Loyola used to have a football team to call its own — until the program was cut by the university in 1930.
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Loyola used to have a football team to call its own — until the program was cut by the university in 1930.
Loyola has a wide variety of sports and athletics to offer. But despite the university’s 13 NCAA-level sports programs, we don’t have a football team.
The draw for students at some universities is football. The tailgating, endless cheering and intense chants are long-standing and lively traditions, according to U.S. News.
The “Flutie Effect” — named for legendary Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie — describes the pattern of students applying to schools as a result of the football program’s popularity, according to Ivy Wise. One study published by The Wire showed a university’s incoming student applications increased by 18.7% after winning a major bowl game.
Football has become the most popular American sport, and college football can be particularly exciting. This leaves Loyola students wondering why football isn’t a part of the Athletics Department.
This wasn’t always the case — Loyola used to field a football team, first being established in 1882 and slowly started gaining popularity.
One game in 1908 against Marquette Academy saw the university’s entire 600-person population present. The total attendance had “exceeded any that ever attended a college game here,” according to the Loyola library.
The team practiced and played games on the campus’ Loyola Field, which is now Hoyne Field, and sometimes at Soldier Field — the current home to the Chicago Bears.
The university invested a great deal into the football program. Loyola became the first school in the Midwest to have its major football team play night games after investing in a field night lighting system, according to an archive of the Loyolan.
Around 1926, after developing a reputation for traveling to so many different states to play, the team’s nickname “Ramblers” caught on. Media also officially recognized the football team as “the Ramblers,” which was of course later adopted by Loyola.
The team was inconsistent. They won at least four out of eight games a season in the 1920s, before only winning two out of nine games in 1930, according to an archive of The Chicago Tribune.
Loyola’s football team fell two years short of the 50-year anniversary mark and was disbanded in 1930. Administrators decided football was becoming too commercialized without benefits for students, according to the Loyola library.
“Loyola students were in an uproar,” and the disbandment was so much of a “shock,” students wanted to form petitions — students in the College of Liberal Arts even put on a strike, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“The colleges and universities are competing with entertainment agencies for the patronage of the public,” the Rev. Robert M. Kelley, S. J., the university president at the time, said in a statement.
In his statement, the Rev. Kelley assured the disbandment wasn’t a result of the team’s play that year. Notably, the shuttering came after the team’s most financially successful season in its history.
The lack of football at Loyola has carried over to current times, as football is only played on campus through intramural and club teams — which were instated in 2012.
What might’ve happened if Loyola maintained the team over the century will forever be unknown.
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