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You know one thing that would help "bring back" college hoops in Chicago? Better coverage by the Chicago newspapers

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Well, it's a start ! The thing about this entire Chgo Sorts writing thing is an almost total fawning on ND and the Big Ten, when it comes down to it. It is like DePewl, Uic Chgo St and LUC are located somewhere in the Dakotas or somewhere else. Point of fact , ND - 80 miles away in a different state. Ill 160 miles away and NW at least is close by . Now this article FINALLY discusses LOCAL teams. Some say a school MUST earn their props. I agree to an extent. But where is it written (kind of a pun) that the Media cannot report on local teams , win or lose ?? Frankly I am getting tired of all the ND Press--day after day. Our Press here in AKRON-CLE is in a similar situation as is the Chgo Media, but hardly a day goes by where you cannot find an article re CSU, Kent St, Akron U and the smaller Colleges around.

The Chgo Media MUST give Chgo schools more Press good or bad re its teams. Fair Play , please .

This is an important discussion, really. The Tribune acts as if they have no role at all in this. I'm not saying it's ALL their fault-- the schools have made mistakes and gone through years of bad teams and bad athletic department management-- but there have also been good, exciting, interesting things going on that were not covered well, or at all. Still, the Tribune bears a lot of blame because they deliberately created the Big 10/Notre Dame focus, and in doing so, consciously and actively downplayed the other schools FOR YEARS. So NOW they furrow their brow and wonder why college basketball is stunted? The effect of the Tribune non-coverage and lousy coverage can be estimated pretty closely by looking at analogs.

Marquette in Milwaukee is somewhat similar to Loyola. How the Journal and Sentinel (and later on the merged paper) treated them led to huge attendance, revenue, and sustained success through both strong and weak periods. The comparison is extremely similar (competition from pro sports, big state school about 120 miles away, newcomer schools in D1 like UWM coming along in later years), and this alternate universe market where college sports is covered well by the newspapers is only 90 miles away from Chicago.

Take a look at how the newspapers have covered local college basketball through the years in Philadelphia, DC, Cincinnati, New York, Boston, and Detroit... All of those markets have better college basketball attendance, more local kids staying at local schools, and all the SAD things lamented about Chicago in the Tribune article-- but each market has had historically better coverage of their local schools than the Tribune gave out. And Chicago has had Loyola and DePaul win 1 National Championship, 1 NIT Championship, reach 2 Final Fours, 2 NIT Runner ups, and too many Sweet 16s to count.

The Tribune's editorial decisions and effective sabotage is at least 50% of the reason why local college sports isn't successful in Chicago. The Big 10 is huge. Exhibitions by big time schools out of market are well attended. Yet the local schools get crap, and always have, because The Colonel wanted to promote the Big 10, give out awards, and make it into a big deal at the direct expense of locals schools. Thanks, Tribune.

Perhaps its because I am younger but I think we may be past the time where papers are going to help with recruiting. Loyola is doing a good job of allowing access to guys like Jesse Kramer who actually want to cover and talk about our program. Online coverage, both columns and social media, is the new way go to. The papers probably played a part in getting us into this situation but I do not think they will help much in getting us out.

Yes, you are right. It's too late to make a difference now. We don't even have a regular beat reporter-- a fact which mystifies and confounds all the media in other MVC markets. But to write a think piece about why this state of affairs exists without citing the effort, planning and hard work on the part of the Tribune to undermine local schools for decades in favor of the Big 10 is disingenuous.

YOU SEE !! John writes my thoughts exactly !! ARCH WARD, way back when--Yup. I was around--did the HUGE damage and his successors, like lemmings have followed him...Back in the day we did have JIM ENRIGHT --ooops , wrong newspaper--He was mostly a square shooter.
BTW, we read a lot about RAY M in the Trib article--I may have missed it , but IRELAND was hard to find in that article .

WELL, this could be the year that LUC earns and does get more publicity--WE ARE GOOD !!!