Game Of Change Documentary Worth Your Time

Oct. 20, 2008

-- posted by Will Roleson, Associate Commissioner for Communications and Media

This past Saturday at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, I had the opportunity to see the new film documentary "The Game of Change".

I was excited to see the film, knowing that Loyola's 1963 men's basketball national championship team started four African-American players and set the table for the more-famous Texas Western team three years later. The Texas Western squad featured an all-black starting five and defeated Kentucky three years later in the NCAA championship game and was later profiled in the 2006 full-length feature movie Glory Road.

Truth be told, "The Game of Change" is less about Loyola and more about race relations and politics in the early `60s in the state of Mississippi and their affect on the Mississippi State University basketball team, the Ramblers' opponent in the first round of the 1963 NCAA Tournament.

Each of the two years prior, MSU had turned down bids to the NCAAs despite winning the Southeastern Conference because they might have to play integrated teams, which was against the unwritten Mississippi state rules at the time.

But in 1963, MSU President Dean W. Colvard and head coach Babe McCarthy took a stand and were determined to give their players the experience they'd twice been denied. Knowing they risked prosecution, Colvard was driven overnight from Starkville to Birmingham and McCarthy hid in the back seat of another car and headed to Nashville, while the team flew out of the Starkville Airport the next morning en route to the tournament in East Lansing, Mich. Even the NCAA wasn't sure if State's team would show up for the game.

The story is told through interviews with Colvard's wife and children and players from both Mississippi State and Loyola, including Jerry Harkness, the leading scorer on that Ramblers team and the father of the film's director, Jerald Harkness. (Loyola would go on to win the national championship with a thrilling 60-58 victory over two-time defending champion University of Cincinnati.)

What made the film so memorable to me realizing it all happened only eight years before I was born. Those of us who didn't live through the racial upheaval of the `60s read about it in school, but seeing it on film - and in a sports context - really put it into perspective. As is mentioned in the documentary, the Loyola-Mississippi State game was a "vehicle to challenge the state's segregationist history" and "one of the biggest events in the history of Mississippi."

"The Game of Change" will be shown twice more at the Heartland Film Festival - at 9:30 p.m. ET on Monday, Oct. 20, at AMC Castleton Square and Wednesday, Oct. 22, at 7:15 p.m., also at AMC Castleton Square.

If you get the opportunity, I highly recommend it.