By Harold Guttman
The Journal News
Before spin was a public-relations term, there was Bill Miller, and his attempts to create positive publicity for Manhattan College out of one of the biggest scandals in college basketball history.
A Pearl River resident and 1948 Manhattan graduate, Miller was the Jaspers' first sports information director. When a gambling scandal hit the Riverdale campus in 1951, he became the envy of any current spin doctor. It would also serve as an example of Miller's support and dedication to Jaspers athletics and make him one of eight inductees elected last month to the Manhattan College Athletic Hall of Fame.
The game-fixing scandal that enveloped a handful of New York-area college basketball teams — most famously the 1950 NCAA and NIT champion City College — came to Manhattan College when two ex-Jaspers' captains tried to get first-year player Junius Kellogg to throw a game for $1,000.
Kellogg seemed like a well-picked target. He was talented, and the 6-foot-8 star center was one of 11 siblings in a poor family. But instead of taking the money, Kellogg told the school hierarchy and the Manhattan district attorney about the offer.
When the story broke, the city's afternoon dailies focused on how the Manhattan program was tainted with gambling money. The morning papers were about to pile on until Miller, in his recently created position of sports information director, hit the phones.
"You don't want the same story the afternoon papers have, here's the story — put the emphasis on Junius Kellogg," Miller told the New York Times, the Daily News, the Daily Mirror, the Herald Tribune and others.
Miller said that Kellogg, the team's first black player, should be admired for standing up to the gamblers; Kellogg's efforts, which included recording his conversations with the dirty Manhattan alums, led to widespread efforts to clean up the sport.
"(Miller) was instrumental in pointing out the courage of Junius Kellogg," said George Skau, head of the Hall of Fame Committee. "He's always been prominently in the forefront of promoting Manhattan athletics."
Miller went to La Salle Academy in Manhattan, where he won the quarter mile at the CHSAA Sectional Championships. He went to Manhattan on a track scholarship, but was called up to serve in the Army Air Corps Reserve toward the end of his freshman year.
After two years of service in the South Pacific and Asia, Miller used the G.I. Bill, which paid the tuition of veterans, to go back to Manhattan without needing an athletic scholarship to support his education.
"I didn't have to worry about money then, so I concentrated on what I was going to do after college," Miller said. "That's when I turned to the newspaper."
Miller became the sports editor of the campus newspaper, the Quadrangle, for two years, and the power of his writing quickly became apparent.
Manhattan planned to drop crew for financial reasons. The college eliminated its Division I football squad after World War II, but Miller's advocacy for crew helped save that program from a similar fate.
"It was one of the few times they take seriously what a guy with a sports column does," Miller said.
Miller is best known in the local track and field community as a sports writer for the New York Times, where Miller has worked continuously for 57 years. He is a recent recipient of the prestigious Jesse Abramson Award, given at the Penn Relays for outstanding reporting on track and field.