Thursday, Dec. 28, 1944

 

 

Once Over
Lightly
___By Andy Rooney

NEw YORK, Dec. 27—Do you detect

an odor? Do you smell something
funny? Whether you detect it or not,
something is beginning to smell, and it
is the big time gambling racket which is
moving in on amateur and, in particular,
college sports. —

A few weeks ago University of Kan-
sas basketball coach Dr. Forrest C.
‘‘Phog’’ Allen popped off again. Good
Doctor Allen is always popping off about

this time of the
year, but never-
theless he had
something to say.
Simply, Phog told
everyone who
wanted to hear it
and some who
didn’t. that’ gam-
blers have become a
threat to college
athletics. Speci-
- fically Allen pointed
out the’ case. of|
“ii ‘Utah University |
PHOG ALLEN  ~— Coach Vadal
‘Peterson, who answered the door in his
hotel room in New York before a game
in the Garden and was confronted with
a man who asked the question: ‘“‘How
much will it cost me to have you.see to
it that your boys lose to Dartmouth in
the finals of the NCAA basketball
tournament?’ Peterson slammed the
door.

Allen offered further information
without laying himself open to a libel
case about two college players who sold
their own team to professional gamblers
for a price. And lastly, Allen suggested
that there is a scandal in the making
which will make the Black Sox mess
look like a penny pick-pocket affair.

OSTLY what Phog Allen was talking

about was Madison Square Garden.
where the biggest basketball business in
_ America is being carried on every winter
by Ned Irish. The facts. are that hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars are ex-
changing hands on the results of the
Garden winners and where there is that
much involved someone is going to get
_ approached. College gambling is not a
haphazard affair participated in by a few
track bookies during the off season ; it is
a big time racket all by itself. These
odds often oe the prices the
gamblers are offering are not set by guess
work and too often they are set by in-
formation not available to the public.