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Loyola is the team of Chicago’s college basketball dreams

By Shea Corrigan

DALLAS, TX - MARCH 17: Loyola-Chicago Ramblers players celebrate winning the NCAA Div I Men's Championship Second Round basketball game between Loyola-Chicago and Tennessee on March 17, 2018 at American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX. (Photo by George Walker/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
DALLAS, TX - MARCH 17: Loyola-Chicago Ramblers players celebrate winning the NCAA Div I Men's Championship Second Round basketball game between Loyola-Chicago and Tennessee on March 17, 2018 at American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX. (Photo by George Walker/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /
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Chicago, as a city, has no chill when it comes to a good sports team.

Chicago is a known sports town and, despite not currently having an NBA team to speak of, it is very much a basketball town. But Chicago also has a very real, frequently unquenched, thirst for a good sports team. A thirst that Chicagoans respond to by being embarrassingly into any briefly good team that is even arguably affiliated with the city.

It’s a mutually parasitic relationship and it is especially prominent in college sports. Every school in the vague vicinity claims to be “Chicago’s team” and, in turn, Chicago will rally around any school in the vague vicinity if they win. We have even been known to sell ourselves on the hype of Northwestern football. As for March Madness, last year we became Wildcats for two rounds. This year’s, we’re Ramblers.

Our lack of a consistent college allegiance is not for a lack of schools in the city limits. From north to south, Chicago is home to the following colleges: Northwestern University, Loyola University of Chicago, DePaul University, Roosevelt University, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Chicago and Chicago State University. Of those schools, Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, UIC and Chicago State have Division I men’s basketball programs. Of those schools, Northwestern made the tournament for the first time ever in 2017, losing in the second round to No. 1 seed Gonzaga. DePaul used to be a March Madness regular in the 80s and last made the tourney in 2004 as a No. 7 seed, where they lost in the second round. UIC has played in March Madness three times — 1998, 2002 and 2004 — and was eliminated in the first round each time. Then there’s Loyola, who in 2018 became the first Chicago team in the last 30 years to make it to the Sweet 16.

Complicating matters, Chicago is, like most big cities, a hotbed of transplants, including but not limited to Big Ten, ACC and SEC graduates. Meaning, a large portion of the city enters March Madness with extreme alma mater loyalty. For transplants, there’s no real driving need for a Chicago team this time of year. Ditto native Chicagoans who go out of state for school. (To be fair, a lot of Chicago residents did grow up fans of or graduate from the city’s universities. This is obviously not about them.) Furthermore, Chicago is wildly territorial and also lazy when it comes to our neighborhoods. Your average Wicker Park resident is not going to go to, or even feel geographically-inclined to support a team from, Rogers Park.

Still, if there’s one thing that brings Chicagoans together, it’s rooting for Chicago in the face of literally anyone/anything else, and/or the opportunity to lord victory over other people and places in America, especially if we are the underdog. Chicago and our permanent shoulder-chip over everything.

And Loyola makes a really, really good case. They’re fun, prone to heart-stopping buzzer-beater endings. They’re homegrown, kind of. Given the severity of the city’s basketball talent drain, Loyola running out two local kids seems revolutionary. (Led by Simeon grad Donte Ingram and featuring Whitney Young guard Lucas Williamson, the team could only be more of a Chicago Public League peace talk if it featured a Morgan Park star.) They’re supported by other beloved Chicagoans, namely, President Barack Obama and Chance the Rapper. And honestly, it helps that it’s not Northwestern, i.e., the alma mater of seemingly every sports media personality with a platform, and also a big program from a big conference that is not even in the city limits.

And so Chicago has indeed rallied around Loyola, the answer to our thirsty prayers and also the source of our inevitable but familiar heartbreak, in the same fashion we approach Chicago summers: with the manic enthusiasm of people who know this feeling is fleeting.

This is a team that ranked last in attendance in the Missouri Valley Conference and literally bribed students with hot dogs to attend regular season games. Now, the United Center hangs Loyola banners in its windows and Cubs and Blackhawks players make good luck videos. Michael Blaha, the owner of the official watch spot for Loyola sports, told Red Eye that secretaries are calling “strenuously requesting reservations for their boss — almost sounding scared if they don’t get it.” Columnists are calling up Tennessee radio hosts to berate them for tweets.

Chicagoans getting crazy aggressive about sports is how we express love. And if a successful Chicago sports team is like summer in a city known for its winters, then a March Madness Cinderella is our summer fling: heated, exciting and fun, but doomed to fade. Loyola will lose or Cubs season will start — whichever comes first — and said bosses and columnists will forget about the team in Rogers Park. At least until next March.

Next: 12 Biggest Cinderellas In March Madness History

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