The Real Everett and Frank Story of ACC Basketball
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The Real Everett and Frank Story of ACC Basketball Most every ACC basketball fan knows of the “bitter rivalry” stories re NC State’s Everett Case and UNC with Frank McGuire. Yes? If you are a sports fan in North Carolina and are of a certain age you understand that basketball was defined by this rivalry and reached a peak with the 1957 Lennie Rosenbluth national champions. Is there a “rest of the story” here? Bob Lee, a respected blogger who over the years focused on Tar Heel basketball wrote in his March 22, 2016 blog: “The period from 1957-62 was pivotal; for Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal……for ACC Basketball. ………. And for the future of Basketball in America. As “Lefty” was running the mob’s sports gambling operation, Everett Case and Frank McGuire were birthing a phenomenon known as ACC Basketball. Case came to Raleigh from Indiana set upon making William Neal Reynolds Coliseum the center of Southern basketball. But Case needed ‘a hated rival’ to gin up the ‘tobacco-road’ Populace of the “Rip Van Winkle State. Enter Frank McGuire. With McGuire’s imports from NYC and Case’s Hoosiers the perfect adversaries, Case and McGuire would meet for Sunday dinner at Case’s home in Raleigh and contrive ‘bitter rivalry’ scenarios to gin up their quite naïve fans. The off-court theatrics between the two cagey coaches were as phony as pro wrestling but the on-court battles were quire real. Meanwhile in the Chicago suburb of Cicero, Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal took a meeting with an ambitious young basketball player named Jack Molinas. By his own admission he’d ‘rather swindle you out of a nickel than earn an honest dollar.’ If Jack Molinas did not invent the art of point-shaving, he certainly refined it.” For those of you that did not keep up with Madison Square Garden Basketball in Post WWII New York, you might want to read Rosen’s book The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Almost Destroyed the Game of Basketball. Below are some of the quotes taken directly from the book. Re Point Shaving of New York College Basketball games: “Here’s the testimony of one of New York’s most distinguished coaches and an intimate friend of Frank McGuire, who coached St. John’s for 1948 to 1952. ““Frank was the son of a policeman,” says Coach X, “and being brought up in Hell’s Kitchen, over on the West Side of New York, he also knew Albert Anastasia and the entire Mafia crowd that operated there. In fact, Frank was the only guy that both the mob and the police felt they could trust. At the time, the mob had important members of both police and the fire departments in their pockets and they needed a reliable, trustworthy bag man to make the pay-offs. And Frank McGuire was their man.” “Coach X’s information is corroborated by an outstanding player who performed for one of New York City’s Catholic colleges in the late 1940s.” “Frank McGuire was always dressed in expensive clothes and was always flashing a ton of money. He drove a Cadillac, his wife drove a fancy car, and they had a luxurious apartment in the city, and a large, well-appointed vacation home up in Greenwood Lake. McGuire never played the stock market or anything like that. His only discernible source of income was his coaching salary from St. John’s which only amounted to seventy-five hundred dollars a year. Everybody who wanted to know knew where McGuire’s real income was coming from.” Coach X adds this: “After the basketball scandal broke and Senator Kefauver began to investigate the influence of organized crime, things were really hot in New York. To protect themselves and to protect Frank, the Mafia enlisted the aid of Ben Carnevale, an alumnus of North Carolina, who was then coaching at Navy and Carnevale got Frank the coaching job down in Chapel Hill.” Frank got out of New York, to use a Supply Chain term, “Just in Time!” What does all this have to do with our young hero? Well, Jack Molinas had a stooge named Joe Green who developed relationships with NC State basketball players “Dutch” Muehlbauer, Stan Niewierowske and UNC basketball players Lou Brown and Doug Moe around 1960-61. As a peripheral jock, our young hero knew Stan Niewierowske and Dutch Muehlbauer. One of my room-mates in a shared apartment was a close friend of a third teammate of the two. It was not uncommon for Stan and Dutch to show up at our apartment during dinner time when my room-mate’s basketball friend would make spaghetti for the group (often one of my tennis rackets was used without my knowledge in the straining process.) These and a number of other “unnamed” persons were at the center of a New York and Chicago based drama that affected the vector path of NC State and UNC basketball during the next 50 plus years. Many years later, as an executive with a couple of North Carolina textile companies I got to know Pete Brennan of the Tar Heel 57 team, who was what we called a “rag merchant” in New York. From my conversations with Pete about those times and knowing some of the participants involved, I came away with a level of understanding of the point shaving scandal that, at least for me, codified my thinking about the history. It is fair to say that the Catholic kids out of New York had learned from their elders about the nature of College Basketball in New York and were wise about “how things were done” with respect to college basketball gambling. As an observer, from the outside looking in, the learning I took away from the State College/UNC scandal of that time was about a perception of what it meant to “cheat” and the global effects of “cheating.” I explained to myself that there were a lot of ignorant kids whose whole life was basketball and or, as in the case of one player, an All-American Boy with a family to support and no money to do it, that were dragged into a reality of respected scum-bags who cared little for the players but much for the money involved. I remember one of the involved players saying, “It didn’t seem all that “bad” – “we didn’t throw the game – we just didn’t win by so much!” “What’s so wrong by what we did?” During the 1960-61, 62 period State College was under the control of a shared Board of Trustees dominated by Chapel Hill campus supporters led by a young, politically malleable President William Friday. Thus, it was no surprise that with the help of a Chapel Hill-centric state media, “State College” took the brunt of the media shame re “The Point Shaving Scandal.” The State College hosted, “Dixie Classic Basketball Tournament” was shut down and both the State College and UNC basketball programs were put on “probation.” The events of the time marked the beginning of failing health for Everett Case and a rather media-driven obfuscation of any negative reasons concerning Frank McGuire’s departure to the NBA. Frank McGuire’s departure left his trusted assistant, Dean Smith, as a future Hall of Fame Coach for the Carolina Tar Heels. [A North Carolina icon, Dean Smith could make the Bible Belt Carolina fans miss their church services if the Tar Heels were playing at noon on Sunday television!] Over the years the saintly Dean Smith was often mentioned by Tar Heel Basketball zealots in contrast with the “thugs” at State College that almost “brought down” ACC basketball. Unlike a situation of say, academic fraud cheating, designed to allow ineligible student athletes illegal participation, the “point shaving scandal” of the 1960-61-62 period was not designed for competitive advantage. However, it did queer the Professional Gambling business across the Country and had to be stopped!!! Was it stopped? Well, “Lefty” moved his operation from Cicero to Miami, leaving NC State and UNC basketball to pick up the pieces. The point shaving scandal defined NC State and UNC basketball for the next 50 plus years! Each began to pick up the pieces in their own way! How they picked up the pieces was affected by the fact that until 1972 the NC State Administration reported to a UNC “Tar Heel” dominated – Board of Trustees. After which it reported to a UNC “Tar Heel “dominated - Board of Governors! How this political structure affected North Carolina’s Public University and its Political Structure and how the values of our young hero in the back yard shooting baskets was colored by the process of picking up the pieces is “The Rest of the Story!!!” W. Douglas Cooper June 14, 2016 .