Winning in Smaller Ways

This chapter covers the 1978–79 Boston College basketball scandal, which involved a case of game fixing that notably implicated not only three Boston College players, but members of an organized crime syndicate as well. The Boston College scandal illustrated that even after decades of investigations and prosecutions, gamblers and fixers could still use vulnerable college athletes to manipulate the outcome of games. These players were willing to expose themselves to danger and to compromise their futures for relatively small sums of money. The NCAA's failure to investigate gambling in the late 1970s reinforces the view of critics who argue that the organization's primary goal has been to convince the public that college sports are uncorrupted by professionalization and commercialization.