Rambling, the school had a lot to do with it. Do you think Porter paid for the facilities improvements, a top 2 conference coaching salary, beefed up marketing department, charter flights etc? It was a collective effort to bring the program back to prominence.

Does it matter. New coach has retained all the recruits and key current players. He signed a fantastic new recruit within a week. I like the future.

The school didn’t put money into the program until Porter made the program worthy of the investment. The charter flights didn’t become regular until the program was winning. Porter called out the school about the travel situation and the school responded. The same thing with the facilities and his salary. The administration responded. It did not lead. Porter made them respond by winning. It was his constant cheerleading and pressure that improved the profile of the program and got upgrades. The team would still travel by bus without Porter.

I pretty firmly disagree, the school is experiencing unprecedented success in athletics since Watson was hired and men's basketball is only a portion of it. Porters a great coach and was the right person to make a long term investment in, clearly. But he's not Jesus of Nazareth, and attributing 100% of the programs success to him minimizes the fantastic contributions of so many within our community and athletic department.

It’s revisionist history to say that the administrations support was ahead of PM’s success. PM was out there begging for support for years. His success forced the administration to support the program.

One thing people do forget is we had an interim AD with zero experience for like a year and a half in the middle of Porter's tenure.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

This. Many times, this. No matter who deserves credit for what became of the program the last 4 years, does everyone realize how quickly all of that could’ve dissolved over the last month? In the college transfer world we live in now? There are roughly 1,400 players in the transfer portal right now, and so far none of them arrived there from Loyola after PM left. That’s absolutely huge. That’s entirely to the credit of Drew Valentine and Steve Watson. I’m ready for the Valentine era.

I think everyone has a right to be mad at Moser leaving because he did give up something great for a perceived “greener pasture” and the mere possibility of doing something greater. BUT - if he was going to leave eventually anyway, I’m glad he’s gone NOW, and didn’t leave us decimated. Drew Valentine has a legit chance to be the next Brad stevens with what we have coming back, and it’ll be up to him how hard he works to maintain the program’s success. He’s got a chance to win a lot of games next year right from the jump.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Porter at his furry convention with with the Rogers & Hammerstein Norman dinner theatre cast in attendance on the Tarmac. I also laughed at his videotaped game of show-and-tell with Lincoln Riley. I’m fine with him taking “created by culture” since it doesn’t really mean anything. Porter has 15 to 17 years of coaching left... he can’t be fully embraced and loved by the Loyola community while he’s still out coaching another program, and in 15 or 20 years from now when he hangs it up, he won’t be much remembered in Rogers Park other than he was a “great coach” while he was here. He won’t be “a legend.” He could have been a legend... he chose another path. That’s fine.

Meanwhile, Loyola is going to win several more conference titles (maybe with Drew or someone else), and the program is built, funded, and poised to compete in the Valley for years to come. Longterm, I think we are going to be just fine.

I’ve decided not to hate Porter. I’m going to pity him instead. In my mind, Porter Moser is a great leader who made a stupid choice. He failed at Little Rock, failed at Illinois State, and for 4 years, he failed at Loyola. He caught lightning, “created a culture,” but foolishly walked away from it in its prime after years and years of failure before finally getting it right. He’ll never be a “legend” at Loyola now, and he’ll never be a legend in Norman, living in the shadow of the football program. He’ll never be a Homer Drew, Ray Meyer, Mark Few, Bobby Knight, John Wooden, Lute Olson, Coach K, Dean Smith, Denny Crum, Tom Izzo - guys that stayed at the schools that made them great, and are forever beloved by their fanbase a and respected by everyone else. Keep in mind, most of those coaches didn’t inherit program prominence - they built it.... OVER DECADES... like Porter could have...

But Porter solidified his place in college basketball by leaving Loyola after 10 years with another possible 20 years remaining. He now joins the ranks of Dan Monson, Bruce Pearl, Todd Lickliter, Jim Larranaga, Shaka Smart, Tom Crean, Archie Miller, Sean Miller, Bryce Drew, Nate Oats, Dave Lietao, Steve Prohm, Mark Turgeon, Thad Matta - and a host of other coaches that achieved major success at the mid major level, left for non-blue blood “big conference” schools, and have either failed miserably, or have no real shot at winning an NCAA title any time soon.

