Matthew Coller: Vikings rookie Walter Rouse carries his grandfather's legacy with him

Rouse's grandfather played for the historic 1963 Loyola men's basketball team. The Vikings' young left tackle is driven by what Loyola went through to win...

Photos courtesy Minnesota Vikings and Loyola University

EAGAN — If you gave Minnesota Vikings rookie Walter Rouse a time machine, he would know instantly where he wanted to go. Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 23, 1963.

Inside that place and on that day, his grandfather Walter Victor “Vic” Rouse scored the game-winning basket in the 1963 National Championship game in overtime for the Loyola Ramblers.

“I remember the first time I heard the actual radio call, it was different than just hearing about it or reading about it,” the Vikings new left tackle said on Friday. “I imagine myself on the sideline and the position he was in.”

Walter never got to meet his grandfather because he passed away in 1999, yet Vic has been an important presence in his life. When he was growing up his grandmother and aunt made sure to teach Walter about Vic’s legacy. Walter has Vic’s No. 40 jersey and received a collection of photos and news clippings featuring him and the ‘63 Ramblers for one of his birthdays.

“I give thanks to my family tremendously because I wasn’t able to meet him but through them I feel like I know him,” Rouse said.

When Walter mentioned his grandfather on his conference call following the Vikings selecting him in the sixth round of this year’s draft, it seemed like simply a fun factoid. Any young athlete would be thrilled to have a national champion in their family and want to strive toward the same accomplishment. But in the case of the 1963 Loyola Ramblers and Vic Rouse, there is so much more to the story.

Behind his winning put-back shot over the Cincinnati Bearcats is a journey encapsulated in a time period in which the civil rights movement was gaining momentum and many were still gripping to the ways of the past.

Consider that it was only a few months after Vic Rouse tipped the ball back into the basket that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famed “I have a dream” speech in Washington, D.C.

Walter Rouse’s grandfather wasn’t just a starting forward for a winning team, he was the starting forward for a basketball team that carried a torch for progress. A team that was honored by the President of the United States in 2013.

Four members of the ‘63 Loyola Ramblers meet President Obama in 2013 / Loyola University

Until Walter Rouse was drafted by the Vikings, I was not familiar with the story of the 1963 Loyola Ramblers. Former Loyola point guard and captain Lucas Williamson, who narrated the documentary The Loyola Project that captured their path to the championship, was not offended by that. While he was part of the 2018 Loyola team that went to the Final Four, he didn’t know the entire background until he worked on the documentary.

He knew the basics. They had four black starters in a time that was not acceptable. They played in the “Game of Change.” They won it all. But the process of writing and narrating the documentary (produced by filmmaker Patrick Creadon) opened Williamson’s — and then the audience’s — eyes to the many layers of Loyola’s championship.

Being aware that players like Vic Rouse faced bigotry is different than going through the specific details of what they overcame. Knowing that their championship made an impact is different from seeing the full breadth of their accomplishment.

The documentary begins with head coach of the ‘63 Loyola team George Ireland looking for answers. In the late 50s he was under fire after producing back-to-back sub-.500 seasons so he decided that he needed to either do something drastic or lose his job. At the time, the best black prospects like Wilt Chamberlain were getting the attention of big schools but the next level down — the average very good black prospect — was often overlooked.

Ireland went in search of finding under-the-radar black players and discovered the team’s most skilled player Jerry Harkness in Harlem. He had only played one year of high school basketball and wasn’t highly recruited. Vic Rouse was a 6-foot-6 rebounder from Tennessee. He agreed to come to Loyola if fellow Tennessean center Les Hunter came along. Ron Miller was a scorer and defensive specialist.

At first, Ireland’s gifted four black players could not be on the floor at the same time. It was an unwritten rule that there had to be at least two white players on the court at all times. We don’t often think of Chicago as a home to segregation but education was still very much segregated and 98% of Loyola students at the time were white.

