The History of the Point Spread: Who Invented It?

Who invented the point spread? The usual answer is Charles K. McNeil, a former math teacher who became a Chicago bookmaker in the 1940s, and the answer comes with a warning. The University of Chicago Magazine calls the credit long-standing lore that is plausible but impossible to prove, because bookmakers did not keep their correspondence. One fellow oddsmaker told an author he knew of no one who could take credit for it.

The spread changed how Americans bet on football and basketball by replacing the question of who would win with the question of by how many points. It also created a new way to fix games without losing them, which came to light in 1951, when New York prosecutors arrested 32 players from seven colleges. This article traces the spread from its Chicago origins to those arrests and to the federal tax that struck Nevada’s sports books the same year, and it notes where the sources disagree.

Before the Spread: Odds and the Bookmaker’s Problem

Before the spread, a bet on a game was struck at odds: a favorite paid less and an underdog paid more. According to the University of Chicago Magazine, odds can confuse casual gamblers, limit interest in lopsided games and tilt betting toward the favored team. The magazine says the spread, by contrast, served bookmakers’ interests in both the volume and the balance of bets, because it encourages wagers on both sides.

The spread turns a bet on who wins into a bet on the margin of victory. In the magazine’s example, if bookmakers decide one team is six points better than another, wagers on the favorite win only if it wins by more than six points. Wagers on the underdog win if it wins outright or loses by five or fewer. The posted number, known as the line, handicaps the game so that either side has, in theory, an equal chance.

The history of who first posted such a line is hard to document. The New York Times observed in 1977 that it is always chancy to say who did anything first in betting, because documentation is rare and often avoided, and that some bookmakers kept their notes on special paper that would turn to ashes if police broke down the door. For that reason, accounts of the spread’s origin rest on recollections, books and the reasoning of historians rather than on surviving ledgers.

Charles K. McNeil and the Chicago Sports Book

McNeil earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1925, according to the University of Chicago Magazine, and then taught math at Riverdale Country School in New York. The magazine says his students included John F. Kennedy; the Times in 1977 instead named Jack and Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. as pupils. During the Depression he worked as a securities analyst at a bank, the magazine reports.

His skill at football wagers drew the attention of bookmakers. The magazine, drawing on a 1977 New York Times Magazine story by William Barry Furlong, says he took enough money from bookmakers on low-stakes bets that they asked how he did it. He described a system that estimated the difference in the score, and advised them that mass marketing of bets would require something like it. Furlong concluded that the best evidence suggests some bookmakers listened and began using the spread in New York City.

In the 1940s, after one of Chicago’s biggest sports books limited how much he could wager, McNeil opened his own. The magazine says he offered spread bets on college football and then college basketball, and drew so much action that the book that had restricted him shut down. It cites Betting the Line (Ohio State University Press, 2001) for the statement that McNeil refined the concept and first offered it from his own sports book. Sports Illustrated in 1986 called him the wizard who gave the world the spread, and Jimmy Snyder, later a CBS football handicapper, said he first heard of the method from McNeil during World War II.

The magazine calls bookmaking his illicit line of work. By his own 1957 reckoning he had been a winner in 25 of 27 seasons of betting on college football, averaging $320,000 a year, and he closed his bookmaking operation when, he told a friend, organized crime wanted to become his partner.

Turning Points: January and February 1951

The spread opened a new angle for fixers. A team did not have to lose, only fail to cover the number, and the magazine calls the early-1950s college basketball scandals a byproduct of the system so often attributed to McNeil. Bribery of players was already public: historian Humbert Nelli notes that five Brooklyn College players were expelled in 1945 after admitting they had taken bribes to lose a game.

The 1951 arrests began with a player who refused. In January 1951, Manhattan College’s Junius Kellogg was offered $1,000 to control the point spread in a game against DePaul, and he reported the offer to the authorities, according to Nelli and EBSCO. Former Manhattan players Hank Poppe and Jack Byrnes and three fixers were booked on January 17, ESPN Classic reports. In the early hours of February 18, detectives met City College of New York players Ed Warner, Ed Roman and Al Roth at Penn Station after a game in Philadelphia, WBUR reports.

Two days later, Long Island University’s Sherman White, LeRoy Smith and Adolph Bigos were arrested, and the New York Times reported on February 21 that they had admitted collecting $18,500. White had been named Sporting News Player of the Year the day before, ESPN Classic notes.

