Game of Change
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 racially 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. Despite regularly facing racism on the road, 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. Employing a plan involving decoy players, the Bulldogs avoided being served an injunction as they took a charter plane to Michigan the day before the game.
Loyola had advanced to the second round after beating Tennessee Tech by 69 points, the largest margin of victory in tournament history, while Mississippi State had received a first round bye. The regional semifinal game was preceded by a handshake between Jerry Harkness, a black Loyola player, and Joe Dan Gold, a white Mississippi State player. Loyola won the game 61–51 and would ultimately win the entire NCAA tournament with a victory over Cincinnati in the championship game.
Background
Loyola-Chicago
In the early 1960s, college basketball had an unwritten rule that teams should only play two or three black players at a time. For the first decade of his career, Loyola head coach George Ireland had obeyed this rule. In the Ramblers' 1961–62 season, Ireland's starting lineup had three black players and two white players. As the season progressed, however, sophomore Ron Miller developed as a guard, and Rouse says several players felt that Miller should have been starting over Gavin. Miller said he was told explicitly by Ireland that he could not play him because of the limit of three black players. After falling to Dayton in the semifinal of the 1962 National Invitation Tournament, however, Ireland was "tired of losing", according to Egan. The following night, he violated the unwritten rule for the first time by starting Harkness, Rouse, Hunter, Miller, and Egan in the NIT consolation game.Loyola performed well with this lineup, and Ireland would go on to use the same five throughout the 1962–63 season. According to Ireland, this stance on black players made him unpopular in the basketball world; he once said that other coaches "used to stand up at banquets and say, 'George Ireland isn't with us tonight because he's in Africa — recruiting.'" This animosity was persistent, and the Loyola players regularly faced discrimination on the road. In January 1962, the Ramblers had planned to stay at Xavier University of Louisiana while traveling to a game against Loyola of New Orleans; however, this plan fell through at the last minute, and the black and white players were forced to find separate lodgings. Chicago news outlets reported on Ireland's outrage at the situation, although some of his players later suggested he played up the controversy. Another incident took place on February 23, 1963, when Loyola faced a hostile crowd at Houston road game. The spectators at the University of Houston, which would not fully desegregate until the next fall, shouted racial slurs, threw popcorn, ice, and pennies, and chanted, "Our team is red hot. Your team is all black."
Despite these troubles, the Ramblers performed well on the court, and they concluded the regular season with a 24–2 record. They remained in the top five rankings throughout their campaign, and ultimately finished at No. 3 in the AP Poll and No. 4 in the Coaches Poll. On February 18, Loyola was awarded one of eleven at-large bids for the NCAA tournament. In the tournament's first round game on March 11, the Ramblers defeated Tennessee Tech 111–42, the largest margin of victory in tournament history as of 2025 This led them to face Mississippi State, who had received a first round bye, in the mideast regional semifinal on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.
Mississippi State
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, head coach Babe McCarthy led the Mississippi State Bulldogs to much success in the Southeastern Conference. Starting with the 1958–59 season, they won the SEC title four times in five years. They entered the 1962–63 season with high expectations after their 24–1 record the previous season, appearing at No. 7 in the Coaches Poll. After starting the year with a 7–2 record, they briefly dropped out of the national poll, but soon reappeared after starting SEC play with 8 wins to 1 loss. They won the SEC title outright with a win over Ole Miss on March 2. They finished the season at No. 6 in the AP Poll and No. 7 in the Coaches Poll. After winning nine of their final eleven games, Mississippi State finished the regular season with 21 wins and 5 losses.However, at that time there existed an "unwritten law" that Mississippi teams would not play against racially integrated teams. Since 1946, when a football game between Mississippi State and an integrated Nevada team was cancelled, it had been the custom in Mississippi to decline any invitation to face teams with black players. This became a greater point of contention as McCarthy's successes repeatedly earned NCAA tournament invitations, and the coach increasingly expressed his discontent at being held back from the national stage. After Kentucky took the Bulldogs' slot at the 1962 NCAA tournament, McCarthy was quoted saying, "I think the boys should be allowed to play against integrated teams away from home", and further, "I feel that the majority of the people in Mississippi would favor our playing integrated teams out of the state." Early in the 1962–63 season, some of McCarthy's players recall him committing to do everything he could to make a tournament appearance happen that season.
