CCNY locked out from 1946 tournaments

In 1946, CCNY returned to their previous level of success and entered its final regular season game with a record of 13-4.  Few sportswriters or fans gave CCNY a chance against the No. 1 ranked NYU team, which had a record of 18-1 and had won 13 consecutive games.  The build-up to the game reminded many writers of the 1934 CCNY-NYU game and “fans started camping out in front of the ticket booths” four hours before tickets went on sale at 9:00am.  The ticket demand led to nine arrests for “ticket speculation” and the temporary suspension of ticket sales at 9:20am because the “line had become so long and so out of hand.”  Eventually, “ten mounted policemen and a detail of foot police restored order.”  By 3pm, “16,000 tickets” had been sold.[1]

In a surprising upset, CCNY defeated NYU by a score of 49-44 and set off a wave of celebration.  According to the New York Times, “within fifteen minutes after the game ended, a band of about 1,000 C.C.N.Y. rooters massed near the Garden” and paraded through the streets with “a ‘casket’ painted in black and covered with NYU pennants and lettering.”  When the “marchers” reached Broadway, they “started a huge snake dance which caused a traffic tie-up and created an uproar as motorists sounded their horns in an effort to break through.”  The parade entered Times Square and “then headed for the Hudson [River] to dispose of the casket.”[2]

The intense celebration reflected the belief among CCNY students and fans that the victory would result in an invitation to the NIT.  Considering the school’s absence from post-season tournaments since 1942, many hoped this would revitalize the basketball program.  Yet, the day after CCNY’s victory, the NIT announced that Rhode Island State and not City College would be the tournament’s final entrant.  Students, furious with the decision, “assailed the tournament committee for what they termed publicity ‘exploitation’ in creating the impression that City would receive a berth if it defeated N.Y.U.”[3]  Students condemned Garden promoters and NIT officials for using the promise of a tournament berth to increase fan interest, and thus profit, in the CCNY-NYU contest.  Letters of protest to Ned Irish stated that the tournament committee should have named Rhode Island State before the game.  The ticket demand for the game, the celebration following the CCNY victory, and the angry response to the team’s exclusion from the tournament indicated the popularity of CCNY within New York basketball and the intense passions involved in college basketball at Madison Square Garden.

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[1] “Basketball Fans Stage Ticket Rush.” New York Times, March 6, 1946.

[2] “Times Square Parade Marks C.C.N.Y. Victory,” New York Times, March 8, 1946.

[3] “C.C.N.Y. Protests Choice of R.I. State,” New York Times, March 9, 1946.

Post-season tournaments are born, by Ari Sclar

An increase in frenetic activity on the court served as a byproduct of the abolition of the center jump.  Supporters of the center jump had claimed it positively slowed down the game so that players would not overexert themselves.  According to Time, the results of the rule change during the first year led some “physicians and coaches” to become concerned that the pace placed “too great a strain on players’ hearts.”  Most commentators and coaches, however, welcomed the change since the elimination of the jump: “speeds up the game, adds about seven minutes of playing time…[and] results in more spectacular tries for basketball and larger scores.”[1]

The increase in scoring surpassed all expectations as teams and players adjusted to the new rules.  Whereas scores in the early 1930s had often been in the teens and twenties, some teams scored in the sixties during the early 1940s.  By the end of the decade, scores exploded into the seventies, eighties, and even nineties.  Spectators witnessed evenly matched teams score at incredible paces and individual players became stars for scoring more than 20 points in a game. Specialization began to differentiate between positions as “playmakers” became point guards and coaches designed offenses around individual players’ ability to score.  In March 1947, Harry Boykoff scored 54 points, which then set a record at Madison Square Garden, in a 71-52 St. John’s victory over rival St. Francis.[2]  The increased scoring also attracted spectators and intensified the commercialism of college basketball.  Garden promoter Ned Irish and the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association (MBWA) took immediate advantage of this change, and at the end of the 1938 season, they organized a postseason tournament to crown a national champion.

