Happy Thanksgiving to all the old timers (and everyone else I don't know on here these days).

Wasn't able to make it make it back home this year for Thanksgiving, had dinner with work friends. My co-worker's mother-in-law came as well, along with her avuncular boyfriend. He and I were talking and Chicago got mentioned; turns out he is a Loyola grad and was there in '63. Conversation took a weird turn, though, because when he mentioned that hte '63 Team ruined sports for him forever and I assumed it was because sports could never be that exciting or fun again, he instead went on a rant about how the team was full of "mercenaries" from New York and LA. Some weird racial comments were made, too. Complaints that Loyola's grading was on a quota system (sounded like law school curves to me), so if there were basketball players in your classes there were fewer A's to go around, even though the players didn't attend classes.

Just a conversation I didn't expect to have, and complaints that sounded (absurd, in part) and more like students might have in 2017 about "student-athletes" than back then. Or maybe I'm just naive. Either way, thought that there'd be some people here with some thoughts.

OUCH !! What must have been difficult for you All I can say is both Egan and Harkness have truly from all I hear and read , done well fur themselves and families.

In any case I trust that you did have a great Thanksgiving Day despite that !!

Some of us in the class of 1963 probably suffer from dementia. Don't forget that the starting five had eleven degrees among them. Grades were not as inflated as today, but there were plenty of A's to go around. All of the players were good men.

That sounds weird to me. I had Egan, Miller, Hunter, Rouse, Rochelle, and Wood in many of my classes and they attended on a regular basis. I remember Rich Rochelle trying to squeeze his 6' 10" frame into one of those little high school desks in Dumbach Hall. I know that all of the aforementioned graduated. Vic Rouse earned multiple graduate degrees. John Egan earned a law degree. And Rich Rochelle was a principal in the Evanston School District.

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Let's go Braden!

was he a commuter?? Am I correct that the only two dorms for guys were Campion and Gonzaga? and that the players were well know and well liked on campus? I know Ronnie Miller lived next to my brother at Campion and they were good friends and Egan played on their dorm softball team. The guy sounds like an anomaly....fake news.....

If the grades were "fixed," and African Americans got better treatment, that's news to Billy Smith and Pablo Robertson, who both flunked out after the Fall semester leaving Loyola with a very weak bench for 3/4 of the season and the NCAA Tournament. Billy Smith came back after a year at a juco raising his grades. Pablo joined the Harlem Globetrotters.

Yes, there was a big connection to New York City, which produced Harkness, Miller, Billy Smith and Pablo Robertson. Hunter and Rouse came from Nashville. Egan was a local kid. What you have to remember about that time is there were limited spaces for good black players-- teams didn't want to play more than two at home and three on the road per the gentleman's agreement. That mean't there always had to be at least two white players on the court at all times, so it was necessary to carry many more white reserves than needed without the race-based quota.

While neither Natey or I were with OC at that Dinner I do believe Natey may JUST have put his finger on it---OC.s pal may just have issued Fake nirws !!

That 63 team of ours --all seven of them --were Champs and decent !!

Campion (aka Loyola Hall) was really the only men's dorm. Gonzaga - at the corner of Sheridan and Glenlake - was small and was mostly a retreat house. The team lived throughout the dorm; some of them roomed with non-players.

There are four Loyolas scattered across the county. This guy obviously didn't go to the one in Chicago - where absolutely nothing he reported was true (e.g., no players were from LA; in fact no players came from any further west than Racine, WI).

Glad to hear all the replies that this guy's complaints weren't founded in most people's experience. Hopefully someday I'll get to meet a 63 student with better memories, since the best basketball moment from my four years was losing to Dave Bailey's little brother in the Horizon League Championship.