The Loyola athletics department believes having diversity in its student-athletes, coaches and administrative staff is beneficial, according to Deputy Director of Athletics Jermaine Truax, but the Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) is one of the least diverse mid-major conferences in the Midwest.
The Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) sponsors 4,279 student-athletes competing in 16 sports. In the 2016-17 academic year, 66 percent of those athletes were white, according to the NCAA demographics database. The Horizon League, Atlantic-10 (A10), Conference USA (CUSA) and the American Athletic Conference (AAC) are all similar to the MVC in location, size and tier.
In comparison to those four other conferences, the MVC is the third least diverse.