Cheaters

[MChambers]

5 (tie) Hugh Durham -- FSU/Georgia -- Durham was such a notorious cheater at FSU that when he played in the 1972 Final Four, Coach Jerry Tarkanien complained that it was a black mark on college coaches that he was there. But he doesn't rank higher because he never got caught at FSU ... he did get caught at Georgia, earning probation and having his 1985 NCAA appearance vacated.

I grew up in Florida in the 60s and 70s, so remember Durham well. Before he hit it big at FSU, he had some not-so-great teams. One of my father's friends played on an early Durham team. Once, they were playing one of the better teams on their schedule, and were leading at halftime. Durham told his team, "That's what happens when a good team doesn't play hard", or words to that effect. FSU promptly got creamed at the beginning of the second half.

[blueduke59]

It appears that McAdoo will be pursuing his GED rather than graduating if he chooses to enroll early at carolina. Strange, because chapel hill REQUIRES a high school diploma from an accredited institution and states that it does NOT accept GED's. Crooked Roy strikes again.

BTW, funny how this thread died right after I brought up Ol' Roy. Don't tell me people at the DBR of all places are afraid to dig up dirt on a chapel hill guy...

Nothing like a kid with a 3.9 GPA leaving high school early to pursue a GED. If unc accepts him it will be hard to defend:

http://www.stateuniversity.com/unive...apel_Hill.html

Academic Excellence

There’s no set formula for success, but a demonstrated record of academic excellence is a must to score an admissions offer from carolina. The university requires—not suggests— that students have pursued college-preparatory work in high school, and the Admissions Office recommends that students take as many Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses as possible. Carolina requires a high school diploma from an accredited institution and will not accept a GED or other high school equivalency degree for freshman admission.

[K>Roy]

Nothing like a kid with a 3.9 GPA leaving high school early to pursue a GED. If unc accepts him it will be hard to defend:

http://www.stateuniversity.com/unive...apel_Hill.html

It should be hard to defend. In reality, chapel hill won't have to defend it AT ALL because the media (and apparently DBR) won't touch it. If Cal tried to engineer such a blatant circumnavigation of school policy people would be going nuts. If K did it? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Roy? *Crickets*

All that glitters* is not gold.

EDIT: *Or, rather glittered.

[77devil]

It appears that McAdoo will be pursuing his GED rather than graduating if he chooses to enroll early at carolina.

Can you supply substantiation from a reputable source?

[K>Roy]

Can you supply substantiation from a reputable source?

I can indeed.

[greybeard]

Cheating can occur in a variety of ways. So far, this discussion seems to be focusing primarily on more recent occurrences. Let's go back a few more decades to the sort of cheating which was the center of a major scandal. Think back to college basketball in the fifties.... point shaving, pay for play.

Hey, those guys didn't dump any games. In fact, CCNY was undefeated, and the coach had nothing to do with the shaving. So, where's the beef--the bookies got hurt by the guys who bought the line?

[greybeard]

Including Larry Brown among a "most wanted" list is a bit too far.

He took a moribund UCLA team to within a game of the national title and boom goes the dynamite. Suddenly, the NCAA looks into Sam Gilbert and finds, to its shock, after years and years of his intimate connection to whe Wizard of Westwood's players, that "there is gambling going on here."

You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows and there were clearly some people who had had enough of Sam and UCLA if UCLA was going to be a player on the National scene.

Really, there was something to stick around for.

Brown beat one of the most powerful sports programs in America for a National Championship when his team was being lead by the third best player on the Court that evening. He coached the pants off Oklahoma and stole a championship from them.

The violations the ensuing year were Brown reports he had been told by an NCAA official before he left no big deal. What Brown himself had done was to buy a plane ticket for a player whom he had signed and courted apparently over several years. What was the plane ticket for? To go to his grandmother's funeral. The investigators discovered two more payments, one for $350 which was needed by the player to have his aunt's phone turned back on, and $180 for another plan ticket.

For this there was talk of imposing the death penalty on Kansas.

Pardon me if I believe that the penalty imposed on Kansas had less to do with those violations, then with Kansas's National Championship which Brown had bought by hiring Danny Manning's father as an assistant coach. That hiring, which left many on tobacco road furious, was perfectly legal and not without precedent but when it lead to a national championship, boom goes the dynamite.

You do the math.

Brown got more from his players, including Danny Manning, then any coach in the business and his successes were punished disproportionately after the fact, in the first instance for the sins of the Wizard, and in the second for doing less than LSU did to get another Wizard to play for it.

I think that Brown's name needs to be stricken from the list of ignominity.

[Devil in the Blue Dress]

Hey, those guys didn't dump any games. In fact, CCNY was undefeated, and the coach had nothing to do with the shaving. So, where's the beef--the bookies got hurt by the guys who bought the line?

