page_title: Game of Change
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Game of Change / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: President Barack Obama greets members of the 1963 Loyola University Chicago Ramblers NCAA Championship men's basketball team in the Oval Office, July 11, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
context_page_description: The Game of Change was a college basketball game played between the Loyola Ramblers and the Mississippi State Bulldogs on March 15, 1963, during the second round of the 1963 NCAA University Division Basketball Tournament, at Jenison Fieldhouse in East Lansing, Michigan. Taking place in the midst of the American civil rights movement, the game between the integrated Loyola team and the all-white Mississippi State team is remembered as a milestone in the desegregation of college basketball.
  In an era when teams typically played no more than two black players at a time, Loyola had four black starters. Persevering through hate mail and racial slurs hurled by segregationists, Loyola finished the 1962–63 regular season with a dominant 24–2 record. Mississippi State came into the postseason with their fourth Southeastern Conference title in five years; however, due to an unwritten law that Mississippi teams would never play against black players, they had never before participated in the NCAA tournament. When university president Dean W. Colvard announced that he would send the team to the tournament, several state officials objected and attempted to restrain the team in the state.
context_section_description: The 50th anniversary of the Game of Change was marked with a number of commemorative events. On December 15, 2012, Mississippi State visited Loyola for the teams' first meeting since the 1963 tournament. With surviving players from both of the historic teams present, Loyola won by a score of 59–51. On July 10–11, 2013, members of the 1962–63 Loyola team reunited for a two-day trip to Washington, D.C. On the first day, they toured the Capitol Building and met privately with Senator Dick Durbin and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and on July 11, they met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. On November 24, 2013, the 1962–63 Loyola team was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, the first time an entire team was inducted collectively. The team was also inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame on September 18, 2013.
  The overall significance of the Game of Change to the civil rights movement has been debated. The 1962–63 Loyola Ramblers are often overlooked, or overshadowed by the 1965–66 Texas Western Miners, who won the 1966 NCAA Championship with an all-black starting lineup over an all-white Kentucky team. In a 2018 opinion piece for The Washington Post, Kevin Blackistone argues that the game did not actually bring about much change. Blackistone points to significant setbacks that the movement faced in Mississippi after the game, such as the murder of Vernon Dahmer and the shooting of James Meredith at the March Against Fear, and suggests that the modern narrative of the game is more of an urban legend than a truthful retelling. In a response letter to the editor, journalist Charles Paikert contends that, although the game did not cause sudden major change to ongoing racial tensions in the South, it did show that white athletes and students rejected the unwritten rule against interracial sports competitions. He further writes that the national publicity garnered by Loyola's championship run was a "big deal" in 1963.
caption: President Obama meets with members of the 1962–63 Loyola team for their 50th anniversary.
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