Floyd Layne, who helped City College win both the NCAA and NIT basketball championships in March 1950 but whose career was ruined by a point-shaving scandal, died Friday. Layne, who eventually found salvation working with young people in recreation programs and as head basketball coach at City College, was 95 years old.
His death was confirmed by City College’s associate athletic director Carina Jorge, who did not reveal where he died.
The 6-foot-3 Layne, a standout ball-handler and defensive guard, was one of the four starters in the starting lineup for an unknown City team that won the National Invitational Tournament and the NCAA Tournament at Madison Square Garden in the 10-year championship game. He was one of two sophomore players. Every few days.
However, later in the following season, players from powerful teams such as City College, Long Island University, Bradley University, and the University of Kentucky were arrested for taking bribes from professional gamblers to lose games or keep their winning margins within established point spreads. To attract gamblers.
When three of Layne’s teammates were arrested for point-shaving in mid-February 1951, students rallied on campus to support the team, and they carried the supposedly blameless Layne on their shoulders.
However, Layne was soon arrested as well. He was accused of agreeing to help City College avoid exceeding the margin of victory set by gamblers on point spreads for games against Missouri, Arizona, and Boston College during the 1950-51 season. Layne led detectives to the bedroom of his Bronx home, where he hid $2,890 of the bribe money, minus $110, in a rolled-up handkerchief stuck in the potting soil.
Layne and his teammates Ed Roman, Ed Warner, Irwin Dambrot, Al Roth, Norm Mager, and Herb Cohen each pleaded guilty to misdemeanor conspiracy charges in November 1951. All received suspended sentences except Warner, who received six months in prison. However, no one was prosecuted for game-fixing in the 1950 national tournament.
This episode was the subject of the 1998 HBO documentary “City Dump: The Story of the 1951 CCNY Basketball Scandal.”
Floyd Layne was born in Brooklyn on January 1, 1929, and moved to the Bronx with his mother at the age of eight after his father left home. He played at DeWitt Clinton High School and then transferred to Manhattan’s Benjamin Franklin High School, where he was an All-City player.
At City College, he coordinated the offense and faced some of the toughest opponents on defense. He was also a left-handed pitcher on the baseball team.
The scandal dashed Layne’s hopes of pursuing a career in the NBA or Major League Baseball. He was expelled from City College, served in the Army, and then played in the semipro Eastern League with the Harlem Globetrotters. However, he was able to re-enter City and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1957. He went on to receive a master’s degree in recreation and education from Teachers College, Columbia University.
Layne worked with young people in recreational programs, most notably mentoring Hall of Famer Nate (Tiny) Archibald in the NBA, and coached the Queensborough Community College team.
He was named basketball coach at City College in 1974, taking over a program that was moderately competitive after the scandal.
“The rehabilitation of Floyd Lane is an incredible success story that holds many valuable lessons for the youth of this city.” University President Robert Marshak told the New York Times at the time, alluding to the scandals of the 1950s.
After taking over as coach, Layne told The Times: “We were kids who made a mistake and we had to pay a huge price for the next 20 years.” He said his struggles “taught me about adversity and led me to dedicate myself to children so they don’t make the same mistakes and pay the same terrible price.”
Layne’s teams won City University of New York Conference tournament championships in four of his first six seasons. He coached the Beavers for 14 seasons before resigning to teach physical education full-time at City College. He later coached the women’s basketball team at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and the boys’ teams at Prospect Heights High School in Brooklyn and George Washington High School in Manhattan.
He was at Madison Square Garden with his former teammates Dambrot and Ron Nadell in December 2009, when the Garden described City’s double championship as the greatest moment in the 75-year history of college basketball. mentioned. (In the 1950s, teams were eligible to participate in both national tournaments, but today NIT teams are selected from teams not selected for the NCAA Tournament.)
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
When Layne coached his first game at City College, a 90-79 home win over Columbia in front of 2,000 fans, his former coach, Nat Holman, and his former teammates Roman and Warner supported him.
Junius Kellogg, the former Manhattan College center whose bribe offer sparked the points-cutting scandal, also attended the game and reflected on Layne’s work with young people and the burden placed on City players involved in the scandal. It has been done over many years.
“As far as I know, Floyd saved the lives of at least a thousand children,” Kellogg said. “Those people paid their debt to society a long time ago, and as far as Floyd is concerned, he has done much more for society than most of us.”
