The Chicago NBC 10 o'clock news sports segment had an extended film feature on the Notre Dame basketball game. NOTHING (not even a bottom scroll or mention) about the Rambler - WSU game. What is wrong with this picture??? Why cannot we get a tiny modicum of respect and publicity from the powers-that-be in our own city?

Mornin' Gal !! Your question---I feel it all goes back to Arch Ward (Trib) --He Clem Lane (Daily News ) and a host of other Sportswriters backed Notre Dame (Some went there) as well as Big 14 (others went there)---Then we have RAY MEYER a Notre Damer BTW who truly did a nice promo job with media in promoting DePewl.

Lennie Sachs -LUC was a great coach who apparently thought LUC played Hoops --did it well, but he cared little about the Press. Then we had a string of Jesuits who were rash enough to think that Education came first--Of course the anomaly in this thing was George Ireland--His success was not used to its full extent by the Jesuit regime at the time--sad to say.

In my opinion , over the years LUC HOOPS was good if not great , but secondary to Education by a long way.

Ray Meyer ingratiated himself to the Media--The Jesuits did not--The Jesuit tradition appeared to be all that was needed --Hoops was fine BUT----

Now comes Fr G, and his bunch. He is turning things around--One must only look at the great things LUC has done since I matriculated--1947-51.

I really feel LUC MUST win and win NOW--The Media will ALWAYS love the Big 14 and especially the IRISH as well--We must muscle our way into the "Club" by winning and winning and then some---Starting with the Wichitas and the rest of our great Conference. BTW I have nothing but respect for Shockers . Bradley and the rest. BUT we need to clobber them as we have other schools in say Volleyball.

The other BIG problem is apathy by students and Alums--WE MUST have our new AD address and cure this--THIS I feel is what Fr G is paying him for.--

Sorry to run on like this --but the perception has always been that LUC is what is was and is--That high fallutin Private school just south of Northwestern.

One last thing --LOYOLA IS STILL THE ONLY TEAM IN ILLINOIS to have won a NAT'L Hoops championship --How that must gall the Media--BTW when did Notre Dame win one ??

I'm glad Brot added some historical context. The other thing going on that hurts us on coverage is the fragmentation of media, especially in the past five years. Newspapers have eliminated a lot of the most expensive and lowest priority beats. The Sun Times, for example, even eliminated all their staff photographers, including a Pulitzer Prize winner. We no longer have beat reporters, even at home games.

This is a thing that our new conference partners can't understand, since the teams they support are mostly the only game in town. The MVC has half the Division I teams in Iowa (where the biggest professional team is the AAA Iowa Cubs) and one of the teams is located in their biggest media market. Wichita State is one third of the Division I teams in the state of Kansas, and the only one located within 130 miles of their biggest city. Peoria has minor league hockey, Class A minor league baseball, and Bradley, Bradley, Bradley-- the lead story on their sports reports is often a high school game. Bloomington-Normal shares Peoria's TV market, so ISUr depends on the shrinking Pantagraph (newspaper), cable TV, and local radio for most of their coverage. Who knows what's going on in downstate Illinois....

For us-- in a market where there are five Division I teams in college basketball, an historical Big 10 conference focus (thank the Tribune for that), wildly popular and media-dominant pro sports, a focus on the large and diverse region, and a nationally-relevant media market-- it's not really that surprising that college hoops is one of the first things to get purged in a crowded, fragmenting, and cost-conscious media landscape. It doesn't help at all that internally Loyola made the decision to forego a broadcast radio outlet, and has been generally disappointing on the court for 30 years.

Well, I did witness a ton of LUC Hoops History and all that BUT full disclosure---- Some years ago when 63 and I were runnin' around loose, John was good enough to send some of his research notes to me. This research and my first hand eye witness stuff aided my comments above !! BTW, I still remember bumping my head a number of times in the stands at Alumni Hall--Old timers will remember , right guys !! Longshot Lor always said that I never learned--even with the accumulated bumps !!!

RESPECT ?? We will have to earn it by winning winning and more winning--The Media are notorious front-runners , so we will get them when we make some winning noise. It is what it is---so !! Now DePewl never did have that problem because the Media loved Meyer and we were that snobby Jesuit school up north.
( I will say this though, Jim Enright--writer and great referee did give us a fair shake in his columns) !! Gosh , he was fun to watch--all 9000 pounds of him as he hustled up and down the court ragging on the players when they fouled or traveled--You would have had to have seen him to believe !!! Suffice it to say , He Rocked the Stadium---The players --most of them loved him !!!

John has a brain chock- full of great facts and stories

MORAL---Force the Media to follow and report on us--WIN !!

OK Gal--what do you say ??

I've got to believe that if we had beaten SIU, Evansville, and Indiana State, we'd be a big topic in local sports media, even during Superbowl week. We'd have been 16-4 overall and 6-2 in conference going into the WSU game, with an RPI in the top 50, and we'd get a mention facing the #12. That's what adds extra pain to Milt's injury-- that we had such a great record and real list of accomplishments before it happened, that we held our own in the first four tough conference games, etc.

But going into WSU having lost three in a row, it was not on anyone's radar screen. If we were losing before he got hurt, the few of us who've seen collapses so many times before would have taken it in stride, wished him a quick recovery, and gone on with business as usual. But with the best start since the 1960s, it was all the more painful to watch losing in the otherwise winnable games. And with those losses, a really great chance to turn heads and get wider notice.

Not Loyola, but here's an article that shows a hurdle for LU to get positive publicity: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ro ... olumn.html

U of I football coach essentially asked the media to give his program some positive support. This backfired; esteemed Tribune columnist Rosenbloom took it upon himself to dedicate a column bashing Beckman for having the audacity to ask that the media support his efforts to re-build a program.

The Sun-Times version is a bit different: http://chicago.suntimes.com/colleges/7/ ... a-positive

Shows the transcript of his comments, and then below the twitter reactions of some of the local media. Basically the consensus is win and then we'll be nice. What does this tell me? Chicago media wants a front runner and then they'll get on board.

It also reflects who and what their subscribers are telling them. I guess that the number of LU alums and ND alums are about the same in the Chicago area but ND gets zillinons more pub......and I bet it is ND alum who squawk every time they feel they don't get enough ink. Our crowds at games also is an indicator of our alums and the community's interest. We were once the star at the top of the tree. I have newspaper clippings to prove it. However we are now the clippings at the bottom of the bird cage. I hate to say it but it is the truth. It is going to be a tough climb back to the top. Encouraging is that I am hearing very good reviews on the new AD and that is a step in the right direction.
Just to add to this lack of info on LU......Bradley /WS gets a by line while we get Wheres Waldo mention at the bottom of the college roundup