Banner Day

and having to share the title with little nephew, he should be thinking about how they were up 2 with 2 to go and they blew it.

As for what to do about the banners, we should just ask ourselves "What would Tressel do?"

If the university doesn't want to put the banners back up, fine, but I don't see them offering to give back all the $ they made off of the Fab 5. #hypocrisy

I meant to comment on the original Webber piece when it was originally posted as I was struck by some of the "cultural" considerations Brian wrote somewhat dignifying racism; or at least rationalizing it. I obviously don't think that was Brian's intent or reflective of his true personal beliefs. For the record, I'm a big fan of his and of this blog. But I think it does bear inspection some of the conclusions he drew in trying to understand his conflicted feelings about the Fab Five.

As a person of color who grew up in the suburbs and attended Michigan during the Fab Five era, I am not at all naive to the fact that these types of conversations exist. My problem with that piece is that he sketched a comparative cultural analysis from an extremely small sample of grievances to explain cultural divides. As if a (presumably) black woman being rude to him at a gas station is tantamount to understanding an entire race, or even a section of it. It's somewhat akin to watching Tyler Perry movies and getting all you need to know about black culture (god help us). In the least, it doesn't explain Jim Nantz or others having to find racial subtext for something that doesn't agree with them.

I totally get he was somewhat  trying to juxtapose experiences and project them on his feelings about the Fab Five, et al. I fear that his only interaction - and maybe some on this board - with African Americans is solely through the athletes they follow: Totally possible and no big deal. But it is hardly a representative capture of the breadth of people of color and quite frankly, glorified athletes may have less in common with all of us regardless of their ethnicity.

I don't mean to soap box here. As a Michigan grad ('94), I am equally disappointed in Webber and Maurice Taylor or anyone who brings shame to our good name. Their race or cultural background notwithstanding, I wish we had a time machine that would go back to 1991 and wipe the slate clean with what we know now -  at least with Webber. The banners should stay in that same room where the Ark of the Covenant is.

I only want to point out that in the larger context of Brian's well-intentioned, but I think off-the-mark, racial/cultural context. Sure, it cannot be avoided in some way because our society is still rather fragmented and talking about the character of athletes will involve talking about some black people in a negative light. And it's not to say some those caricatures aren't realized in some of the individuals we're talking about.

But I don't know that old black woman and I'm pretty sure she isn't a relative of mine. So, what does that say about anything? Not much.

Go Blue. Happy to just talk about how awesome Novak and our current team is from here on out...

I have mixed feelings on the banners. I get some of what Brian is saying, but I also think there is some naivete at work here. A former Kinesiology Lecturer and assistant Hockey Coach at Michigan, and also Sports radio announcer, Dave Strand, had this to say in a brilliant must read interview at MVictors,

I always admire the ability of Michigan fans to blow smoke up their own ass.

If you are interested in an insider perspective from someone who both taught and coached at Michigan, who worked to see teams succeed and to recruit athletes who were academically challenged, who has his own perspective on Fisher, the Fab Five, Ohio, and Rodriguez, you owe it to yourself to read this interview. It is dated, being written in 2008, but gives a great perspective on a lot of behind the scenes issues. LINK:  Dave Shand Interview.

Seriously, I agree completely with Strand about the la la land so many of us Michigan Alumni are in regarding academics and many athletes. You have to be very creative to get Division 1 level athletes accepted to a school like Michigan, and many of these guys are just in a different place than most of us students academically. This is neither bad nor good, but it is the reality. We have this stupid debate about the majors of football students at Ohio and Michigan, and as Strand says,

The conventional wisdom is that Michigan is better than anybody else at academics and athletics. We are good at it. We are not better than everybody else at it. We have to cut corners and we have to make accommodations, we have to set different standards to recruit student athletes, as every other elite program in the country has to do. It’s the nature of the business.

I did it at Michigan. I did it as a coach when I was coaching with Red Berenson. Did we have some student athletes on the team that would not be admitted under normal Michigan standards? Absolutely. Did I get them in? You’re damn right I did.

Everybody thinks we’re better than Ohio State. We’re not. We’re the same. And the reason we’re the same is that’s the only way we can compete athletically. If you want to be different, be Notre Dame when Bob Davie was down there and they raised academic levels on all admissions and you watched Notre Dame football go in the freakin’ toilet. Do you want that to happen at Michigan? We try to do the best job we can, to give the kids that get in here the best support we could possibly give. And in some cases we give them remedial courses to get them up to speed to be legitimate college students.