Described as the “Rose Bowl of Basketball,” the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) invited six teams (NYU, LIU, Temple, Bradley, Oklahoma A&M, and Colorado) to Madison Square Garden in March 1938.  Some basketball fans declared the NIT “will prove nothing” due to the absence of Stanford, Notre Dame, and teams from the powerful Big Ten, which did not participate in post-season games.  Others asserted that bids to NYU and LIU after mediocre seasons only illustrated that the “writers are playing stooges to enrich the coffers of Ned Irish.”  The tournament championship game received wide media attention as Temple, with All-American Mike (Meyer) Bloom leading the way, defeated Colorado and its star, future Supreme Court Justice Byron ‘Whizzer’ White, 60-38 by playing “a brand of basketball that never has been surpassed in Madison Square Garden.”[3]  The NIT attracted fewer customers than regular season games, but its success led the NCAA to form its own postseason national tournament in 1939.

The post-season tournaments encouraged the ongoing growth and standardization of college basketball.  Stanford coach John Bunn stated the Garden provided a “benefit” to all participants since “Western teams could learn about ball-handling from their Eastern opponents while…invading teams could teach the local fives a little about shooting.”  As more cities promoted double-headers, eastern teams sometimes traveled west and commentators declared that “basketball’s provincialism is gone and the game is much healthier for it.”  In 1940, Newsweek stated that basketball was “watched annually by more paying customers than any other sport, 90,000,000 in a single season.”[4]  That same year, the first televised college basketball game took place, although basketball would not take full advantage of the new medium until the 1950s.  Following the 1941 season, during which Nat Holman served as president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), the organization’s Coaching Committee voted to standardize the size of the ball, floor, backboards, lighting, and other equipment.  Standard equipment, inter-regional double-headers, and national tournaments, helped college basketball surpass all but college football and major league baseball in national popularity by World War II.[5]

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[1] “Sport: In New Orleans,” Time, February 7, 1938; “Sport: Point a Minute,” Time, January 24, 1938. In 1909, Luther Gulick stated he opposed the ‘cage’ game “because of the excessive strain upon the heart produced by the continuous playing.” See Luther Gulick, “Proposed Changes in Basket Ball,” American Physical Education Review 14, no. 8 (October 1909): 509.

[2] Bjarkman, Hoopla, 47. Scoring records fell at incredible paces during the 1940s.  In March 1945, NYU scored 85 points in a game against Temple and Bowling Green scored 97 points at the Garden in 1948.  Boykoff scored a Garden record 45 points in 1943.  That scoring mark was broken by Mikan in 1945.  For Boykoff’s 1947 mark, see “St. Francis Beaten By Redmen,” New York Times, March 12, 1947.  St. John’s coach Joe Lapchick called Dutch Garfinkel a “playmaker” in relation to his ability to produce scoring opportunities for his teammates.  See “West’s Brand of Basketball Finds Favor of Lapchick,” New York Evening Post, December 13, 1938.

[3] “Readers’ Right,” New York Evening Post, March 4, 1938 and March 7, 1938. The Post was not part of the committee which organized the tournament and received 34 letters in protest of the first NIT. NYU and LIU played for the first time ever. On the final, see New York Times, March 17, 1938.

[4] “Activities on Basketball Courts,” New York Times, January 4, 1938.  “West Meets East and Trims It in Year-End Basketball Spurt,” Newsweek, January 8, 1940.  The NCAA formed its own tournament because it determined that it needed to control college basketball.  See Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 170-171.

[5] For information on Holman’s tenure as NABC president, see Nat Holman papers, City College of New York Archives, New York.  On the NABC vote to standardize the game, see “Uniform Basketball and Coaches Pushed by Coaches’ Committee,” New York Times, March 25, 1941. On basketball’s growth and general attendance figures, see “Sports,” Newsweek, April 14, 1944. According to the article, Garden attendance was 249,728 at double-headers and 115,000 at the national tournaments.

Height becomes important, by Ari Sclar

In 1937, college basketball made one of the most important rule changes in its history, the elimination of the center jump.  Prior to the 1937-38 season, play stopped after every made basket and the teams returned to the center of the court for a jump ball.  Opponents of the center jump denounced the unfairness it produced in the game.  Nat Holman had declared that, “basketball as it is now is not 100% healthy due to the advantage held by a team with a tall center.”[1]  Four years later, University of Minnesota coach Dave MacMillan stated that he favored the rule change since “otherwise you have four players and a clown.”[2] 