I'm not talking about CCNY! There were some other places where serious questions were raised, some right along Tobacco Road back about the time Frank McGuire was in charge of recruiting in one location and the Old Gray Fox was in charge in another location.

[K>Roy]

It's truly alarming that anyone associated with chapel hill gets a free pass around here. LB not a cheat? You're serious?

[jimsumner]

Going undefeated and shaving points are not mutually inconsistent.

[blueduke59]

Including Larry Brown among a "most wanted" list is a bit too far.

He took a moribund UCLA team to within a game of the national title and boom goes the dynamite. Suddenly, the NCAA looks into Sam Gilbert and finds, to its shock, after years and years of his intimate connection to whe Wizard of Westwood's players, that "there is gambling going on here."

You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows and there were clearly some people who had had enough of Sam and UCLA if UCLA was going to be a player on the National scene.

Really, there was something to stick around for.

Brown beat one of the most powerful sports programs in America for a National Championship when his team was being lead by the third best player on the Court that evening. He coached the pants off Oklahoma and stole a championship from them.

The violations the ensuing year were Brown reports he had been told by an NCAA official before he left no big deal. What Brown himself had done was to buy a plane ticket for a player whom he had signed and courted apparently over several years. What was the plane ticket for? To go to his grandmother's funeral. The investigators discovered two more payments, one for $350 which was needed by the player to have his aunt's phone turned back on, and $180 for another plan ticket.

For this there was talk of imposing the death penalty on Kansas.

Pardon me if I believe that the penalty imposed on Kansas had less to do with those violations, then with Kansas's National Championship which Brown had bought by hiring Danny Manning's father as an assistant coach. That hiring, which left many on tobacco road furious, was perfectly legal and not without precedent but when it lead to a national championship, boom goes the dynamite.

You do the math.

Brown got more from his players, including Danny Manning, then any coach in the business and his successes were punished disproportionately after the fact, in the first instance for the sins of the Wizard, and in the second for doing less than LSU did to get another Wizard to play for it.

I think that Brown's name needs to be stricken from the list of ignominity.

LB coached 2 college programs and left both on probation and he's not a cheater????? You kidding me????

[77devil]

LB coached 2 college programs and left both on probation and he's not a cheater????? You kidding me????

Hey, what did you expect. It's Greybeard and he's out of his element since it's not lacrosse.

In that case, like Kornheiser, he's totally conflicted.

[Indoor66]

Hey, what did you expect. It's Greybeard and he's out of his element since it's not lacrosse.

Actually, IRRC, Greybeard grew up with Larry Brown and considers him a part of his Long Island homies.

[Shammrog]

You're right. Kids who make mistakes at the age of 19 and 20 should never be allowed to go to college. College is for those who are perfect...

(FYI - sarcasm light bulb should be going off right now)

Ehhhh... I don't know that many of these were typical 19 and 20 year-old "mistakes." UConn has pretty steadily evolved from kids for whom basketball provides an opportunity to attend college into kids for whom basketball provides an opportunity to stay out of prison.

[Shammrog]

LB coached 2 college programs and left both on probation and he's not a cheater????? You kidding me????

Brown was/is a phenomenal coach. But, sorry, a cheater. It is a fair bet that (ala Al Capone) his list of questionable practices went far beyond what he was actually nailed for

Another phenomenal coach - Jerry Tarkanian. Love him or hate him, that guy (like Brown) is flat-out a basketball genius.

[greybeard]

I'm not talking about CCNY! There were some other places where serious questions were raised, some right along Tobacco Road back about the time Frank McGuire was in charge of recruiting in one location and the Old Gray Fox was in charge in another location.

Edie Gard, whom Larry Brown credits for helping him more than anyone understand the nuances of the passing game of the 50s, was a delightful man who played for CCNY before the scandals and was the go-between for the mobster who had the dough and the players who received it. Gard went to jail.

At least in the early 60s, he played every weekend on a court on the South Shore of LI with several others stars from the 50s. Everyone who was anyone came to that court and that would have to have included your boy Arthur, as in Heyman.

There were, I believe, rumors about some of McQuire's guys having had contacts with the guy Gard had been a go-between for, and it might well be that the likes of Rosenbluth and Moe played basketball with Gard and perhaps hung with him, which might have been the source of the rumors.

One of the guys who regularly played on Gard's side was Alan Seidman, St. John's first team All American, '56. Until his death, friends of Seiden's said it was his friendship with Gard, whom he apparently loved like a brother, that kept Seiden out of the pros. Many close to Seiden apparently had urged him to dump his friendship with Gard when he graduated St. John's, but Seiden refused.

I can tell you first hand that Gard made the game a joy, in contrast to Seiden but that is another story, and one can understand how his brilliance at the game, and he was brilliant, attracked the best of the best to want to hang with him.