To give you an idea of the atmosphere in Chicago during the 60s, during a march there in 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. said: “I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South, but I can say that I have never seen – even in Mississippi and Alabama – mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’ve seen here in Chicago,”

In 1962 Loyola lost in the NIT to Dayton while still sticking to the three-black-player unwritten rule. Ireland decided he wasn’t going to suffer more defeats with his best on the bench. He broke the code in the consolation game. Rouse, Hunter, Harkness and Miller started alongside white point guard Jack Eagan.

The documentary points out that much of the coverage surrounding Eagan focused on his smarts but everybody knew it was Vic Rouse who was the brains of the operation.

That fact hit home with his grandson.

“It’s something that, ever since I was first told about it I’ve kept with me,” Rouse said. “He preached that you can have all your sports but as long as you get an education then you are going to be straight in this world and I’ve always applied that.”

Walter applied it and applied it better than 99.9% of the world. He majored in biomechanical engineering at Stanford.

“I wanted to go to Stanford long before I got into football,” Rouse said. “Since like fifth grade, I wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon specializing in pediatrics and I was going to use football as a trampoline to go to med school. I was going to play football and that would be great but I was set on going to med school. Big academic guy and I still am.”

Yep, I’d say that he got the right DNA passed down from Vic. Rouse said that he is hoping to someday pioneer 3D-printed organs for transplants.

The world wasn’t paying attention to Loyola’s four black starters right away in 1963. They weren’t ranked in 1963 season but quickly changed that. They started winning and winning and doing it with style. It wasn’t a traditional slow, safe scheme. It was up tempo. Get the rebound, get up court and score as quickly as possible. They ranked No. 1 in the nation in scoring.

When they went south, it was illegal for Ireland to take a taxi with his players. Loyola ran into hostile crowds and during one game someone popped a popcorn bag and they thought shots were being fired at them.

Where Williamson was surprised was that on their own turf at Loyola University they still had different sets of rules from whites. The players could go to dances but couldn’t dance with white girls. They couldn’t get their hair cut at the barbershop on campus.

“When I was learning the details of the story when I was on the project, I was like, ‘oh my god, I had no idea,’” Williamson said. “I expected them to go through what they went through down south but I wasn’t expected them to be treated how they were on campus. It was an eerie feeling to learn about the struggle that they went through on campus…and then go walk campus and be celebrated after our Final Four.”

This resonated with Walter as well. His locker is next to a white player. Everyone uses the same water bottles. They all stay in the same hotel on the road. It was only 60 years ago that these things were so different.

“I think about what my grandfather had to go through for me to have this opportunity to be in the position I’m in right now,” Rouse said. “There is still some underlying tensions that are going on in this country but I’m thankful that they pushed forward so that I could have the privilege to be here.”

At the same time that Vic Rouse was averaging 14 points and 12 rebounds per game for the ‘63 Ramblers, Mississippi State’s team was pining to get a chance to play the best of the best. They had won four straight SEC titles but they did not go to the NCAA Tournament. Again the unwritten rules were at play. Teams from Mississippi were not supposed to play against squads with black players.

In ‘63 the issue came to a head. Mississippi State wanted to go to the tournament and face Loyola. Two state senators in Mississippi obtained an injunction to keep the team from leaving the state. So the roster split up — the backup players went on a bus to the Starkville airport as decoys. Had they been arrested, another bus was set to drive to another airport. No such arrest took place and they were off to become the first Mississippi team to take the floor with black players.

Before tipoff, Harkness and Mississippi State captain Joe Dan Gold shook hands as flashbulbs popped. It was dubbed “The Game of Change.”

“This was more than a game,” Harkness said in The Loyola Project.

The documentary is careful not to suggest that Loyola’s subsequent victory over Mississippi State solved racial tensions in America. But it was a brick in the long road to equality. When the Mississippi State team returned home, they were greeted with hundreds of fans cheering them. It wasn’t long after that the university was integrated.