I am not happy about some things that happened with the Fab Five, and even more so afterwards. But I think it is naive at best and duplicitous at worst to blame the Fab Five for all that went wrong with Basketball at Michigan, and to make them the scapegoats for the whole system, doesn't make sense.

simultaneously have less than zero sympathy for Robert Traylor and would want to punch him in the face if I ever met him and he was tied to a rock and he had no idea who I was and I could definitely run away before he got loose 

that would be a hard thing to do nowadays  considering the tractor is no longer with us.  

 Michigan Football-  


 What you gonna do when hokemania RUNS wild over you?

Very interesting post and discussion. I consider this to be a high-water mark on the blog for the polite, thoughtful exchange, even in disagreement.

That said, to those of you who don't understand how Brian can be emo when we just won a B1G champeenship (fuck yeah!), I say, "hello, person. I would like to introduce you to Brian Cook. He is far too young to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Smiths the way I do, but he does."

I mean, come on. I think it's fine to debate the rhetorical effectiveness of juxtaposing the FF era with the current team's triumphs, but if you're surprised or outraged that Brian would find the cloud in the silver lining, then I guess you like reading blogs that surprise or outrage you. I personally like MGoBlog for just this reason--it allows me simultaneously to cheer like a madman for M but also indulge my inner Gen Xer, which I am.

A point of clarification needs to be made: the 10-year ban and the vacating of games are two separate issues.  The games are not going to stop being vacated after 10 years.  They'll always be vacated.  The 10-year thing is just how long Webber, Taylor and Bullock (and Traylor, if he were alive) were forbidden from visiting the U-M campus. 

I am with you Brian.  I hope the banners never go up again. 

The Chris Webber/Ed Martin scandal tarnished the image of the one thing that brings us all together - the University of Michigan.   For that alone, the banners should be kept in mothballs forever.

I do, however, hope Rose, Howard, King, and Jackson are honored in a special way at the new Crisler Center.

Brian,

I hope you stop talking about the Fab 5 altogether.  It's been evident forever, but now at least your bias and hatred is explicitly stated on the record.

Juwan Howard is as far from Terrell Pryor as it gets. Ray Jackson isn't to blame for Mo Taylor or all the terrible people Ellerbe brought in. The Fab 5, Steve Fisher, and most of the people associated with the program at that time have continued to live productive, generous, positive lives.  They are not to blame for the vacum of program ethics that followed their time in Ann Arbor.  They were a part of the process, they're in the timeline, but...so were Bo Schembechler, Gary Grant, anyone who ever gives athletes free meals, drinks, or haircuts. 

The mention of Breaking Bad is ironic because that chemistry teacher, it has become evident, is a very very bad guy.  He didn't start of that way maybe, but he felt pressures, made terrible choices, and one thing leads to another.  Maybe you're a few seasons behind, but you just compared Bielien to a guy who murders children.

Tim Hardaway didn't even know Juwan Howard played for Michigan.  You think this is a good thing, I think it's a tragedy (one that Chris Webber deserves blame for, but a tragedy nonetheless.)

Thanks for crapping negativity on what is otherwise a celebratory event.  This is your worst post since you ravaged Carr for no real good reason a few years back. The only part I liked was this:  "I doubt I'm ever going to grapple with what the Fab Five means to Michigan's program again." 

That's for the best.  I think you should take your own advice and focus on the current team.  Maybe leave the past reflections for people who actually liked Michigan basketball before career self-interest forced them to cover it.

As far as I'm concerned, Nick Nolte and Neon Boudreaux (not the Fab 5) invented Terrelle Pryor.

Everyone on here would flip out if OSU or USC kept banners/whatever for the seasons they had to vacate.  Michigan broke the rules and the penalty was vacating the games.  The games weren't temporarily vacated, they were vacated.  That means we didn't win shit during those seasons.  We might as well put up a banner for the 2004-05 national chamionship, because that would be just as legitimate. 

The whining from Jalen and other is just whining.  It's a refusal to accept punishment for breaking the rules.  Even if only Webber was ineligible, he ruined it for his whole team.  Teams win together and lose together, and in this case Webber ensured that they lost.  I don't feel bad for them, because they cheated to win.  It's no different from USC or OSU, and thinking otherwise is just pure homerism. 

A few points in response.  

