CHICAGO — The best documentaries tell you stories you thought you knew and turn them on their head.
“The Loyola Project,” which debuts Monday night on CBS Sports Network and also screens Thursday at the AMC River East 21 theater in Chicago, is one of those films.
Thanks to the recent NCAA Tournament success of the Loyola Ramblers, the story of the 1963 men’s team that broke racial barriers while winning the national championship has been retold a time or two over the last five years. The ‘63 Ramblers won behind a coach who ignored the unwritten rules of the era and started four Black players en route to the title, beating a Mississippi State team along the way that defied its state’s law prohibiting it from playing against integrated teams.
It’s a history lesson that melds the sports world with the civil rights movement, a precursor to the real-life struggles against racial inequality that would play out across the nation during the ‘60s.
But “The Loyola Project” doesn’t paint a picture of an avuncular coach fighting for social justice with a group of kids trying to change the world.
Loyola’s George Ireland isn’t portrayed as a progressive leader but as a regular, veteran coach trying the keep his job the only way he can — by recruiting and playing the best players, regardless of race.
Similarly, Loyola players aren’t portrayed as social justice warriors but as a bunch of college kids trying to win together while navigating the obstacles created by their unique team makeup in tumultuous times.
Despite a similarly happy ending on the court, this is not “Hoosiers.” And it’s not a valentine to the university, which cooperated with the filmmakers but did not have any say in its making.
Chicago feted its championship team, the film shows, but eventually turned its back on some of the young men who made it happen. Jerry Harkness, the star of the 1963 team, tells the story of facing discrimination while trying to find an apartment in Chicago after returning to the city after graduation.
Current Ramblers star Lucas Williamson, who received his bachelor’s degree in journalism last year and is working on a master’s degree in marketing, serves as the narrator and a co-writer of the documentary. The film’s creator, Patrick Creadon, also made the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary “Catholics vs. Convicts” about the football rivalry in the 1980s between Notre Dame and Miami.
Much of the filming took place during the 2020 season that ended prematurely because of the COVID-19 pandemic and fortunately includes Harkness, who died last year.
The blatant racism from that period is explored repeatedly, including a segment on a trip to New Orleans during the 1962-63 season when the white players stayed in a downtown hotel while Black players stayed in private homes in the Algiers neighborhood.
“That’s one of my favorite stories,” Williamson said in a Chicago Tribune interview. “They had to go down South and couldn’t stay in the same hotel. Socially, that obviously bothers me. It doesn’t make sense. But from a basketball standpoint, there are so many things we need to do as a team when we go on the road — watching film, team meals, not to mention team bonding, just hanging out. It’s crazy they had to stay in different places.”
1963 Ramblers player Ron Miller says in the film that Ireland told players he didn’t know about the decision to separate the team until the “last minute,” an excuse Miller still does not buy. After Loyola won, Ireland denounced New Orleans’ segregation laws and said the Ramblers would never return.
But it later was revealed Xavier University had offered Loyola the opportunity to house all its players together and that Ireland declined for unknown reasons.
“It’s not just unsafe,” Williamson says in the film of Ireland’s decision to keep the team segregated. “It’s bad strategy. Your team is your family.”
Later in the film, Ireland’s daughter is shown with a manila envelope with the words “Loyola HM” on it. The HM stood for “hate mail.” The film explains that Ireland intercepted 300 pieces of hate mail sent to his players.
I spoke with Harkness about the letters in March at the NCAA Tournament, and he confirmed he received hate mail signed “KKK” at his dorm. He informed Ireland of the letters, prompting the confiscations of all mail sent to his players.
The filmmakers viewed some of the letters, but the Ireland family denied multiple requests to show any in the film and also declined to return them to the living players. Miller said he has never seen them, even though the players have the right to possess mail addressed to them.
Williamson suggests in the film that Ireland might have seen the letters as a “distraction” for the players. But he then adds that “the problem is, Ireland didn’t (move on),” pointing out the coach hired security for his daughters but not the Loyola players being threatened.
“The coach ends up being quite an interesting character,” Williamson told me. “On one end he’s doing so much, being progressive, and on the other hand he’s doing things that make you ask: ‘Why are you doing that?’ ”
Miller flatly states in the film Ireland was “not interested in race relations” and “was just thinking about himself, his family and just winning basketball games.” He added that he didn’t hold that against the coach.
Creadon didn’t criticize Ireland in a Tribune interview but called him a “a very complicated man.”
“And he’s a man of his time,” Creadon said. “I can’t fault him for that. … He was a basketball coach and he needed to win. Full stop. That’s it. He wasn’t a civil rights visionary. He kind of made that claim years later. But that does not ring true at all with any of his players. That’s not a criticism.”
The segment on “The Game of Change” against Mississippi State doesn’t reveal anything new but is the heart of the story and important to retell. And in giving some of the Mississippi State players a chance to provide their perspectives, the film shows how they also were thrown into a situation no one could prepare for. Like Loyola’s players, they just wanted to play in March Madness.
The film also documents the bravery of Mississippi State coach Babe McCarthy and his players for sneaking out of the state to play in Michigan knowing they could be arrested. The team was “treated like heroes” upon its return to Mississippi, the film states.
Unfortunately, there was no available video of the game, but the black-and-white photo of Harkness shaking hands with the white Mississippi State captain at the start of the game says a thousand words.
“I said this is more than a game,” Harkness recalls in the film. “This is history.”
It’s hard to believe this happened in our lifetime, but it did and deserves to be retold for future generations. Williamson doesn’t sugarcoat things at the end of the film, rhetorically asking if the accomplishments of the 1963 team changed anything for Black Americans, then answering his question with two words: “It’s complicated.”
“There will always be more work to do, more unwritten rules to break, more ways to make the world better for the next generation,” he says in the film.
Williamson, who was a key contributor to Loyola’s 2018 Final Four and 2021 Sweet 16 teams, turned out to be the perfect choice to link the 1963 Ramblers to the present. A professional narrator could not have done any better, and he can relate to the ‘63 players on and off the court.
“I’m a bridge between the ‘63 guys and now,” Williamson told me. “Yeah, the story did happen in ‘63, but there are still some themes and things they had to go through that are relevant today. It might take a different form. It might feel different or sound different. But it’s still the same at the end of the day.
“I wanted to emphasize that. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in 2022. There’s still a lot of work to be done.”
An edited, hourlong version of the documentary will air on CBS during March Madness, but the full 90-minute version is worth viewing now.
You don’t have to be a college basketball fan to enjoy watching “The Loyola Project,” though it certainly would help.
This is more about an era and how a group of young men found themselves in the middle of a conflict that none had signed up for — then saw it forever shape their lives.