MacMillan’s distinction between ‘players’ and the center ‘clown’ indicated the clear bias against tall players in basketball.  Prior to the 1936 Olympic qualifying tournament, the Time magazine described the McPherson Oilers, whose starting five ranging in height from 6’1” to 6’9”, as “athletic freaks.”  They had perfected a “technique called ‘dunking’ with which they score by jumping up above the basket, dropping the ball into it.”  Some traditionalists believed that such activity would ruin the game.  Kansas coach ‘Phog’ Allen spoke for many coaches and critics when he stated: “dunking is not basketball.”[3]

During the early decades of the twentieth century, coaches viewed taller players as awkward, ungainly, and useful only for rebounds or the center jump.  In 1934, newspapers viewed Jewish high schooler and future NYU star Irwin Witty as “a smooth player, despite his 6’3” height.”[4]  Coaches spent considerably more time with shorter guards and forwards who possessed the bursts of movement required in basketball.  Many assumed this would continue in the post-center jump era.  Ironically, the rule change produced the opposite effect.  The absence of the center jump forced coaches to provide tall players with instruction, which increased their skill and ability on the court.  Some commentators immediately recognized that a shift had occurred.  In the March 1938 YMHA Bulletin, Stanley Frank re-issued his treatise on Barney Sedran with the additional comment that basketball “gives the big man crushing advantages over a smaller opponent.”  By the mid-1940s, players over 6’9” became more common in college basketball as DePaul’s George Mikan, Oklahoma A&M’s Bob Kurland, and St. John’s Harry Boykoff changed the nature of the game.[5]  Yet, tall players remained seen as “freaks.”  In 1943, Newsweek profiled the 6’9” Boykoff, New York City’s first successful ‘big man.’  The text focused on his height, made no mention of his Jewishness and explained that, “It is rumored that the reason the 20-year-old sophomore is studying accountancy is so that he can tally his final height.”[6]

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the new generation of ‘freaks’ often stood under the basket to block their opponents’ shot.  Many commentators considered this, much like the center jump, an unfair advantage for taller players and believed that the “practice called ‘goal tending’ threatened to turn the game over to circus giants, whether or not they can play basketball.”[7]  The NCAA banned goaltending following the 1944 season, but taller players and their coaches adapted to this rule like they had the elimination of the center jump.  Holman and others lamented the gradual removal of the ‘small’ player.  Holman scoffed at Phog Allen’s suggestion that the basket be raised to 12-feet, but suggested the lanes be widened to 12-feet in order to “aid the little man” by keeping taller players further from the basket.  Despite opposition from traditionalists, however, the sport’s popularity seemed to increase every year as basketball became “a sport where height pays off.”[8] 

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[1] “Holman’s No-Tap Plan Tested as Court Experts See Y Beat Collegians,” Y Bulletin, April 7, 1933.  In 1933, Holman organized a “test game” between the 92^nd Street YMHA varsity and a collection of ‘all-stars’ from CCNY and St. John’s. 

[2] “On the Courts,” New York Times, December 29, 1937. MacMillan’s comments were made after the first double-header in which a record crowd of 18,148 saw Stanford defeat CCNY and Minnesota beat LIU.  MacMillan was a former teammate of Holman’s with the Celtics.

[3] Quote on ‘freaks’ from “Sport: Basketball,” Time, April 13, 1936; Quote on ‘dunking’ from “Brooklyn College and McPherson Oilers Score in Garden Basketball Games,” New York Times, March 12, 1936.  Prior to the 1936 qualifying tournament, the Oilers played an All-Metropolitan team composed of the entire LIU squad and stars from NYU, CCNY, St. John’s, Manhattan, Fordham, and St. Francis.  MacPherson won 45-43 in “the most brilliantly played and spectacular basketball game that Madison Square Garden ever has seen.”  On Allen’s attitude, see Harold C. Evans, “Some Notes on College Basketball in Kansas,” The Kansas Historical Quarterly 11, no. 2 (May 1942): 199-215.  Quote on 213.

[4] “Jefferson Seeks First Court Title in Facing Clinton,” New York Times, March 24, 1934.

[5] Stanley Frank, “Jews in Sports: Barney Sedran,” Y Bulletin, March 18, 1938. 

[6] “Basketball,” Newsweek, February 1, 1943.  On Mikan  as the “first” great big man, see Isaacs, All the Moves, 129-135; Bjarkman, Hoopla, 51-52.

[7] The rules committee also allowed unlimited substitutions, increased personal fouls from four to five, and provided the referee with the ability to call time out for an injured player.  See “Sports,” Newsweek, April 14, 1944.

