Loyola is Chicago’s new fan fave
CHICAGO – “Please do not block the doors. Step all the way in to make room for passengers who are waiting.”
That’s an advisory that should be familiar to anyone who’s ridden the “L” in Chicago. But it could very well apply to the Loyola bandwagon, too, which gets more and more crowded with every game the Ramblers win in the NCAA tournament.
Chicago, it’s often said, is a Bears town. Or in recent years, a Cubs town. You might have to dig deep in your memories for this, but it was once a Bulls town, too — though it’s probably more accurate to say it was a Jordan town.
But what Chicago really is is a Chicago town. The city likes winners, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a pro or college team so long as it calls Chicago home.
“Honestly it wouldn’t matter if it were DePaul, (the University of Illinois-Chicago) or Chicago State making this run. The city would get behind it,” said Laurence Holmes, who grew up in Chicago and is now a host at 670 The Score, one of the city’s sports talk radio stations. “It’s a fan town more than a pro town.”
Consider the Blackhawks, who were practically invisible around the turn of the century. Then they got Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane and won three
Stanley Cups in six years, and suddenly everybody in the city was a die-hard fan.
Or the Cubs, whose attendance plunged during the ugly, early years of
Theo Epstein’s rebuild only to have the entire city go on a month-long bender when the team won the World Series, ending one of the sorriest streaks in sport’s history.
Which brings us back to Loyola. Although it’s long been a Chicago institution, with campuses on the northern edge of the city and downtown, Loyola has largely been overlooked in the city’s sports landscape. Part of that is natural allegiances, with Chicago one of the biggest draws for Big Ten graduates, and part of that is that Loyola just hasn’t been very good historically.
Now that the Ramblers are in the Final Four, however, everybody wants a piece of them.
Loyola has gotten shout-outs from favorite Chicago sons Chance the Rapper and former president Barack Obama, who said he didn’t even care that his bracket was busted because there was a Chicago team in the Final Four.
The John Hancock Center and Sears Tower (sorry, it’ll never be known as anything else to anyone who has ever lived here) are lit in maroon and gold while the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park was bathed in school colors over the weekend. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower spelled out “GO LOYOLA” on its windows, an honor usually reserved for Cubs’ and Blackhawks’ playoff runs.
“It was so cool coming back from O’Hare. We’re driving down, we’ve got a police escort and a bunch of people were honking and waving at us,” said Loyola center Cam Krutwig, who grew up in Algonquin, a northwestern suburb. “It was just a cool sight to see.”
At ChiTown Magpie, a boutique located on the edge of Loyola’s campus, owner Sara Lukens came in Monday, a day the store is normally closed, to create a display of Sister Jean T-shirts that had just arrived. Within an hour, she’d sold a dozen shirts.
Lukens said she’s doing about four times the business she normally would and has been asked to ship Loyola merchandise to California, Utah, Michigan, Ohio and, of course, Texas, where the Ramblers play Michigan on Saturday.
“They’re neighborhood folks. They’re Loyola students. They’re family members. They’re Loyola alumni coming to campus to watch a game,” Lukens said. “Or they’ve just wandered onto the Loyola campus because Loyola won and it’s a big deal.”
Bar 63, located a block south of campus and named for Loyola’s national championship team — the only title won by an Illinois team — has had to hire security on game days because there’s far more fans than there is capacity.
“I get chills thinking about how we’ve positively impacted the program, the city,” said Loyola coach Porter Moser, who grew up in suburban Naperville and proudly maintained his Chicago loyalties during stops in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Texas, Arkansas and Missouri. “Pride’s a powerful feeling. It means a lot, especially being from here.”
It doesn’t hurt that Loyola is the only game in town right now, too.
The Bears are awful, rebuilding yet again with their third new coach in six years. The Blackhawks will miss the playoffs for the first time in a decade. The Bulls are tanking. Baseball season only started Thursday.
So Chicago is looking for a team to love, one of its own to embrace, and has gone all-in on Loyola.
“It’s very provincial,” Holmes said. “People want Chicago to do well.”
In other words, climb aboard the Loyola bandwagon. In Chicago, there’s always room for more.