Lifting the Curtain

In a Manhattan courtroom, General Sessions Judge Saul Streit addressed himself to an unpleasant duty. Awaiting sentence before him were 14 college boys under indictment in the New York basketball fix scandal.* All had pleaded guilty. Judge Streit listened gravely to the recommendations of the district attorney, who wanted the boys left unpunished as an encouragement to others to testify against the gamblers. Then the court announced his decision.

He sent five players to prison for terms ranging from six months to three years. He freed nine on probation, and he sent Master Fixer Salvatore Sollazzo to prison for an 8-to-16-year term. But before the shocked and shaken prisoners were led away, Judge Streit angrily underlined one inescapable fact: "The responsibility . . . must be shared not only by the crooked fixers and the corrupt players, but also by the college administrations, coaches and alumni groups . . ."

Vicious Pattern. Slender, studious Judge Streit was never much of an athlete himself, but as a five-term assemblyman and a judge for 14 of his 54 years, he knew just where to dig around in the shabby woodwork. Block by block he built up a ringing, 41-page indictment of big-time intercollegiate athletics. Said he: "The exposure before me is only the lifting of the curtain for a small glimpse of intercollegiate football and basketball, fired by commercialism and determination to win at all costs."

Behind the curtain, Judge Streit found a vicious pattern of commercialized recruiting that begins with athletic scholarships and falsified admission records, proceeds through four years of such cinch courses as music appreciation and finger painting, and winds up with a squad of athletic hirelings who may be easy touches for fast-talking fixers. Among his findings:

P: "Flagrant recruiting, proselyting and subsidizing" among big-time college football powers. Among the chief offenders: Maryland, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Southern Methodist (which awards 154 athletic scholarships every year).

P: "Deliberate fraud and probable forgery" in academic admission records at City College of New York, where one player's high-school average of 70.62% was raised to 89.4%, and another's was raised ten points, to make them eligible for admission, i.e., to play on C.C.N.Y.'s basketball team.

P: Basketball players, "masquerading as amateurs," who earned as much as $2,000 on summer jobs while playing in summer tournaments.

P: Big-business commercialism in schools like Kentucky, which grossed $1,200,000 in football gate receipts last year.

P: An offer to and acceptance by one player at Cincinnati University of scholarships "both for himself and his [non-playing] brother, which included tuition, board, a job, $50 a month expense money, and the use of a car."

Said Streit: "The naivete, the equivocation and the denials of the coaches and their assistants concerning their knowledge of gambling, recruiting and subsidizing would be comical were they not so despicable."

Individuals v. Policy. Judge Streit's blast brought some blunt and immediate answers. "It isn't any of the judge's business in the first place," yelped S.M.U. Athletic Director Matty Bell, "and in the second place, these scholarships cover all sports, not just football." Maryland President Dr. Harry ("Curley") Byrd, an old footballer, frankly admitted the presence of 60 out-of-staters on undefeated Maryland's huge, 97-man football squad. "What of it?" Byrd growled. Basketball Coach Clair Bee, now acting president of Long Island University and a particular target of Judge Streit's indictment, defended the "tradition" of subsidization and declared: "I would do it the same way again." Said defiant Clair Bee: the "present mess is one of individuals and not the result of policy."

But there were those--and in the majority--who were beginning to realize that present athletic policies, and not the individuals, were primarily to blame for the mess. C.C.N.Y. promptly launched an investigation of its forged records and announced that it was withdrawing forthwith from the athletic big time. In Chicago, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's policy-making council proposed a new set of rigid controls on academic standards and professionalism. Among them: limiting practice sessions to the regular season, a body blow to all postseason bowl games.

The most direct action of all came from Washington, where a ten-man committee of college presidents was meeting "to preserve what is good in college sports and eliminate the evils." Their first and major conclusion was a frank recognition that athletic scandals begin at home. Said the committee: the presidents themselves must "assume all responsibility for the conduct of athletics at their institutions."

* Still pending: cases against two Manhattan College players, three from Kentucky's 1948 Olympic team, three from Bradley. Two from Toledo University are admitted fixers of several games played last year, but will go scot-free because Ohio has no bribery statute.

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