[8] “Little Man: Holman Urges Changes in Cage Setup,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1951; “Coach Assails Basket Ball Toss-Up as Unsportsmanlike,” Washington Post, January 17, 1929. Sport: Basketball Pfd,” Time, April 6, 1942.

Garden double-headers go 'big-time', by Ari Sclar

After a successful opening season, college basketball continued to grow at the Garden.  The complaints from some coaches during the first season did not diminish the Garden’s appeal and many teams returned during the second season of double-headers.  In December 1935, Kentucky again lost to NYU, 41-28, although “Kentucky had no excuse tonight. The officiating…was not questioned.”[1]  The Garden also attracted Pacific Coast schools during the 1936 season.  After the University of California lost to NYU 41-26 in the opener, the team’s coach praised the referees and said: “I prefer the way the game is played in the East.  Nobody got hurt and the action was faster.”[2]  The coach’s comments demonstrated the important role the Garden double-headers played in college basketball.  Without discussing any problems associated with officiating or rule interpretation, he concentrated on the ‘way’ basketball was played in New York.

Standardized officiating allowed commentators directly to discuss the decades-old question of regional supremacy.  As they had since the early 1930s, the New York press portrayed the city’s basketball as superior to the rest of the country.  Others, however, viewed the sport from a difference perspective.  In 1935, Literary Digest had commented that college basketball had been “long dominated by the Midwest.”[3]  The importance of conferences in the Midwest and West Coast likely contributed to this impression, but historical success meant little during inter-regional games.  Commentators nonetheless distinguished the various forms of basketball through spatial considerations that often contained implicit racial differences.

Differentiated styles conformed to generalized regional differences within the United States.  In reality, styles varied within regions, cities, and even schools as some coaches changed strategies based on personnel.[4]  Most commentators ignored such intricacies, however, and viewed basketball through the lens of regionalism.  Time magazine’s mid-season report in February 1934 represented the basic summary: “bred on small gymnasium courts, Eastern teams play a cunning, fast game; usually with spontaneous maneuvers.  The larger Western courts develop long passers, elaborate strategies.”[5]  Time ignored a ‘Southern’ style, but after the first NYU-Kentucky game in January 1935, the New York Times had explained that Kentucky “demonstrated something quite new to metropolitan court circles.”  They used “a slow, deliberate style of offense” that “was so sharp a contrast that the spectators, used to the swift-moving panorama of metropolitan basketball, were inclined to be impatient with the other type.”[6]

The Garden double-headers both served as a laboratory to determine regional supremacy and slowly decreased stylistic and regional differences.  Teams observed, studied, and embraced the strategies, styles, and methods of their opponents even as the debate over dominance stopped being theoretical.  The Garden’s commercial and popular success led promoters in Buffalo, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities to imitate the double-headers.  This structure encouraged annual tours by western schools during winter breaks.  One particular visit revolutionized the sport.[7]

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[1] “New York U. Crushes Kentucky Cats 41-28,” Kentuckian, January 9, 1936.

[2] “Maidman is Best to Bears’ Coach,” New York Evening Post, December 19, 1935.

[3] “Eastern Candidates for Basketball’s Crown,” Literary Digest, February 9, 1935. 

[4] St. John’s illustrated the power of a college program as the team adapted to new personnel and played a different style than they had as the ‘Wonder Five.’  With “fast and shifty,” but “undersized” players, the St. John’s coach transformed the team into one that used a “fast-breaking offense” of “short passes and hard cutting.”  See “St. John’s Quintet Due to Poor Year,” New York Evening Post, November 24, 1933.

[5] “Basketball: Midseason,” Time, February 19, 1934.

[6] “NYU Defeats Kentucky Five, 23-22,” New York Times, January 6, 1935.

[7] Isaacs, All the Moves, 79-80.

