William & Mary scandal of 1951

The William & Mary scandal of 1951 was a transcript-altering scandal at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Prior to World War II, William & Mary tried to become a formidable NCAA Division I athletics powerhouse despite its incredibly tiny size (fewer than 1,000 males attended the school in the late 1930s). Although the school had always been known as a top tier liberal arts university, pressures to be as equally successful in sports—especially football, men's basketball and baseball—had been mounting for over a decade by the time the scandal was discovered in 1951.

In 1946, the William & Mary Board of Visitors announced their goal of achieving more contest wins than losses.Rube McCray, the head football coach from 1944–1950, was given a substantial pay raise so that consistently winning teams could be produced. As a side effect of this decision, almost all of the college's scholastic financial aid was given to athletes coming into William & Mary, despite some of them having minimal academic qualifications. The football program was initially successful after World War II with the influx of veterans, but in order to continue the success, members of the athletic department found it necessary to modify players' high school transcripts to get them admitted to the college. Later, football players were given credit and grades for summer school classes they never attended. McCray, who jointly served as the school's athletic director and head football coach, acknowledged that the problems were on "his watch," but said he had nothing to do with altering any players' transcripts. Throughout the entire time of the changes, approximately 1947-1950, none of the players knew their grades or transcripts had been changed. An initial investigation in late 1949 by the college's registrar J. Wilfred Lambert, who also was Dean of Students, discovered the transcript altering, but could not determine the culprits. Players, at the time, did not realize there were any problems. After Lambert's report to the college's president, the procedure for handling transcripts of athletes was completely revised. No action was taken against anyone in the athletic department.

From 1940 to 1949, the William & Mary Indians football teams were more dominant than any other era in the program's history. The 1942 team, under head coach Carl Voyles (1939–1944), compiled a 9–1–1 record and defeated the University of Oklahoma, 14–7, in Norman. In several of the seasons after the war they were ranked in the national top 20. They also routinely played the country's top teams, even managing to tie the 3rd-ranked North Carolina in 1948. Twenty-four total players were drafted to the National Football League (NFL), some of whom went on to have highly successful professional careers. The Indians won two Southern Conference championships and played in their first two bowl games on January 1, 1948 and January 1, 1949. Some of the football success in the years after 1946 can be attributed, in part, to gaining some good athletes through false transcripts.

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