And so everyone is clear - Porter didn’t take “more money” to go to Oklahoma. Loyola was going to pay him whatever they could to keep him there and extend it out over a long period of time. If Porter stayed and kept winning, Loyola was going to redo his contract each year and would have done whatever they could have to keep him there. Had he stayed, Loyola was going to offer him more “guaranteed” money than Oklahoma (albeit over ten years rather than 6)... but each year he took the ramblers back to the tournament he was going to be able to renegotiate. And with the return Loyola gets - they were going to take care of him. For those of you who think he ended up taking a “substantial” pay raise .... long term - I disagree. If Porter is halfway intelligent outside of basketball, he’s dying a millionaire with his kids taken care, whether he stayed at Loyola or left for Oklahoma.

My overarching point is - if you’re mad at Porter Moser, it’s not because he’s a jerk, or a traitor, or a used car salesman, or any or that. You’re mad at him because you LOVED him as our coach, you think he’s an unbelievable motivator, you think he had a chance to be a legend as a coach on the national stage for Loyola, and he made a stupid decision. Bottom line - he’s a great dude who made a bad choice, and right now he’s swept up in the honeymoon of that bad choice. Let’s be honest - if he went to Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, or Kentucky, we would have all understood. Our problem is, we all believe he’s a high caliber coach worthy of jobs like those that have legit shots at competing for a title, year in and year out, and if he left Loyola for a better gig - that’s where he should have been. The hard pill to swallow is that, given where he went (and where we are at as a program right now), he gave it all up for “high level mediocrity” as opposed to mid-major prominence. Our feelings are most likely that “if you’re not leaving to compete for a national title each year (which he’s not), why would you walk away from a chance to be a hometown legend ?” I think those feelings are understandable.

If this is how you feel - you are the portion of the fanbase that is with ME. I love Porter. I love what he did for us. I wanted him to either 1) shock the world and win a national title for us in the next ten years, or 2) go to a blue blood program where I think he belongs and win 5 national titles, so I could say “it all started at Loyola.” Because we are educated basketball fans, we know the Oklahoma job, while enticing, will most likely lead to coaching mediocrity for Porter, who we consider one of our own. And the choice for mediocrity stings because it comes at our expense a bit too.

The funny thing is Porter’s situation, individually, is very similar to Loyola’s program situation. We sucked, sucked, sucked for 20+ years even though we were working hard - then Bam - 5 years of success. But for those of you who think Porter made the wrong decision to capitalize on his success and go to a bigger program, I’d be very interested to know if you would also think Loyola should accept an invitation to the Big East if we were invited?

First glance / no brainer right? No more Evansville, Indiana State, Valpo! From now on Georgetown, Villanova, Marquette, UConn ..... STOP. If we went to the Big East we would have an inflated sports budget and get our asses kicked for years and be hanging in the cellar with DePaul. We are all smart enough to know this, and yet the prospect still sounds really enticing, doesn’t it? I’ll be the first to admit, I know it would set the program back, but the prospect of playing those higher teams on a nightly basis would make it really hard for me to say no if they asked us. I bet more than half of our fan base would say “leave the valley” immediately for the big east even though they know there’s a 90% probability we’d fail miserably. I bet a ton of us would still bet on the will and hard work of Loyola and want to take the chance. Essentially ... that was Porter’s same decision to leave for Oklahoma. We can call him stupid for making it, but I at least understand it.

You made some really good points there Toledo. I've been ready to move on from the Porter talk for a couple of weeks. He was the Loyola men's basketball coach, now he's not. We're in good hands currently, I'm excited to see where we go from here. Given that we will have a handful of new assistants this upcoming season, this represents a seismic shift. There is a lot to talk about there. But to continue talking about Porter leaving for a Oklahoma doesn't interest me.

I’ve never really thought that Krut would go to Oklahoma, and this only encourages that belief.