Establishing a national basketball culture, by Ari Sclar

Before Garden basketball could succeed in constructing a new model in college basketball, it had to overcome the sport’s fragmentation.  In 1934, Time explained that college basketball “is played almost entirely within regional leagues.”  This restricted the sport’s nationalization because “the argument of each league that it has the best team in the land is more forceful than most such controversies, since the strongest teams play on courts of different sizes under rules differently interpreted.”[1]  Stanley Frank pointed out that the root of the problem was “a vague negative set of rules, lending itself easily to all sorts of conflicting interpretation, is the stumbling block which makes college basketball a purely sectional sport.”  Any ‘championship’ contest would “prove exactly nothing” since “the home team most probably would win because the visiting squad would be bewildered and crucified by the wholly unfamiliar rule enforced by home officials.”  Frank quoted officials who that the rule book caused many problems since it merely “tells what a player cannot do and leaves everything else to the imagination.”[2]

The first Garden double-header in December 1934 demonstrated Frank’s supposition.  In the highly anticipated second game, St. John’s played Westminster College in the opener, NYU’s predominantly Jewish team and Notre Dame provided “hardly a dull moment all evening” before a crowd of 16,000 “that knew its basketball thoroughly.”  Literary Digest declared that “the packed galleries” in the arena had acted “as they do at a professional hockey game.”  This influenced the outcome since “the conduct of the partisan crowd kept nervous Notre Dame players from sinking a lot of free shots at the basket.”  To offset the partisanship, the Garden brought in a Midwestern referee to officiate alongside a New York referee.  The New York Times explained that “the Midwestern interpretation of guarding cost NYU…a heavy penalty in fouls.”  Literary Digest concurred that the “interpretation of the guarding rule inflicted a heavy penalty on the NYU team.”  NYU, which fielded largely the same team that had gone undefeated in 1934, defeated Notre Dame 25-18 despite the rulings of the Midwestern official.[3]

Rule interpretation remained the most pressing problem of Garden basketball during the 1934-35 season.  In the second double-header, NYU played Kentucky, considered the best team in the South.  In the final minute of play, New York ref Jack Murray called a foul on Kentucky’s star player, 6’5” center Leroy Edwards.  NYU’s Sid Gross converted the free throw, which proved to be the deciding basket in a 23-22 NYU victory.  The questionable foul, “set off the most raucous and liveliest argument the sport has yet provoked.”  Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp claimed his team had been “robbed” by Eastern officials since they had not punished NYU’s rough players for fouling Edwards throughout the entire game.  Literary Digest stated that Rupp and Notre Dame’s coach both “contend that they would have made a far better showing against NYU had their games been handled by home officials.  No team can lay claim to a ‘National Championship’ as long as officials are unable to agree on their definitions of fouls in a game.”  The mainstream media begrudgingly agreed that “NYU has the strongest claim of the [national] title.”[4]

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[1] “Sport: Basketball,” Time, February 19, 1934. The centrality of conferences in college sport led New York schools to discuss forming a Metropolitan League as a way to provide publicity and revenue.  The advent of regular Garden basketball made such a league irrelevant, but even if it had been formed, it would have contributed to the confusion of college basketball. 

[2] Stanley Frank, “Court Chatter,” New York Evening Post, January 10, 1934.

[3] “Playing the Game,” Literary Digest, January 12, 1935; “NYU Five Downs Notre Dame, 25-18, as 16,000 Look On,” New York Times, December 30, 1934.

[4] “Eastern Candidates for Basketball’s Crown,” Literary Digest, February 9, 1935. For coaches’ “contention,” see “Melvin Goldsmith, “College Basketball in the Far West,” Literary Digest, January 26, 1935.  The NYU-Kentucky game led to the three-second lane in order to restrict roughness under the basket. 

Promoting college basketball, by Ari Sclar

Fan interest in the CCNY-NYU game aroused the curiosity of promoters.  The game had been played before 5,000 fans at the 102^nd Armory, but reports indicated that three times as many people wanted tickets.  Promoters made a failed attempt to move the game to Madison Square Garden, although they successfully organized a series of double-headers at the Garden the following season.[1]  Lead promoter Ned Irish explained that he left his job as a sportswriter at the New York World Telegram to run the double-headers because: “Basket ball in the Metropolitan area should have the greatest ready-made market of any sport. It is played in colleges, high schools, elementary schools, at playgrounds.”  Speaking to the same fluidity of New York basketball that Barney Ain had described in Spalding, Irish stated that “games in college gymnasiums and armories have been well-attended – but principally by younger enthusiasts who were willing to brave the discomforts of first-come first-served ushering, makeshift seats with somebody’s legs hanging over your shoulders and abominable ventilation.”  These conditions could only attract the most dedicated – and partisan – fans, whereas “adult fans were not attracted.”  Irish intended to transform the audience experience and hoped to exploit basketball’s popularity by giving “the fans a good place in which to watch games.”[2]

