The Scandals of '51: How the Gamblers Almost Killed College Basketball

by Charley Rosen, L.J. Ganser (Narrator)

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball—a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures—including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians—that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so. Rosen shows who got caught and who didn't, and what role class, race, and religion played in determining this.

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1997

About the author

Charles Elliot Rosen is an American author and former basketball player and basketball coach. Rosen has been selected for induction into the NYC Basketball Hall of Fame with the Class of 2024.

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book about what I usually don't think of as an interesting topic -- college basketball. Specifically, this is a report on the scandals caused by criminal betting and game-throwing among many teams in the 1950's.

What keeps me from saying it's a perfect book on the subject is the writing style, which is very newspaper-like, it's as if you're reading a book length newspaper article. The author tends to ramble from one thought to another, often without a clear flow of ideas.

But it's very informative -- and I feel like I got to know a few of the characters as real people, often flawed and virtuaous at the same time.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very disappointing book. There is no real indication that gambling in 1951 was going to "destroy college basketball." No index. No bibliography. Lots of rambling paragraphs and lots of names that were hard to keep track of without some sort of index.

[BStooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the Audiobook. History will repeat itself (or is doing so right now). With all the gambling apps and
$$ being wagered athletes/officials will succumb to the temptation to “shave” some points for some financial compensation.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how many of the connections Rosen makes are actually true. There's no sourcing, which is a problem. And the book is more than a little purple, written in the vernacular of 1950s newspapers. But it's still an incredible story and one that even the most dedicated watchers of NCAA basketball rarely hear about.

[Dave Cottenie · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting review of the point shaving scandals that plagued college basketball in the late forties and early fifties. Informative and intriguing, it ends with an interesting synopsis of how to avoid gambling and recruiting violations in the future.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://randomcatastrophe.net/2015/04/...

[RA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent fiction about the 1951 college basketball betting scandal. First-person oral "histories" of many of the participants, set in NYC.