Rambling on about Loyola … @SoxNerd style!
*Oh boy …: Loyola fans, it’s the day of the Final Four and I know what you are thinking.
I experienced this in 2003 when my beloved alumni Marquette University reached college hoops’ Promised Land.
This is what I was thinking as I waited for Wade, Diener and Novak to take the floor in New Orleans:
I can’t believe it.
It’s too good to be true.
Things like this don’t happen to my school. These things only happen to Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina.
We are back, baby!
Savor every minute of this for you never know when it will happen again.
*Old days: Loyola played a huge part in fostering my love of college basketball.
I spent many a cold winter nights in the den of our suburban Chicago home in the 1970s and 1980s watching the Ramblers of Sullivan, Wakefield, Hughes, and Sappleton on the old black and white. Those teams were fun to watch, too: scrappy, hustling, aggressive and good, too.
The fact that the great Red Rush was behind the mike for those games only emboldened my boyhood love for the maroon and gold.
*Sully’s revenge: I know Gene Sullivan, the coach of those 1970s and 1980s Ramblers, is enjoying this run in basketball heaven.
Most of his run at the school was spent being told no by the man. He was a renegade, an outsider who was an absolute fighter for Loyola.
His teams were often passed over by the NCAA Tournament in favor of the bigger schools.
In fact, one year I remember Sullivan being so upset over a snub by the NCAA and NIT he wanted to start his own postseason tournament.
These Ramblers have rattled the blue bloods and the powers-that-be in a way that would make Sullivan proud.
*Everywhere a sign: For years, Loyola had a sign fastened to the back of Alumni Hall celebrating its 1963 NCAA Championship.
That sign kept the Ramblers in my consciousness for years because it greeted riders as trains pulled into the Loyola and Sheridan elevated stop. I am sure that sign was the best advertising that school had for a long time and sparked many a rush hour conversation about that historic team, the institution, and college hoops.
With the increase in media and arrival of social media, these Ramblers are kind of a modern day version of that sign.
*Sox connections: The White Sox fill-in PA announcer is Pat Schultz, a Loyola grad and the school’s Associate Athletic Director.
In the above picture, “Pat of the Valley,” as I call him at the park, is getting a little airtime in the background after a Rambler tourney win.
Of course, when Pat fills in at Sox games it is for Gene Honda, who is the stadium voice of the Final Four.
*The Fat Man: Al McGuire begat Rick Majerus who begat Loyola coach Porter Moser.
How can I not be rooting for Loyola?
Of course, the next time Marquette plays Loyola I hope Marquette wins to the point where the Ramblers want to kill the program for the good.
soxnerd 