I wasn't around that court in the early 60s but a friend of mine whose old man had practically adopted Brown as a third son was, and he is the one who told me that Brown thought of Gard as a genuis. No way that Joe Glass would have let Brown get messed up in any nonsense, none. I doubt that Gard was involved in any shaddiness either through that era. We just didn't present in that fashion when I encountered that same game in the late 60s-early 70s.

Postscript, when SI did a cover story on Wally Szczerbiach as a senor in high school, he was quoted as saying that he learned most of what he knew about the passing game from going to CW Post with his old man, quite a player in his own right by the way. He mentioned Al Seiden as among the guys he learned from. The only thing anybody could have learned from Seiden was how to gun. It must have been Edie.

[greybeard]

Actually, IRRC, Greybeard grew up with Larry Brown and considers him a part of his Long Island homies.

Never met the man. Only saw him play once in person, Olympic tryouts, which were held my Senior year at St. John's. I went with a bunch of teammates to see the college All Stars, not the Goodyear team that Brown played for. Heard about Brown from the guy who sat next to me on the bench my senior year, Brent Glass, who went to the game with his entire family because they had all but adopted Brown several years earlier, as I learned that day.

I learned much more about the Larry the summer after I graduated when Larry was on the Olympic team and my best friend was recruited to be a counselor at Camp Keeyuma and play on the counselor team coached by Herb Brown. I visited a couple of times that summer or the next and got an earful about how great Larry was. Herb too, who word was was a better Xs and Os guy then Larry was, but did not have Larry's genuis as a teacher.

Didn't learn about Larry's perspectives about Gard until the year the Sixers made their run. I was sitting in my office listening to Kornheiser on the radio when he introduces Brent Glass as a guest. Brent then was the head of historic preservation for Pa and was on to chat about a project the State had completed honoring Wilt's 100 point game. I hopped in a cab and got to the ESPN Zone to see my old teammate. In talking about old times and our ball playing experiences I mentioned how during the summers after I had graduated high school I had found my way to this outrageous game in a neighboring town and described Gard's play. Brent then told me that "Larry" used to take him to that court to play and related how Larry had said that that guy, whom Brent said was named Edie Gard, had showed him more about how street ball could be played then anybody he had ever met.

So, it ain't like Larry and me are exactly tied at the hip. In fact, I got no connection to the guy, except that Brent's old man, who is a great, great guy who I haven't seen in 46 years, represents him and two guys I know, one, T, much better than the other, love him.

Finally, I repeat, Larry don't belong on your list and you guys would admit THAT it if he wasn't a UNC guy and you weren't from Duke.

[blueduke59]

The man coached at 2 schools and left both on probation. I guess the world just had it in for him.

[greybeard]

The man coached at 2 schools and left both on probation. I guess the world just had it in for him.

Nope, the NCAA had enough of Sam and, after the Wizard retired, would not allow a UCLA team to ascend to prominence for sins that went "unnoticed" when the Wizard of Westwood reigned. One has to wonder, as I pointed out on another thread, exactly how the Wizard (which was a name given Wooden by two LA sports reporters for just this reason) skated by all those years. Indeed, somewhat mystically, Wooden got off with a simple, "Maybe I had tunnel vision" admission well after the fact, even while the relationship between all his players and Sam went uninvestigated during his many Championship years. And, Sam remained a fixture around the program even after Wooden retired, even when several former Wooden stars took their turns at the helm with no success.

It was only after Larry's stellar coaching performance threatened to bring UCLA back to prominence that the NCAA discovered Sam was doing favors for UCLA ball players. Jezz, some guys have all the luck I guess.

As for the Kansas thing, if you think that the plane ticket for the kid to go to his grandmother's funeral, which Brown admitted and said he would do again even after learning it was against NCAA rules, makes Brown a cheat, you are a Dukie and I'm not.

I have to think that the probation sanction imposed after Brown left was due more to Brown's hiring of Manning's pops to win a recruiting war and then outcoach the world in beating a superior Oklahoma team in the national championship game--it is not good to make Oklahoma and UNC mad--then that plane ticket and the two similar acts of largesse an assistant did for the same player. In fact, they really were chump change, even by the standards of that era, and, when you think about it, are not a whole lot different than allowing Eliot Williams to transfer without consequence to care for his sick mother.

Brown obviously had his fill of the NCAA and its "even-handed" rule applications. He has not returned to college ball since although there have been many stops along his coaches road since.

To equate him to the likes of Calipari is flat wrong in my opinion. I dissent from your insistence that he belongs on a list of college balls worst cheats and believe that I have the way stronger position.

[jimsumner]

"The man coached at 2 schools and left both on probation. I guess the world just had it in for him. "

Well, not exactly. He didn't leave Davidson on probation. Of course, that may be because he anticipated that the NCAA would have it in for him and left Davidson for the pros after a month.

Who does that? Seriously.