Charles Carney

From Hoopedia

Charles Carney (born August 25, 1900, in Chicago; died September 5, 1984, in Manchester, NH), a former United States collegiate basketball player. He best known as a Hall of Fame football player for the University of Illinois, but he also built a successful parallel career in basketball. He was a star player at Evanston High School, where in 1917 he helped lead his team to the Central States Interscholastic Basketball Tournament (which would become the National Interscholastic Basketball Tournament in 1920), sponsored by the University of Chicago.

Carney graduated in 1918, and enrolled at the University of Illinois, where he had an extraordinary dual career in basketball and football. In basketball, the 6-1, 194 pounder played center for three years and was the designated free-throw shooter (when the rules allowed a designated free-throw shooter). Carney scored 202 points (71 from the free-throw line) his first season, accounting for 52 percent of all his team’s scoring that year. He led the Big Ten in scoring both his sophomore and senior years.

After graduating in 1922, Carney played one year of professional football, for the Columbus Panhandles. He coached football at Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Harvard, and then went into the investment banking business.

Carney is a member of the Evanston High School Athletic Hall of Fame, the University of Illinois All-Century Team, and the National Football Hall of Fame. He was selected retrospectively for the Helms All-American basketball teams of 1920 and 1922, and retrospectively named Helms Foundation Player of the Year Award for 1922.