Not everyone celebrated the new model of New York college basketball.  Prior to a double-header in December 1935, NYU students publicly complained of being relegated to “gallery” seats.  A student publication declared that, “one can easily deduce that the non-commercialism of NYU athletics is just so much talk and nothing more.”  Two student publications boycotted basketball and refused to include news on the team until officials remedied the situation.  Upon being informed of the controversy, Irish denied any responsibility.  A media report stated that Irish believed the “matter rested solely between the students and the university officials.”  He also provided assurances to all fans “that there was no foundation for the claims of poor visibility from the balcony.”[3] 

The failed boycott did not prevent the isolation and marginalization of students purposely implemented by Irish.  Promoters of the March 1934 CCNY-NYU game limited student tickets to 500 from each school, but students remained well represented at a contest with an audience of 5,000.  Irish’s desire to exploit an existing mass culture and cater to an older audience led to a scathing critique in the Nation.  In March 1935, columnist ‘Left Wing’ stated: “a college basketball team has no more place in a professional sports arena… than a Jew in Hitler’s bathtub.”  ‘Left Wing’ connected the Garden double-headers to the ‘evils’ of college athletics, which “today is in the control of thoroughly venal men” who only cared about the commercial benefits of sport.  They hypocritically called college sports amateur while “making it professional in everything but name, with paid athletes, games played before enormous throngs, and a professional atmosphere surrounding the whole thing.”[4] 

Few commentators or sportswriters joined ‘Left Wing’ in condemning the new model.  The double-headers assured college basketball’s place in the pantheon of American sport.  They received national media attention and praise from national sportswriters as articles marveled at the sudden rise of college basketball into the “big-time.”  Magazines and newspapers produced familiar storylines as teams, players, and coaches became recognizable figures.  New York schools welcomed the financial opportunities provided by the Garden.  One media report stated that CCNY’s Holman “looks with high favor upon the development” of basketball’s “prosperous future.”[5]  Yet, whereas the charity double and triple headers of the early 1930s had been local or regional events, the regular double-headers brought teams from across the nation to play New York schools.  This posed a problem.

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[1] Isaacs, All the Moves, 76, 78-79.

[2] “Basket Ball Cashes Big Time in New York, Seen as Threat to Football in Crowds, Dollars,” Washington Post, January 7, 1935.

[3] “NYU Papers Urge Basketball Boycott,” New York Times, December 20, 1935.  The cited quote is from the Washington Square College Bulletin.  NYU had recently de-emphasized football due to commercialism.

[4] “The Build-Up of Basketball,” The Nation, March 27, 1935.

[5] “Playing the Game,” Literary Digest, January 12, 1935.

CCNY v. NYU, March 1934 - by Ari Sclar

The CCNY-NYU game in March 1934 served as the spark that led to college basketball’s emergence into the national spotlight.  The extensive media attention during the season peaked for this final game.  The pre-game coverage generally focused on the strengths and weakness of the teams, players, and coaches.  Sportswriters excitedly discussed the matchup, and used increasingly more elaborate imagery and symbolism in anticipation of a mythic contest.  Both teams entered the contest undefeated and the New York Times stated that the twentieth annual meeting between the two schools had “never before … aroused such widespread interest.”[1]

One central discussion involved speculation whether Holman would play his All-American center, Moe Goldman.  In the days leading up the CCNY-NYU game, Goldman had publicly indicated his intention to join the Philadelphia Sphas immediately following the NYU game.[2]  A conflict emerged between Holman and Goldman, although it did not involve the player’s decision to turn professional.  Rather, Goldman’s “desultory attitude” became the problem as he placed his own aspirations before the team.  Holman hoped a CCNY victory would lead to a “post-season” game against Notre Dame, considered the best team in the Midwest.  Goldman’s decision to turn professional would make him ineligible for a contest many believed would crown a ‘national’ champion.[3]  Writers firmly backed Holman and blamed Goldman for a lack of focus.  In the end, Goldman played, which led the New York Post to state: “In the normal course of events, Holman undoubtedly would keep Goldman on the bench, but this is no normal situation.”[4]

The 1934 CCNY-NYU game involved competitive pressures previously unseen in New York college basketball.  Prior to the season, Holman had won eighty percent of his games at CCNY and had almost complete authority and influence over the basketball program.  The revenue and publicity connected to a possible CCNY-Notre Dame game, however, prevented him from banishing his star player.  NYU ended discussions of a ‘national’ championship by beating CCNY 24-18.  Goldman played, but NYU’s Irwin ‘King Kong’ Klein and Joe Lefft held him to only three points.[5]

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[1] “Unbeaten City College and NYU Fives Clash Tonight in 20^th Annual Game,” New York Times, March 3, 1934.