As the civil rights movement was gaining traction around the country, the unwritten law began to face opposition from outside the team as well. On February 25, 1963, the Bulldogs secured a tournament invitation with a win over Tulane, and that night, hundreds of students gathered outside the home of Dean W. Colvard, president of Mississippi State University since 1960, chanting "we want to go". Over the next two days, Mississippi State's student senate voted unanimously to recommend that the Bulldogs accept the tournament invitation and gathered 2,000 student signatures on a resolution to the same effect.
The decision ultimately fell upon Colvard, who was being bombarded with calls, telegrams, and letters from people across the state. Most who contacted him were in favor of playing; of the 389 letters in Mississippi State's archives, 333 were in favor of going to the tournament. Colvard had personally been in favor of attending the tournament in 1961 and 1962, but the question never came directly to him, and he felt he lacked the political capital to oppose figures such as Governor Ross Barnett on this issue so early in his presidency. In 1963, however, the issue did come to his desk, and he felt he had the opportunity to act. The previous year, Barnett had attempted to pressure the state board of higher education into denying the admission of James Meredith as the first black student at the University of Mississippi. This political interference prompted a warning from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and jeopardized the accreditation of Mississippi state schools. This forced Barnett to step back from the issue, and Colvard felt he had some leeway. On March 2, 1963, Colvard issued a statement announcing that he would be sending the team to the tournament "unless hindered by competent authority".
Colvard's decision sparked widespread debate within the state of Mississippi. Many local newspapers ran columns that decried the decision as treasonous or as a threat to the state's unity; one anonymous letter wrote that "something more than the game will be lost". Several Mississippi legislators, including State Senator Billy Mitts, State Representative Russell Fox, and State Rep. Walter Hester, expressed their disapproval of the decision. In a statement, Hester wrote, "This action follows the Meredith incident as an admission that Miss. State has capitulated and is willing for the Negroes to move into that school en masse." State Sen. Sonny Montgomery, on the other hand, was alone amongst his colleagues in publicly voicing support for the decision. Sending the team to the tournament was also favored by the players themselves, who unanimously indicated their desire to play when interviewed by The Clarion-Ledger, as well as by the general public, with a poll conducted by WJTV and WSLI reporting 85% approval.
On March 5, the state board of higher education announced they would be holding a special session to review Colvard's decision. The meeting was convened by trustee M. M. Roberts of Hattiesburg, whom Sports Illustrated's Alexander Wolff describes as a "tenacious lawyer and proud racist". Barnett opposed Colvard's decision in a prepared statement on March 6, writing, "Personally, I feel it is not for the best interest of Mississippi State University, the state of Mississippi, or either of the races." When the board met several days later in Jackson, Mississippi, protesters and petitioners on both sides of the debate were present outside the building. The board voted 8–3 in support of the tournament decision, and 9–2 in a vote expressing confidence in Colvard's leadership.
Nevertheless, participation in the game was still opposed by many in the state. On the afternoon of March 13, State Sens. Billy Mitts and B. W. Lawson obtained an injunction from the Chancery Court of Hinds County forbidding the team from playing in the game. That night, the injunction was reportedly received by the Oktibbeha County deputy sheriff, Dot Johnson. Colvard and the university vice president fled to a motel in Birmingham, Alabama, and coach Babe McCarthy and the athletic director headed north to Nashville.
On the morning of March 14, the day before the game was to be played, the team sent trainer Dutch Luchsinger and five reserve players to Starkville airport at 8 a.m. as decoys. Had they been stopped by authorities while trying to board, the rest of the team would have taken a private plane to Nashville and flown commercially to Michigan. The Clarion-Ledger reported that Deputy Sheriff Johnson went to the airport to serve the injunction, but left after learning that the plane had not yet arrived due to delays in Atlanta. Other accounts suggest alternate reasons why Johnson failed, such as that he arrived too late because he stopped to finish his coffee first; historian Michael Lenehan sums up the legend of Dot Johnson as "a deputy sheriff who tried to do his duty, but not too hard".
Regardless of why, it is clear that the reserve squad did not encounter the deputy sheriff when they arrived, and thus returned to campus to reunite with the rest of the team. Thirty minutes later, they received word that the plane was en route, and the entire team headed to the airport together. Facing no further obstruction, their plane took off at 9:44 a.m. They stopped over in Nashville to pick up McCarthy before proceeding to the game site in East Lansing, Michigan. The injunction was suspended later that day by an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, and ultimately dismissed ten days later.