NEW SENSATIONAL CHARGE
MADE IN CAGE GAMBLING

 

| Army Man, Former Manager of Syracuse Pro Club,
| Says College Players Told Him of Their ‘Co-Op-
eration’ With New York’s Gambling Element.

OLUMBUS, 0., Oct. 24.—With Ned Irish, manager of Mad-
ison Square Garden, in New York, expressing the ‘‘per-
to “let the entire matter drop rather than

sonal wish”

give (Dr. Forrest C. “Phog’’) Allen a change to talk again,”
new, and by far the most damaging, indictment against “the

“Broadway mob” and its alleged
control of basketball was written
into the record here Tuesday.
Sergt. Lou Greenberg, former
manager of the Syracuse (New
York) Reds, professional basket-
ball team, now stationed at Co- ‘
lumbus, said that eastern pro
layers had told him of their
alleged “co-operation” in having
the point scores in their col-
lege games fit the oe
odds.
Greenberg said:
“The only remedy for it is to
| have a basketball czar.”

| This brought immediate opposi-
tion from Harold G. Olsen, Ohio
State basketball coach and chair-
| man of the National Collegiate Ath-
letic association tournament com-
mittee—the group which arranges
the college games played in Madi-
son Square, and on other eastern
| courts, as well as the Kansas City
|tournament held each March.

Olsen called Greenberg’s sugges-
tion “silly.”

“I’ve been coaching for more
than twenty-five years,” he said,
“and I never knew of a single
instance where any boy ever has
fallen for any of that gambling
stuff.”

In New York Irish, promoter of
the winter program of basketball
games, was quoted as saying that
he received Allen’s telegram, nam-
ing names in the latter’s charge
that certain college players has
“thrown” games.

Allen, dean of midwestern basket-
ball coaches and tutor of the game
at the University of Kansas, last
week charged that gamblers had
|approached certain players and
| paid them to throw games. He
}mamed the players allegedly in-
| volved in a telegram to Irish.

 

“The situation to which Allen

a

refers was investigated thoroly by
the authorities and the newspapers
when the rumor first developed,”
Irish said. “That investigation
proved that the rumor was base-
less. No player was disciplined and
no other action was taken.”

Irish ‘said it was his penal:
wish to “let the entire matter
drop rather than give Allen a
chance to talk again.”

“He (Allen) has been doing that

 

 

sort of thing -for years now and!

the mystery to me is that people |

take him seriously in the light of
his previous false prophecies,” Irish
said. “In this instance, it was a
very serious thing for him to do,
based strictly on a second-hand
story, and, in justice to the players
he named, I feel moved to say there
was nothing to it.”
The new phase of the Allen case,
as brought into the open by Green-
berg, has been touched on before.’
The matter of “co-operation”—the
term used by Greenberg—resulted
in several articles in the New York |
Daily Mirror, in which its sports}
editor, Dan Parker, and its sports |
columnist, Bob Considine, com-|
mented.
Considine wrote, recently:
“Most of the warnings... have !
centered around the curious way
in which so many of the final
scores of Garden games have
ended ‘in the middle.’ .
‘In the middle’ is a gambling
expression denoting a final score
which is just right for the gam-
bler—in that he collects from
both wagering side. For instance,
a.gambler ordains that one team
is ‘15-13’ over another, meaning
‘that if you want to bet on the
favorite you must bet not that
the favorite will win, but that
\ the favorite will win by at least
fifteen points, or if you want

the underdog you ‘bet. that said

underdog will come within thir-

teen points of winning.

“A lot of games. have been
ending in the middle, which, in
the hypothetical case outlined
above, would mean that the win-
ning team wins by only fourteen
points. Thus the bookmaker col-
lects from both bettors.

“There have been a few too
.many in-the-middle games to
suit the lovers of the law of
mathematics .. .”

What, if any action, the N. C. A.
A. will take relative to the state-
ment of Greenberg was not known
Tuesday. In his statement Green-
berg said the players involved—men
who had played on college teams
and at the end of their amateur
careers had turned “pro”—told him
of their experiences, and actions. ,
Greenberg made it clear these state- |
ments did not relate to professional |
basketball, but to what took err
in college games,