Floyd Layne, who helped City College win both the N.C.A.A. and N.I.T. basketball championships in March 1950 but who shattered his career in a point-shaving scandal, died on Friday. Layne, who eventually found redemption working with young people in recreation programs and as City College’s head basketball coach, was 95.
His death was confirmed by Karina Jorge, an assistant director of athletics at City College, who did not say where he died.
An outstanding ballhandler and defensive player at guard, the 6-foot-3-inch Layne was among four sophomores in the starting lineup for an unheralded City team that won the National Invitation Tournament and the N.C.A.A. tournament at Madison Square Garden in championship games held 10 days apart.
But late in the following season, players from powerful teams like City College, Long Island University, Bradley University and the University of Kentucky were arrested after being accused of taking bribes from professional gamblers to lose games or keep margins of victory within the point spread established to attract bettors.
When three of Layne’s teammates were arrested in mid-February 1951, accused of point-shaving, students staged a campus rally to support the squad, and they carried the presumably unsullied Layne on their shoulders.
But Layne was soon arrested as well. He was accused of agreeing to help keep City College from exceeding victory margins set by gamblers in their point spreads for games with Missouri, Arizona and Boston College during the 1950-51 season. Layne led detectives to the bedroom of his Bronx home, where he had hidden $2,890 — all but $110 of the bribe money — in a rolled-up handkerchief embedded in the dirt of a flower pot.
Layne and his teammates Ed Roman, Ed Warner, Irwin Dambrot, Al Roth, Norm Mager and Herb Cohen each pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge in November 1951. All received suspended sentences except for Warner, who received a six-month jail term. But none were accused of fixing games in the 1950 national tournaments.
The episode became the subject of a 1998 HBO documentary: “City Dump: The Story of the 1951 CCNY Basketball Scandal.”
Floyd Layne was born on Jan. 1, 1929, in Brooklyn and moved to the Bronx with his mother when he was 8, after his father left home. He played at DeWitt Clinton High School before transferring to Benjamin Franklin High School in Manhattan, where he was an all-city player.
At City College, he orchestrated the offense and was matched against some of the toughest opposing players on defense. He was also a left-handed pitcher on the baseball team.
The scandal wrecked Layne’s hopes for a career in the N.B.A. or Major League Baseball. He was expelled from City College, served in the Army and then played for the Harlem Globetrotters and in the semipro Eastern League. But he was allowed to re-enter City, where he obtained 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 Nate (Tiny) Archibald, who went on to a Hall of Fame career in the N.B.A., and he coached the Queensborough Community College team.
He was named City College’s basketball coach in 1974, taking over a program that had been playing at a modest competitive level since the scandal.
“Floyd Layne’s rehabilitation is a remarkable success story that holds many valuable lessons for the youth of this city,” Robert Marshak, the college president, told The New York Times at the time, alluding to the scandal of the 1950s.
After getting the coaching job, Layne told The Times, “We were kids who made a mistake and we went on to pay a heavy price over the next 20 years.” His struggles, he said, “taught me about adversity and led me to dedicate myself to kids so they wouldn’t make the same kind of mistake and have to pay the same terrible price.”
Layne’s teams won the City University of New York Conference tournament championship in four of his first six seasons. He coached the Beavers for 14 seasons before resigning to teach physical education at City College full time. 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 in December 2009 with his former teammates Dambrot and Ron Nadell when the Garden cited City’s double championship as the No. 1 college basketball moment in the game’s 75-year history there. (In the 1950s, teams could compete in both national tournaments; today, teams in the N.I.T. are chosen from those not selected for the N.C.A.A. tournament.)
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
When Layne coached his first game at City College, a 90-79 home victory over Columbia before 2,000 fans, Nat Holman, his former coach, and his former teammates Roman and Warner were on hand to support him.
Junius Kellogg, the former Manhattan College center whose report of a bribe offer had touched off the point-shaving scandal, was also at that game, and he reflected on Layne’s work with young people and the burden that the City players involved in the scandal had carried over the years.
“Floyd has salvaged at least a thousand kids’ lives that I know of,” Kellogg said. “Those guys paid their debt to society a long time ago, and as far as Floyd is concerned, he has done a hell of a lot more for society than most of us.”