Aftermath: Sentences, a Federal Tax and Nevada’s Sports Books

In all, District Attorney Frank Hogan arrested 32 players from seven colleges for fixing 86 games between 1947 and 1950, according to ESPN Classic and UPI. Kentucky’s Ralph Beard, Alex Groza and Dale Barnstable were arrested on October 20, 1951 over a 1949 tournament game against Loyola of Chicago, which Kentucky, a ten-point favorite, lost 67 to 56, Nelli writes. Across the cases, most players received suspended sentences, according to ESPN Classic, but White was sentenced to a year in prison and served nine months on Rikers Island. EBSCO reports that gambler Salvatore Sollazzo received eight to sixteen years.

The same year, Congress targeted betting itself. Nevada had specifically approved sports betting in 1949, the Tax Policy Center notes, but David Schwartz of UNLV writes that the Revenue Act of 1951 imposed a 10 percent excise tax on the amount wagered, along with a $50 occupational stamp. A well-run book keeps only about 5 percent of what is bet, Schwartz says, so the tax guaranteed losses. The State Bar of Nevada illustrates this with a hypothetical, perfectly balanced book on the 1959 NFL championship game:

Twenty-one of Nevada’s race and sports books closed, the State Bar of Nevada says. Senator Howard Cannon won a cut to 2 percent in 1974, Schwartz writes, and casinos returned; the first sports pool inside a casino opened in 1975 at the Union Plaza, according to the San Diego Law Review.

Myths, Disputes and the Other Side

The inventor is disputed. The Times wrote in 1977 that the National Football League might owe McNeil a great deal if it were proven beyond doubt that he invented the spread. Ed Curd, an oddsmaker and friend, told author Dan Moldea that McNeil fell into line like everyone else, though he called him the best handicapper who ever lived. Even McNeil’s pupils are reported differently.

The law and the numbers also vary. Schwartz dates the federal law to the Revenue Act of 1951 in one article and to a 1952 Wagering Tax Act in another. The State Bar of Nevada counts 21 of 24 books closed, while UNLV’s Faiss and Gemignani count 21 of 25. Schwartz says Nevada decriminalized bookmaking in 1941, while others date sports betting’s approval to 1949, and the tax fell to 0.25 percent in 1982 by one account and 1983 by another.

The scandal also had a human cost. White was arrested needing 77 points to set the all-time collegiate scoring record, and his sentence cost him nine months in prison. Fixing did not begin with the spread, either: bribery was already public in 1945.

Timeline: From McNeil’s Book to the Casino Sportsbook

Dates below come from the sources listed at the end of the article; the exact date of the spread’s invention is undocumented.

What Comes Next in Sports Betting History

The spread’s first decades connect to larger stories: the turf clubs that survived Nevada’s tax, the return of casino sportsbooks and the federal laws that shaped the business, each of which deserves its own account in this series. The 1951 scandals themselves lead into later questions about how leagues, colleges and regulators responded to betting on games, and the answers to those questions changed over the following decades.

The story also overlaps with other chapters of gambling history. Jimmy Snyder, who said he first heard of the spread from McNeil, also volunteered to promote the first World Series of Poker, told in how the World Series of Poker began. Both stories show how gambling ideas moved from back rooms into public life.

Sources & References

• Jason Kelly, University of Chicago Magazine — Point man (2013)
• The New York Times — Of ‘lines,’ ‘point spreads’ and ‘middles’ (January 2, 1977)
• ESPN Classic — Explosion: 1951 scandals threaten college hoops
• Alexander Feinberg, The New York Times — 3 players at L.I.U. admit collecting $18,500 bribe cash (February 21, 1951)
• UPI — College Basketball Point-Shaving Scandals (1985)
• EBSCO Research Starters — Basketball point-shaving scandal
• Humbert S. Nelli, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society — Adolph Rupp, the Kentucky Wildcats, and the Basketball Scandal of 1951
• Jonathan Chang, WBUR Only A Game — From Heroes To Villains: CCNY Basketball’s Dramatic Fall From Glory (2020)
• David G. Schwartz — Why Congress Should Repeal a Federal Tax on Sports Betting
• David G. Schwartz, CDC Gaming Reports — A Winning Parlay (2016)
• State Bar of Nevada — The Remaining Wagering Excise Tax
• Robert D. Faiss and Gregory R. Gemignani, UNLV Center for Gaming Research — Nevada Gaming Statutes: Their Evolution and History (2011)
• Richard Auxier, Tax Policy Center — The Prospects and Limitations of Taxing Sports Betting
• Lena E. Richardson, San Diego Law Review — What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas. Or Does It?