The City Game

Starred review from June 17, 2019
Goodman (Eighty Days) effectively combines interviews and extensive research to definitively recreate the unfortunate story of the 1949–50 City College of New York basketball team, which won an unprecedented two college championships in the same year (the NIT and the NCAA) before being tainted by a point-shaving scandal involving several of its stars. Through his conversations with the five surviving team members (Herb Cohen, Floyd Layne, Ron Nadell, Arthur Glass, and Leroy Watkins), Goodman traces the Beavers’ path toward success, and their eventual downfall. Goodman explains how a decade earlier, a “securities analyst and aspiring bookmaker” named Charles McNeil came up with the concept of the point spread, which enabled sports bettors to gamble on what the margin of victory would be; point-shaving enabled the athletes to try to win the game, while making some intentional mistakes that would keep the final score different than predicted. The appeal of easy money to impoverished players such as center Eddie Roman was too much to resist (and as Goodman notes, point-shaving was endemic in college basket all throughout the country). Goodman closes with the argument that “the commercialization of big-time college sports had fostered a culture of gambling” that corrupted players, coaches, and administrators. Fans of college hoops will devour Goodman’s excellent history.

September 1, 2019

Goodman (Eighty Days) chronicles the point shaving scandal that rocked basketball college teams during the 1951 season, focusing on the players of the City College of New York. Composed mainly of African Americans and Jewish Americans from working-class backgrounds, City College was the first and only team to win the NIT and NCAA national championship in the same season, led by Hall of Fame coach Nat Holman. Goodman follows the lives and friendship of players Ed Warner, Eddie Roman, and Floyd Layne. At the time, gambling was a major problem in New York City and especially at Madison Square Garden, where college basketball was more popular than professional. Corruption was rampant, with politicians and police receiving payments from gamblers. As the district attorney investigated, it was revealed that City College players received payments from gamblers to go under the point spread for two seasons. The players are portrayed as victims of systematic abuse, in which everyone earns monetary rewards, including coaches, colleges, and promoters, off of the unpaid work of student athletes. VERDICT Recommended for anyone interested in the history of post-World War II basketball; relevant to issues within amateur athletics today.--Chris Wilkes, Tazewell Cty. P.L., VA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2019
A college basketball Cinderella story that turned into a scandalous tale. The 1949-1950 City College team achieved a feat no other has or almost certainly ever will: The Beavers won the NCAA and the National Invitational Tournament in the same season. This double national championship run was improbable in part because the parochial, academic-focused college in Manhattan consisted of African American and Jewish players in an otherwise mostly segregated, WASPy sports world. However, even years after the Beavers' legendary season, the team would come to be viewed as more infamous than famous, as prominent City College players admitted to accepting bribes from gamblers to shave points during games in that and the subsequently tumultuous 1951-1952 season. Goodman (Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World, 2013, etc.) takes on the story more as a historian than sportswriter, and readers will be grateful for that. The author describes much of the on-court play-by-play with hackneyed language common for the genre. The notable exception is a memorable chapter on the Beavers' defeat of the University of Kentucky, coached by segregationist Adolph Rupp, who once said, "the Lord never meant for a white boy to play with a colored boy...else he wouldn't have painted them different colors." Most of the riveting action unfolds outside the arena, in the halls of government and through the hands of bookies; here, Goodman is at his scene-setting best. While he occasionally provides more detail than is necessary, he smoothly shapes readable narratives of a deep roster of characters, including coaches (Goodman paints Hall of Fame head coach Nat Holman as a hands-off figurehead and assistant Bobby Sand as a sympathetic workhorse), politicians, police, detectives, organized criminals, and, of course, players (with focus on the lives and achievements of Eddie Roman, Ed Warner, and Floyd Lane). Basketball fans are not the only readers who will be edified by this significant slice of New York City history.

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Starred review from September 1, 2019
The 1949-50 City College of New York Beavers won both the National Invitational Tournament and the NCAA basketball championship, the only team to ever capture the dual titles in the same year. Then scandal came to CCNY. Goodman not only chronicles the point-shaving scam that eventually brought down the team, but he also provides a richly detailed portrait of mid-twentieth-century New York City. There were an estimated 4,000 bookies in the boroughs who were protected by a corrupt mayor, police chief, and police force. The center of the city's gambling world was Madison Square Garden, where CCNY played its games under the exacting tutelage of legendary coach Nat Holman, who brought an improvisational style uncommon at the time to the game. The fans loved it, and the Garden was packed every time the Beavers played; naturally, many of the fans had money on the games. The bookies, backed by crime syndicates and the police, saw a way to make even more money. Get poor kids to shave points in order to affect the gambling results. The CCNY kids, many from poor backgrounds, fell in line, terrified of the possible consequences if they didn't manage to engineer the desired result. The resulting scandal was tragic. Reputations were ruined forever. Goodman follows the principals through their lives, even interviewing their children. This is a marvelous, vibrant recounting of a bit of sports history in which the backdrop of New York dominates.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)