After playing around a little more, I noticed that my TMPL_LOOP label was the same as the name of the "select" list in the template. Changing the name of the TMPL_LOOP made everything work correctly.
Another note I will be adding to my printed copy of the HTML:Template docs.
This leads me to another question. If I find issues like this as I am working with modules, and I would like to contribute the info to the module documentation, how do I go about doing that?
Every module's documentation includes contact information for the author. In my experience, just writing a polite email with a suggestion for a change should be enough.