“Sports has a way of changing faster than society because it’s black and white, either you are the fastest guy or you’re not the fastest guy. There is a scoreboard,” Williamson said. “But in life it’s hard to measure. You don’t have those types of metrics. Knowing what they went through and knowing that I’ll never have to go through anything like what they went through, it gave me a tremendous amount of appreciation for the progress that we have made since ‘63 and how important it is to carry that forward and pass the torch.”

Loyola moved onto play Cincinnati in the championship game, which turned out to be something right out of a movie in itself.

The Ramblers struggled and fell behind at halftime. Normally that would not be a big deal but there was no shot clock and the Bearcats could hold onto the ball and run clock. They were trailing by as much as 15 points in the second half.

Harkness got rolling and hit the game-tying shot after a Cincinnati missed free throw with seconds left on the clock. In overtime, Loyola’s fast-paced scheme decided to slow down and play keep-away. With the game tied at 58, Harkness was supposed to shoot but instead passed the ball to Hunter. He took a jump shot which missed, bouncing into Rouse’s hands and he popped the ball off the backboard and into the net to give the Ramblers the victory.

If only Walter Rouse had that time machine.

“I wish I could go back and experience that moment,” Rouse said.

A few years later the Texas Western Miners started a lineup of five black players and beat an all-white Kentucky team in the national championship. The movie “Glory Road” is about their journey. It tends to overshadow Loyola’s place in history but one probably wouldn’t exist without the other.

At the end of the movie, Williamson gives his own feelings about the ‘63 Loyola team’s place in history. He says:

“There will always be more work to do, more unwritten rules to break, more ways to make the world better for the next generation. To me that’s the inspiration we can all carry forward. That’s the legacy of the ‘63 Ramblers.”

I read those words back to him over the phone. He paused for a moment.

“I have chills right now,” Williamson said.

“Every time I’ve seen the movie, I make sure to come back to the ending and listen to that quote,” he continued. “That quote is so powerful and it’s so encapsulating of the story and the things they went through. The black American athlete story today and where it’s gone and beyond sports. This isn’t just a sports story. It’s a social justice issue that is still prevalent today. There are always more ways to make things better for the next generation. That’s how we honor people that have done the harder work in the past.”

“Yes, it’s about the Loyola Ramblers winning a national championship but it’s more about the black athlete story and how they relate to the world.”

Walter takes it as a great responsibility to keep pushing forward. In his case, that might be as an athlete or in the medical field someday. However it happens, he feels that calling.

“Lead the way for the next generation,” Rouse said. “I’m doing what I can for my kids and my friends and the next and many generations after me have even better privileges than I have.”

Walter Rouse is the last man off the practice field each day at Vikings training camp. He stands alone doing pass set after pass set in 90 degree heat.

When he was growing up he thought that he would be the next Vic Rouse — which wasn’t exactly a crazy thought considering he played a key role on his own high school championship basketball team. As a pro, it’s football. Though there are shades of his grandfather’s skills in his play a left tackle.

“For tackle to have great feet, and being able to move well, I think that's very important, and I think I got that from basketball,” Rouse said. “Doing AAU since I was in elementary school and having that background, when I finally got to football, a lot of stuff just kind of came naturally to me, it was easier for me to learn. Basketball was a huge help for me.”

I asked Williamson what he thinks about Walter making the NFL and if he had a message for him.

“For him to be drafted and for him to play football at the highest level and have this opportunity, with respect, I know that his grandfather is smiling down on him,” Williamson said. “Even in the film, black athletes in that period of time had such a hard time becoming professionals and getting the respect they deserved and for a grandson to have an opportunity to play in the NFL is a big deal.”

Walter understands that. He’s determined to make sure he does something to leave the world a better place as his grandfather did.

“I know he would have been so proud of me and I’m so proud of him,” Rouse said.