When the Chicago Bulls played at Beloit

The Last Dance, the popular TV mini-series about the 1990s-era Chicago Bulls, is bringing back all sorts of memories of the team’s NBA dynasty featuring Michael Jordan.

But only a few years earlier, the Bulls team, which included an incredibly promising rookie in Jordan, held their preseason training in the Beloit College Fieldhouse.

We share two stories about this unlikely convergence between the NBA and our small college. Veteran Bulls beat reporter K.C. Johnson’89 was a self-described scrawny teenager back then with a ringside seat. He recently wrote about this little known chapter in Beloit’s history for NBC Sports Chicago, where he covers the Bulls.

And in 2013, College Archivist Fred Burwell’86 covered Beloit’s brush with sports stardom in a Fridays with Fred column, a popular series he initially wrote for a weekly college newsletter.