Loyola Basketball Still Ramblin’ Along
Two eventual changes to the college basketball game and one outstanding player occupied the Loyola Rambler’s wish list in 1985:
- A shot clock
- A 3-point line
- Kenny Norman
If those changes to the college game were made sooner, and if Kenny Norman decided to play for Loyola instead of the University of Illinois, the Ramblers may have brought home the ’85 NCAA National Championship instead of Villanova.
But one thing the Ramblers did have in 1985 was a radio home on WLUW, the best college radio station in America.
Today, they have no radio home. They’re still Ramblin’ Along, even as conference champs, living up to the nickname.
So congratulations, Loyola! Your men’s basketball team won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship. But if you listened to the University’s owned and operated radio station WLUW, you probably didn’t know it.
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The last time there was this much excitement about Rambler basketball was during the 1984–1985 season. I should know. I was a sophomore, in attendance at the Rosemont Horizon when the Ramblers defeated the fourth-ranked Illini in December of ’84. I returned to the Horizon to see the Ramblers defeat DePaul in February of ’85, and hear the crowd chant “NCAA!” in anticipation of a Top 20 national ranking and a March Madness appearance. Former DePaul Basketball Coach Ray Meyer labeled the Ramblers as “giant killers” in a forthcoming edition of the Chicago Sun-Times.
I was also part of the mob scene as Loyola students flooded the Lake Shore Campus and closed Sheridan Road the night the Ramblers played — and lost — their 1985 Sweet 16 game to the Georgetown Hoyas.
That last line bears repeating.
The Ramblers lost their last tournament game. Yet the impromptu Rogers Park festivities that followed defeat that night were incredible. A celebratory atmosphere unimaginable to any current or former Loyola student from the last 30 years erupted. No celebration like that has been seen since.
March 21, 1985 was the last time the Ramblers played a game on a national, over-the-air broadcast television network. The Rambler-Hoya game was on CBS. And that night, within minutes of Brent Musberger and Billy Packer signing off from Providence, Rogers Park residents and visitors emphatically streamed into the streets.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of students and the University’s Lake Shore neighbors came out to celebrate. Sheridan Road had to be closed north of Devon. A man dangled from the Loyola “El” station over the fanatic crowd. An increased Chicago police presence was needed to restore order. Local media caught the sights and sounds.
It all happened after a basketball game Loyola lost.
Seen on national television. Heard on WLUW.
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If you listened to Loyola’s WLUW in 1984 and 1985, you knew all about the Loyola Ramblers.
You knew about the players, the coaches, the athletic department and the support staff. You familiarized yourself with the passion, energy and excitement surrounding the team that carried the nation’s longest 19-game winning streak into the Sweet 16. Likely you recalled University sports tradition, and may have remembered the pride felt in a diverse, groundbreaking run to the 1963 Division 1 NCAA Championship.
And you got to know the names of Loyola’s sports radio broadcasters.
Not today. This Rambler team doesn’t enjoy that media coverage.
In the early 1980’s, Loyola student Brian Wheeler was a trailblazer in college and WLUW sports radio. Not only did Brian cover men’s basketball for WLUW, he covered the University’s men’s soccer and women’s softball and basketball teams. Brian paved the way for many future sports broadcasters’ success at the student station. The 84–85 season was not a “one hit wonder” for WLUW sports.
Dating back to 1980, Brian worked to ensure that all Loyola Rambler men’s basketball games would be available on the radio. Back then, Brian worked with commercial radio stations WGN and WAUR to offer Rambler broadcasts. But it was WLUW that eventually carried a full slate of games every season. (A rare accomplishment for a noncommercial student station at a University with a nationally-recognized basketball program in a major media market.)
To call Brian a hustler and a grinder for Loyola basketball would be an understatement.
By the time the 84–85 season tipped, Brian Wheeler established himself as the commercial radio voice of the Ramblers, serving as the color commentator for Loyola’s tournament games on WBBM-AM Newsradio 780, and play-by-play announcer on a host of other Chicago stations throughout the decade. (Rich King did play-by-play when ‘BBM picked up Rambler games late in the ’85 run.)
The job of students calling a season’s worth of Rambler games on non-commercial WLUW during the 84–85 season was handled by the undergraduate duo of play-by-play announcer Tom Wuestenfeld and color commentator Lou Canellis. Their partnership and teamwork produced game coverage that could rival any other gameday broadcast, anywhere. They were that good.
Brian, Tom and Lou were years ahead of their time. So was WLUW, which featured a team of students, faculty, staff and volunteers that could deliver a student and listener experience unlike any other radio station in the country. Commercial or non commercial.
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The last time I saw Brian Wheeler at a Loyola basketball game was on February 25, 2010. As the current, long-standing play-by-play radio announcer for the Portland Trail Blazers, Brian was in town to call their game against the Chicago Bulls the following night.
In attendance at that game against Milwaukee was a group of friends that included Brian, former Loyola Athletics ticket manager Tom Brennan and a Loyola graduate named Bruce Kite. (Bruce became a fixture at the scorer’s table for Loyola home basketball and volleyball games until he lost his battle with cancer in November of 2011.)
The Ramblers lost the game to Milwaukee that night 63–61. But the final score didn’t matter. What mattered was something exponentially worse.
After the game and after the school’s underwhelming post-game basement reception, our group of friends decided to walk across Sheridan to local pub Bruno’s.
Those who have spent a late evening in the Chicago winter walking around the part of Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus adjacent to Sheridan Road can picture the scene: Cold. Dark. Empty streets. A barren elevated train station. On this particular night, nobody would ever know that a men’s D1 basketball game had just been played in a 5,000 seat building 100 yards away.