[2] On Goldman’s post-CCNY career, see Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field, 66-68.

[3] “Coach May Bench Captain Goldman for NYU Game,” New York Times, March 1, 1934. Goldman was named Converse second team All-America.  He first skipped practice and then Holman barred him from practice.

[4] “Lavender Choice as Smarter Five; Goldman to Play,” New York Evening Post, March 3, 1934. 

[5] “NYU Five Stages Lat Spurt to Halt City College,” New York Times, March 4, 1934; “NYU Quintet May Play Irish,” New York Evening Post, March 4, 1934.  Both NYU and CCNY played Jewish clubs after their game.  In late March 1934, NYU played against the New Haven YMHA and helped raise $160 for the Hebrew Institute, the Home of Jewish Children, the Jewish Home for the Aged, and the YM-YWHA camp. See “Final Basketball Game – Benefit Performance,” Community News, March 30, 1934. CCNY played against the Brooklyn Dux.  See Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbet’s Field, 33-34. Beginning in 1934-35, Holman established a policy of preseason news releases that were provided to all New York area newspapers.  Other city schools followed his lead.  See Applin, “From Muscular Christianity to the Marketplace,” 170.

The Rise of LIU - Ari Sclar

Bolstered by CCNY’s success, New York sportswriters increased their boosterism in 1934 and presented New York as “the college basketball center of the East.”  Other schools contributed to notions of New York superiority.  St. John’s remained an excellent program after the 1931 scandal and NYU defeated Yale, Temple, and St. John’s over a five day span in February 1934.  Stanley Frank declared that NYU’s 47-30 “whaling” of St. John’s was “the most impressive display of power shown this year.”[1]  The strength of CCNY, NYU, and other city schools during the 1934 season led sportswriters to discuss the possible formation of a Metropolitan League, made up of the ‘Big Six.’  If Columbia could not leave the Ivy League, sportswriters begrudgingly decided that it would be replaced by Long Island University (LIU), which had only started its basketball program in the late 1920s.[2]

Considered “small-time” in the early 1930s, LIU found itself denigrated by other New York schools.  Unlike the city’s top programs, this latecomer to New York basketball allowed freshmen to play and had not been included in the first charity triple-header at the Garden.  The program slowly increased its prestige after Claire Bee became the head coach and recruited top high school players from New York.  Bee’s acumen at recruiting had brought some of the best Jewish players to LIU, which became the fourth ‘Jewish’ basketball school in New York, joining NYU, CCNY, and St. John’s.  Yet, its invitation to play in the 1933 charity ‘carnival’ did not mean that sportswriters or fans considered LIU to be in the class of NYU or CCNY.  In 1934, the school announced it would no longer allow freshmen to play on the varsity, but sportswriters belittled LIU’s 20-game winning streak against “second-class competition.”  Ironically, a 33-28 loss to St. John’s provided the school legitimacy as “a new basketball power.”[3]

The 1934 LIU-St. John’s game illustrated the intense passion that basketball could produce.  Thirteen hundred spectators “formed the most rabidly partisan gathering of the campaign,” and watched a “tense, thrilling battle that was worthy of its setting.”  During the game, “the players kept remarkable control of themselves until just 35 seconds before the final gun” when St. John’s Rip Kaplinsky slammed into LIU’s Bill Schwartz.  “Fists started to fly and in an instant one end of the court was a mass of fighting players.”  Eventually, “the constabulary arrived in time to stop a few zealous spectators from throwing sucker punches in the players’ private fight.”[4]   

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[1] Stanley Frank, “Court Chatter,” New York Evening Post, February 19, 1934.

[2] Claire Hare, “How About It?” New York Evening Post, January 20, 1934.

[3] “LIU Joins Court Leaders,” New York Evening Post, February 15, 1934.

[4] “St. John’s Topples LIU Five, 33-28,” New York Times, February 15, 1934.