering why your dad is a certain way. Well, here's one answer I love when

[Margot Gray]

I hear somebody says I have a boring family history. They didn't do anything. I say it's because you don't know anything about your history.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Please follow and listen to family Lore on any of your podcast apps.