Basketball Scandal Rocks College Ranks

College basketball’s vulnerability to illegal gambling reared up again Thursday--just two days before the NCAA’s Final Four tournament games--as a federal grand jury here indicted two former Northwestern University players on charges of attempting to fix the outcome of three contests during the 1994-95 season.

The latest scandal came as a stinging blow because of Northwestern’s reputation as a college that long has placed academic performance before athletic dominance. If top-flight academic universities are just as impotent as collegiate sports powerhouses in staving off student betting, officials acknowledged, no school is immune.

“This should be a lesson to us all that this kind of activity is endemic, not isolated,” said a somber Rick Taylor, Northwestern’s athletic director. Taylor, one of the architects of the Wildcats’ rags-to-riches football team, and other Northwestern officials learned only Thursday morning of the imminent indictments.

Kenneth Dion Lee, 24, and Dewey Williams, 25, were served with arrest summonses for allegedly shaving points while playing for a hapless basketball squad that won only five of its 27 games. As starting seniors on Northwestern’s 1994-95 team, Lee and Williams allegedly conspired with two bettors--placing thousands of dollars in wagers--to alter their play so that their opponents would cover the point spread.

The two alleged bettors, Kevin Pendergast, 27, of Los Olivos, Calif., and Brian Irving, 27, of San Francisco, were accused of scheming to fix the games--Pendergast by bribing Lee with $4,000 to divide between himself and his teammates and Irving by placing bets at Reno and Las Vegas casinos and expecting the players’ point-shaving would cover his wagers. Pendergast is a former Notre Dame football place kicker.

The federal investigation is the latest in a line of point-shaving scandals that have plagued college basketball since the early 1950s--tainting programs at such schools as Tulane and City College of New York. The new charges come four months after two Arizona State Sun Devils stars were charged in a 72-count indictment--along with four purported Chicago bookmakers--in a point-shaving scheme that authorities called one of the most elaborate in college sports history.

At the Final Four in San Antonio, where much of the college basketball world assembled for Saturday’s semifinal games and Monday’s national championship, NCAA Executive Director Cedric Dempsey said: “We should not be surprised this is occurring. Gambling is as big an addiction on our campuses as alcohol, and it reflects what is going on in our society.”

Bill Saum, who oversees anti-gambling programs for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., acknowledged that “in a perfect world, we’d rather this not happen today”--so close to the Final Four matchups pitting Kentucky against Stanford and North Carolina against Utah.

Saum insisted that the NCAA’s efforts to isolate college athletes from campus gambling were working and that the emergence of yet another point-shaving scandal offers “a great educational moment that will help us raise awareness of the problem.”

All 64 teams that competed in this year’s NCAA tournament were required to view an anti-gambling video before playing. Saum and an FBI representative had been scheduled to speak to the Final Four teams before news of the Northwestern scandal hit.

But Taylor spoke in glum counterpoint. “Even my three sons knew who the campus bookies were at their schools.” Taylor said he worries that college athletes “are growing up in a society desensitized to gambling”--ranging from “governors who bet on bowl games” to “church bingos.”

Both Northwestern and NCAA officials reacted defensively to questions about whether they had dealt severely enough with Lee when the university learned in late 1994 that he had been betting on college football games.

Lee was suspended by Northwestern from playing in two exhibition basketball games and six regular season games that season after college officials investigated reports that he and other student athletes were betting on college football. A Northwestern football player also was suspended.

Taylor said he talked with NCAA officials about an appropriate punishment for Lee before the suspension was announced.

But that same year, Saum acknowledged, the NCAA’s own eligibility committee called for harsher penalties against student athletes caught betting.

Taylor stressed that it was Northwestern officials who launched the case against Lee and Williams after receiving a tip in early 1995 about possible point-shaving. The school hired a former federal prosecutor to work with their lawyers in checking the allegations. When they became convinced there might be truth behind the suspicions, Taylor said, “we went right to the U.S. attorney.”

Investigators intimated that some of Lee’s bets may have been placed with Brian Ballarini, 25, a former Northwestern football player who was charged in a separate indictment Thursday for allegedly running a campus betting operation that took wagers from several student athletes. A third Northwestern basketball player, Matthew Purdy, was named an unindicted conspirator in the case, authorities said.

Between November 1994 and February 1995, authorities charged, Ballarini threatened to harm Lee for failing to pay gambling debts. Scott R. Lassar, the U.S. attorney for the Northern Illinois district, would not divulge the nature of the threat, but he said that the pressure of having to repay Ballarini may have played a role in Lee’s joining the alleged point-shaving scheme.

Federal officials said that both Lee and Pendergast are cooperating with investigators.

The bettors involved in the Northwestern case had no known ties to organized crime, investigators said. Nor were there any apparent links between the Arizona State and the Northwestern cases, despite their Chicago connection, said Bill Eubanks, a Chicago-based FBI agent.

Lassar declined to comment on how Lee and Williams may have muted their play to affect the outcome of games against Big Ten rivals Wisconsin, Penn State and Michigan. “Did they not try as hard? Did they not jump as high? It’s not alleged,” is all he would say.

Game statistics released by Northwestern officials on Thursday show that Lee, who averaged 12 points a game, had 9 against Wisconsin, 2 against Penn State and 8 against Michigan.

Williams averaged 8 points a game and scored 9 against Wisconsin, 4 against Penn State and 4 against Michigan.

“We still don’t know how this was done,” Taylor said.

In the first game, in which Wisconsin was favored by 13 points, the Badgers beat Northwestern, 70-56, after trailing 28-21 at the half. Penn State was favored by 14 points and won, 89-59. In the third game, Michigan was favored by 25 points and won, 81-64.

Because Northwestern failed to beat the point spread in the Michigan game, federal investigators said, the players involved in the scheme received no payoffs afterward.

Northwestern officials lamented that athletes who bet against their team do the ultimate harm to their school.

“Quite simply,” Taylor said, “it’s betrayal--betrayal of themselves, their teammates, coaches, their families and, most of all, the game itself.”

Times staff writer Robyn Norwood in San Antonio contributed to this story.

* DIFFICULT TO FIX: NCAA Director Cedric Dempsey calls gambling most critical issue facing college sports. C1