First, I think that part of the reason there are so many questions still lingering about the Fab Five is that the school absolutely abandoned them.  I'm surprised you don't recognize that the dynamic is so similar to some of the fallout we just saw with Rich Rod: a new athletic director came in and wanted to clean house; the coach had significant baggage and was ripe to take the fall for everything; the players from past teams had no one to defend them.  Unlike most NCAA investigations, there were no real opposing interests in the Michigan basketball inquiry: everyone who was still around had something to gain from throwing the book at the Fab Five (and at the recruiting classes that followed).  What we ended up with is exactly what you'd think would result from a one-sided inquisition: the book was thrown, but no real smoking gun emerged.  All signs point to Ed Martin giving cash to lots of kids in Detroit, some who "made it," and many more who didn't.  All signs indicate that Chris Webber never got substantial money until his NCAA career was over.  Louis Bullock is a douch bag (and seems to be the only person not from Detroit who received money from Ed Martin), but I never saw anything that suggested that Robert Traylor or Jerod Ward or Maceo Baston did anything to deserve your scorn.  The same way that Rich Rod is a sympathetic figure when you see his (slash Bacon's) perspective, I think there is a lot to be said for the characters that you ignored who came to Michigan, gave their hearts and souls for the school, put Michigan well on the way to being a NCAA regular, lost some heartbreaking games, and then were kicked out on the curb for a "clean house" and Brian Ellerbe.  

Second, the Fab Five and everyone else on those teams - people like Eric Riley, Rob Pelinka, James Voskuil to name a few - lived and breathed maize and blue every bit as much as these teams do today.  That Chris Webber was and is sort of a baby doesn't change that fact.  If you saw him crying after their loss to Duke in 1992, you would have though, and remember: wow, there's a big baby who loves Michigan.  That Maurice Taylor and Louis Bullock were much much less than tremendous individuals has nothing to do with the teams that played 1991-1995, your over blown narrative of last night aside.  You think Jimmy King and Ray Jackson deserve to be asterisked from the record books for sticking around for four years, fighting their way into four straight NCAA tournaments? You think Jalen Rose, who by my memory played all but 30 or so seconds of the NCAA tournament in 1993, didn't and doesn't love the University of Michigan?  I disagree.

I wish Chris Webber would come forward and tell the truth; I bet he never will, given that perjury cloud.  I wish Steve Fisher would have cleared the air on a lot of the issues; I understand why he wouldn't given that he wanted to coach again, and why he probably doesn't want to say more now.  Mainly, I wish people would remember the excitement, enthusiasm and spirit that those Fab Five teams had, their truly tenacious defense, their team offense, Jalen's leadership on the floor, Juwan Howard dancing on the on the way to the finals, Chip Armer chearing from the end of the bench, etc etc.  When I hear Jalen Rose saying he wants the banners up, I feel like I'm listening to the only person who was around and has a platform to make that argument; I hope he keeps making it, and that Michigan fans like you, at very least, give it a little more thought and make a few less sweeping generalizations.

In summary: I think you paint an innaccurate and unfair picture of the Fab Five teams by portraying them as the evil opposite to the Big Ten Champs this year.  By piling on to the old story line you're perpetuating a very unfortunate myth that hurts the team, past and present.

Congratulations boys, long time coming.

Good article, Brian.  But I am one of many who disagree on the Fab Five banners.  I was their age and came into basketball and particularly Michigan basketball obsession during that era.  I loved Glen Rice and the Nat'l Championship.  I had the Rice SI cover on my bedroom wall until I went to University.

But the Fab Five was a different story for me.  I bled maize and blue during those days.  That is the only time I remember feeling quite the same passion watching basketball as I might watching UM vs OSU football.  It was crazy.  And I loved it.

And I feel the Fab Four (and maybe one more) plus other members of those teams deserve that banner.  But even moreso, I feel I deserve those banners.  THAT IS MY MICHIGAN BASKETBALL - and I love it and want it remembered and honored for the positives, not ignored for the negatives.

I'm coming into this too late to read all of the posts, and what I'm saying may be as a result repeating someone else's point, but I really don't think you can conflate the 1990s into one narrative.  I agree the Taylor, Traylor, Albert White, Jerod Ward etc. teams underachieved, and weren't much fun to watch.  Their predecessors, he Fab Five teams, made two NCAA finals, and an elite 8 game after Webber left and were a lot of fun to watch.

In terms of culture, I agree that there has been a welcome overall change, but that said you can't convince me that Juwan Howard wouldn't fit in fine on a Beilein coached team.

I don't understand why any of the three teams would have an issue sharing the title. 50 years from now it will just be another data point when totalling claimed championships.