Jack Langer

Jack Langer is an American former basketball player. During his basketball career, he played college basketball at Yale University, and won a silver medal with Team USA in the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Israel.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) had not authorized American college basketball players to compete in the 1969 Maccabiah Games. When Langer returned to the Yale team during the 1970 season, the NCAA punished Yale by barring its teams and athletes from competing in NCAA postseason competitions and from receiving money for televised events for two years.

Langer later attended Harvard Business School, and had a career as an investment banker.

Early and personal life Langer was born to Kate and Moritz Langer and raised in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and is Jewish. He attended Fort Lee High School, graduating in 1967. In 1976 he married Lisa Beth Rutstein. The couple later lived in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and Old Tappan, New Jersey.

Basketball career Yale Langer was a center for the Yale Bulldogs at Yale University, where he was an economics major in the class of 1971. At the time he was tall, and weighed .

In his sophomore year in 1968–69, he averaged 3.1 points and 2.8 rebounds per game. As a junior in 1969–70, he averaged 5.0 points and 4.8 rebounds per game.

1969 Maccabiah Games NCAA bars participation of American college basketball players In 1969, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) barred participation by American college basketball players in the Maccabiah Games, the first time it had instituted such a ban.

Basketball was different, however. The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) – with which the NCAA was locked in a bitter power struggle – was for the first time organizing the Team USA basketball team for the Maccabiah Games, a role that had formerly been held by the NCAA. NCAA executive director Walter Byers was involved in the rule change. Byers wrote a letter to University of Pennsylvania President Gaylord Harnwell, in which he said that in refusing to approve participation by NCAA players in the Maccabiah Games basketball tournament, the NCAA "hoped to persuade" the AAU to abandon its effort to control amateur basketball. The Harvard Crimson described him as "power-mad," and others described him as a "petty tyrant."

The Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), an affiliate of the NCAA, followed the NCAA's direction on sanctions. Other American college basketball players, such as Andy Hill and Eric Minkin, withdrew their applications to play in the Maccabiah Games out of concern that the NCAA would suspend them if they played.

Langer played for Team USA in the 1969 Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv, Israel, in July and August 1969 after his sophomore year at Yale. The team won a silver medal at the games.

Describing his experience, Langer said: "The word patriotism takes on a new meaning and transcends the Pledge of Allegiance in grammar school when one, representing the United States, marches into a stadium filled with 50,000 people amid the strains of 'The Star-Spangled Banner'." Yale Athletic Director Delaney Kiphuth said the school was "perfectly willing to take whatever punishment is handed out; we stand by Langer." The eight Ivy League presidents wrote a letter signed by Dale R. Corson, Cornell University's president and the chairman of the Ivy League president's committee, to NCAA executive director Walter Byers, as well as the ECAC. commissioner Asa Bushnell and president Jim Decker, supporting Yale's decision to play Langer. The letter said that the Ivy presidents believed that the prohibition on Maccabiah Games basketball was the result of the war between the NCAA and AAU over control of amateur athletics. Hours later, however, after a second secret meeting the ECAC withdrew its penalty "for further study." during which all Yale teams and athletes were barred from participating in NCAA tournaments, championships and other postseason competitions, and from receiving any money for televised events for 2 years. The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years. In February 1970 Representative Robert N. Giaimo (D-Connecticut) said in the U.S. Congress:

The Yale case, involving basketball player Jack Langer, is tragic. It shows that the NCAA is willing to use any weapon in its continuing power struggle with the Amateur Athletic Union. It shows that the NCAA does not care if it hurts member institutions or individual athletes in the process. It shows once again that the NCAA is ... under the control of a stubborn, dictatorial hierarchy that does not hesitate to use athletes and schools alike as mere pawns in a game of power politics.

In October 1970, Langer quit the Yale basketball team.

Howard Cosell, television sports commentator for ABC, described it; this was a situation where young Americans who happened to be of Jewish persuasion wanted to represent themselves, their universities, their country in what is one of the most traditional and respected international competitions in the world, the Maccabiah Games .. the AAU certified for basketball. So a kid named Jack Langer at Yale ... couldn't go. That is when I became disturbed to the degree I am now. Yale University had the guts to say: "Jack, you go" ... I am reminded of what Al McGuire said quite bluntly to me: 'With all that is going okay and with all that we can do, can you imagine putting Yale University on probation because Jack Langer went to participate in the Maccabiah Games?' ... I don't even know Jack Langer personally, but I fought his battle because it was right.

Congressman Bob Michel (R-Illinois) said he was "incensed" by the Jack Langer matter. From 1990 to 1994, Langer served as Managing Director and Head of Media Group at Kidder Peabody, and from 1995 to 1997, he was a Managing Director and Head of Media Group at Bankers Trust. From 1997 to 2002, he served as Managing Director and Global Co-Head of the Media Group at Lehman Brothers.