For one day, at least, the Harvard of the Midwest felt a little like the UNLV of the Midwest.
Northwestern, one of the nation’s top academic institutions, was reeling from the news Thursday that three of its former basketball players had been involved in a point-shaving scheme during the 1994-95 season. School officials said they were not notified of the results of a federal investigation until Thursday morning, when the U.S. Attorney’s office announced indictments against two bookies.
“This was like pulling up at an intersection, getting the green light, looking both ways to be sure it’s safe, going into the intersection, and you get hit broadside,” Athletic Director Rick Taylor said. “We thought it was a gambling case. Totally out of the blue.”
It was a gambling case in November 1994, when Northwestern, after receiving allegations of student gambling, suspended running back Dennis Lundy and basketball player Kenneth Dion Lee for betting on college athletic events. Lundy was suspended for the last football game of the 1994 season, and Lee for six basketball games.
But federal prosecutors say that not long after Lee returned to the Wildcats’ lineup, he recruited two other players–Dewey Williams and Matt Purdy–to manipulate the outcome of three games.
Officials from the U.S. Attorney’s office credited Northwestern for quickly notifying them of the original gambling problem, and NU officials said that their initial investigation spawned the probe that eventually led to Thursday’s indictments.
But school officials were forced to confront whether they had been too lenient in allowing Lee to return to the court. Taylor said the school set the six-game suspension after consulting with the Big Ten and the NCAA. Northwestern did not require Lee to undergo counseling.
“Northwestern University conducted a full and thorough investigation in November of 1994,” said Allan Cubbage, Northwestern’s vice president for university relations. “Not only did we use our internal investigators, we hired an outside counsel for this, (someone) who is a former assistant U.S. Attorney. We conducted interviews with all the students who were believed to have been involved in it. We took those actions that we believed appropriate at that time. We feel that the investigation garnered us the information we needed to take the action we did in December 1994.”
U.S. Atty. Scott Lassar said he “didn’t see how” NU officials could have known about the point-shaving scheme.
“We’re all shocked to find out that after he’s been suspended that he would engage in point-shaving,” he said.
Lassar said he wasn’t sure why Lee allegedly went from gambling on other athletic events to fixing his own games, but that gambling debts might have been a motive. Lee had placed bets on other sporting events with former Wildcats football player Brian Ballarini, who was indicted Thursday, then conspired with Ballarini to alter the outcome of three Wildcats games. Ballarini left school in December 1994 after Northwestern’s gambling probe.
Taylor said that there is a big difference between gambling and point-shaving.
“The extent of (NU’s) knowledge was that Dion Lee was gambling on football games,” he said. “I’m not condoning that, don’t get me wrong. But when governors of states bet on bowl games and churches have bingo and we as a society have become totally desensitized to gambling, maybe I can understand that. I’d be tempted to ask how many people in here have bets on the Final Four, have a pool at the office, OK?
“I understand, if not condone, that part of it. But point-shaving is a flat-out betrayal. And anybody who can say they’re alike is wrong.”
Taylor said that, although he does not set policy for the school, he will recommend that athletes be dismissed from Northwestern if they are involved in gambling.
“We need to stop finding excuses for kids who do this,” he said. “I think it’s time we hold them accountable and responsible for their actions.”
When Lee and Lundy were suspended in 1994, Northwestern began trying to educate athletes and coaches on gambling. A hospital that has a gambling addiction program sent experts to talk with coaches. A recovering gambling addict addressed the athletes, as did FBI officials.
But the message from federal prosecutors Thursday was that it wasn’t enough, at least in the case of Lee, Williams and Purdy. And the message for the world of college athletics seems to be that if it can happen at Northwestern, a school that has made a name by emphasizing academics over athletics, it can happen anywhere.
“None of us can take anything for granted,” said Michael Weston, a Northwestern vice president and general counsel.
NU will not face any NCAA sanctions because school officials had no prior knowledge of the gambling incidents. But they called Thursday’s news an embarrassment and acknowledged that it won’t completely go away.
“I think we’ll have a black eye while this is in the news, and I think it will probably surface anytime in the future if something were to occur because they always list it,” Taylor said. “But at the same time, it should be stressed these are allegations. And it also should be stressed that no one on the current team was involved whatsoever.”
It might have happened four seasons ago, but Thursday’s developments were raw to the touch.
“It’s almost like a death,” Taylor said. “You get over it, but you never forget it.”
AFTER A LOSS
The context of Kenneth Dion Lee’s quotes after the Northwestern-Wisconsin game in the 1994-95 season seem strange now in light of what has transpired. Lee ripped the school after he and fellow senior Cedric Neloms had been left out of the starting lineup by coach Ricky Byrdsong. The Wildcats lost 70-56, the first game in which Lee allegedly was involved in point-shaving. He scored nine points and then lashed out.
“The changes have to be made from the top all the way down,” Lee said. “You have to change the basketball atmosphere, and it can’t be changed by bringing in a new coach or sitting people down.
“At this level you have to have players. Every other school in the Big Ten gets athletes and turns them into students. We take students and try to turn them into athletes. We back out on the borderline students.”