Student athletes were competing, coaches were coaching and an athletic department was guiding a program to the best of their abilities.
But that celebratory Sweet 16 night in 1985 had become ancient history.
And I had to compare my visions of vastly different post-game scenes, 25 years apart.
Decades of opportunity abandoned and potential lost, amplified in that dark and empty winter night.
I questioned why I would ever bother to return. Especially to support a school which had terminated my employment as WLUW General Manager halfway through my MBA studies. To support my alma mater that let its basketball program slip into obscurity. Which had let the extraordinary tradition of undergraduate sports broadcasting education and experience disappear.
From then on, it was very easy for me to disregard the men’s basketball program at Loyola. Only the game against Mississippi State in 2012 and its commemorative session the night before brought me, a friend who grew up in Mississippi listening to that 1963 Bulldog team on the radio, and his son, back to Rogers Park. I stayed away from Loyola basketball games for well over five years, until the next-to-last 2018 home game against Valpo.
After that Ash Wednesday game, the night’s drive to downtown Chicago was all-too familiar: Sheridan Road south to Lake Shore Drive. The LSD entrance to the left, followed by that immediate right curve, and it was southbound and down.
So I dialed 88.7 FM on the car radio and was greeted by some static over low volume music. This just a mile or two from the station transmitter and its tower. You may never know that Loyola was having its best basketball season in 33 years just by listening to WLUW.
And you gotta keep that signal clean.
So I turned on WBBM-AM. There, announcements were made every 15 minutes about Loyola getting its twenty-second win on the season. It’s the same radio station that once featured sportscasts by Brian Wheeler and Tom Wuestenfeld. But I didn’t get home in time that night to see Lou Canellis’ sports report on Chicago’s Channel 32, the Fox TV affiliate. That’s okay. He was smiling on TV the night that the Ramblers beat the Florida Gators. And he hasn’t stopped smiling since. He must’ve known three months ago this year’s team was going to be special. So did I. And judging from the reaction to the Gator loss on social media and local and national sports broadcasts, so did a lot of people.
But you might never know it if you listened to WLUW.
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I always gave my friend Bruce Kite credit for sticking with the Loyola athletic program through the toughest of times. It’s a shame he didn’t get to see the men’s volleyball championship seasons.
I couldn’t help but watch Loyola’s men’s volleyball team beat Stanford, then Lewis, for back-to-back national championships. The first volleyball championship was won, at home, in front of a sold-out crowd at the Gentile Arena.
The first regular season Missouri Valley Championship for the men’s basketball team was celebrated at home in front of a sellout crowd.
And that win against the University of Florida was likely celebrated by more people across the country than could fit inside the Gentile Arena. Even Sarasota, Florida resident Dick Vitale tweeted that night and described the team as tenacious.
Again, you’d likely never know any of this if you followed the WLUW Twitter feed, or the station website…no mention about the 2017–2018 Loyola Ramblers; no congratulatory words are to be found.
In fairness, it’s quite possible that the team’s success has been mentioned or even discussed on the student airwaves. But a one-off conversation or occasional cross-talk could never substitute for the consistent, reliable, long-term credible coverage which should permeate the airwaves. Regardless of the general station format.
On the other hand, there is Loyola sports initiative. Of the podcasting variety. A February 14 Loyola Phoenix article by Henry Redman detailed how two graduate “Superfans” launched a weekly Rambler podcast. Surely WLUW management could find room for this new media offering, if the podcast producers so desired a traditional media outlet — at least for the next several weeks.
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Here’s what I know:
The Loyola Ramblers are having their best season in 33 years, and it should’ve been covered in full by the University’s radio station.
What Coach Porter Moser and his coaches and players have done this year, and in prior seasons, is remarkable. Winning the College Basketball Invitational in 2015 was impressive.
There should be an undergraduate student sports broadcast team at WLUW attending the University’s School of Communication, covering the men’s basketball team and the entire athletic program. In the light of recent athletic success, WLUW’s absence has been magnified.
The WLUW broadcast learning experience and the professional opportunities gained from covering Loyola athletics have been — and would be — extraordinary.
The exceptional tradition of WLUW student sports broadcasting should’ve remained consistently strong throughout the station’s history.
And speaking of history…
Red Rush had the Rambler championship call in 1963. Brian, Tom and Lou delivered in 1985.
And while there have been others who have delivered credible, quality, and entertaining team coverage at various times over the past 30 years (special shout out to WLUW broadcasters and classmates Jeff Hagedorn and Tim Lindsey from the late 80’s) there’s no radio voice or television personality closely associated with 2018 Loyola basketball.
Nobody like Brian, Tom or Lou. And certainly nobody like Red.
In fact, there’s nobody at all.
On the other hand, the Rambler fan base is here. It’s always been here.
Coach Moser and this squad provided that reason to return. A return to a renovated home arena, on the Lake Shore Campus, situated directly underneath WLUW’s tower atop Mertz Hall.
Ramblers still, but now in name only. At least as far as a gym is concerned.
So here’s to the outstanding Ramblers MVC Championship season.
The CBS spotlight awaits Loyola’s return to network television after its 33 year absence. When, not if, they get there for this Sunday’s broadcast of the MVC tournament championship game.
Kevin Harlan may even want to use the song I Touch Roses by Book of Love as bumper music in and out of one of the Rambler game breaks.
But he’ll have to click that link to hear the music. So will you.
Just something else that hasn’t been heard on WLUW in a very long time.
Tony Compton holds two degrees from Loyola University Chicago: a 1987 B.A. in Communication and a 1995 MBA. Tony was on WLUW’s staff from 1983–1988 and served as the station’s General Manager from September 1990 until December 1993.
