Juwan’s First Banner and the COVID-19 Tourney
In thinking about Juwan coaching for his first Final Four banner at Michigan tonight as a coach, and hearing haters say, “lol, maybe this one won’t be taken down.” I am again reminded that the first Fab Five runner-up banner should have been replaced with a Final Four one. The vacated wins from the 1992 season began with the Final Four games, which was when the first violations by Chris Webber occurred. The team legitimately won their region, and the players, like Juwan, who committed no violations were punished because of what the Fab Five represented rather than what occurred. It was an overreaction.
A hypothetical involving this odd COVID year is a perfect example of why we should celebrate the 1992 team. Let’s say we win tonight, but then over the next week we have a COVID outbreak and can’t play in the Final Four. Is there anyone who would argue that this team didn’t deserve a Final Four banner? Of course not. You get the banner and trophy for winning your region in the NCAA tournament.
The Old Guard who hated the Fab Five has faded away. When Juwan sits down for his contract extension with Warde, I hope he stands up for his 1992 teammates and asks that their earned banner be hung in Crisler.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:18 AM ^
Fab 5 banners are going back up when the 20-21 season's banners go up
Logged in to upvote here ...and munch through a bucket of popcorn while reading the comments. I understand this is a contentious topic (I say 'raise the banners!').
March 30th, 2021 at 11:19 AM ^
Let's NOT say we have a COVID outbreak and can’t play in the Final Four.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:41 AM ^
This ^^^^
Also, why wouldn't they find a way to vaccinate the players as early as possible? I'm not in Michigan, but I've seen they have had trouble getting enough people to take the vaccines, so they have opened it to anyone over 60 could come down without an appointment. Why not get 100 or 150 doses for the basketball programs, and the hockey program and rest easy the rest of the season?
March 30th, 2021 at 12:02 PM ^
You are overestimating the importance of sports, pro or college .
Id much rather the elderly ,those with medical issues , medical professionals, frontline workers get vaccinated before athletes .
March 30th, 2021 at 12:21 PM ^
Certainly the frontline workers should be first in line and if they haven't been vaccinated by this point, they have chosen not to be.
It is also clear that isolation and lockdowns are contributing to a rise in mental health issues and calls to various crisis hotlines. I have to believe that something like the NCAA basketball tournament contributes positively to people's mental health and helps members of each fanbase to be more tightly connected to their community of fans.
You could have vaccinated the whole NCAA field with a few thousand doses at a time when we are administering more than two million a day. Seems like an easy decision to justify.
Might want to talk to folks in East Lansing or Columbus before assuming that the tournament has positively contributed to people’s mental health
LOL. Touche'
March 30th, 2021 at 12:08 PM ^
There are plenty of places where plenty of high risk people are in fact having trouble getting vaccinated. Not sure what the rules are in Michigan, but in Maryland, the first day that vaccines are available for high risk under 60 is today.
In Michigan, the vaccine will be available to all adults regardless of age, profession or medical condition on the 5th of April.
The vaccine is available to any adult with an underlying medical condition or who works in a public-facing job as of last Tuesday. I'm getting mine tonight.
A bunch of counties have already moved to anyone who makes an appointment will get a shot. There's really no reason that student athletes haven't been vaccinated yet at UM.
A couple of things to consider:
1. If the focus had been on players in the tournament, if we had only cared about them having their first shot, it would have had to have been administered 2 weeks before the first game, so almost four weeks ago. At that point the vaccine was less available today.
2. Based on what we have seen, the NCAA seems to have done a pretty good job of bubbling athletes. Conference tournaments less so. If we wanted to back track to cover those, we would have had to go back even further.
While I understand your arguments about it being only a small number of vaccines, it seems challenging to me to explain to a 30 to 40 year old parent of small children who has a high risk health condition, why healthy athletes are being prioritized over him or her.
With regards to states vaccination rates, where you are in your priority order, whether appointments are getting filled etc, don’t tell the whole story. In some areas, people easily getting vaccines is not a measure of all the high risk people being vaccinated, it is a factor of less people wanting to get vaccinated.
“Of the 28 states that have either opened eligibility to all or will do so in the next two weeks, 17 have below-average adult vaccination rates, according to figures available Sunday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eleven lag other states on fully inoculating those 65 and older, one of the highest-risk groups.”
Wow, Indiana opened up to anyone over 30 this week and opens up to everyone next week. I don't understand how some states are so bad at getting these vaccines to people. It is going smooth here. Heck more than double the people have been vaccinated in IN than had the virus.
Florida opens up to anyone 18 and over next week. I just received my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine this past Saturday morning, and that night my arm was sore as hell. So I treated it with Tito's while watching the Sweet 16 games, and it was fine in the morning!
In Ohio, people who are in their 30s and 40s can now register because those older have already been given a chance. I teach, and I had my first shot on February 4th. Not a lot of great things about the State of Ohio, but they have done well with the vaccine roll out.
March 30th, 2021 at 12:20 PM ^
These fucking banners, friends... As a remembrance and homage to our past teams, I love them and I think it's great they hang as a symbol of the past.
But sheesh, some folks around here talk as if they are more important than the actual games and legacies themselves. If no banners were given out, does that mean the games weren't played and teams didn't exist?
Regarding the perceived importance of banners: Recall that we live in a world where people come unglued when other people set banners on fire. Closer to home, recall the pageantry of the Capitol riot.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:22 AM ^
This is only somewhat unrelated and I don't know that it will happen this year (next year, tho?), but I can't stop thinking about how poetic it will be when Juwan Howard wins a National Title as Head Coach of Michigan. I was a little kid when they lost in '92 and '93 and this program has been marked by the legacy of those heartbreaks ever since (with apologies to John Beilein who did much to change the narrative). When it happens, it shouldn't overshadow the accomplishment of the current kids on the court, but as a fan, you couldn't write a better story than how the direct experiences and shortcomings of the Fab 5 contributed to the success of a younger generation. John U. Bacon, is your pen ready?
March 30th, 2021 at 11:23 AM ^
I see you started drinking early for the game tonight.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:30 AM ^
I re-watched the Fab Five 30 for 30 over the weekend. It reminded me that the banner decision making was led by Mary Sue Coleman and David Brandon. That fact alone militates in favor of putting them back up.
You can't erase the past. You do learn from it though. We learned that the Fab Five was the most badass team in the history of college sports.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:38 AM ^
Sure, let's celebrate NCAA violations -- we can jump into the smarmy mosh pit with everyone else; why not?
March 30th, 2021 at 11:55 AM ^
This is a naive and myopic take. If you knew anything about what happened, you would never equate it to what Kansas, LSU, Arizona, Louisville, et all, have done. Never.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:56 AM ^
To take this a step further - no link to the University in any of this. Steve Fisher, a relatively clueless man in general (god love him), was clueless re this.
Lol no he wasn’t
I wouldn't take it that far... Fisher sure as hell knew someone gave Webber something - because he okay'd lockerroom visits for Ed Martin. And he wasn't dumb to the world - he had to have known that 'something' was off. But it wasn't done while Webber was at Michigan - and that's the rub that gets Fisher a clean bill of health from some...
He sure as hell wasn't "clueless", but he did have some plausible deniability.
This is an excerpt from a longer Ann Arbor News article written by former A2 News sports journalist John Beckett, published on October 12, 1997:
"After the 1989-90 season, I had a talk with Fisher. After five seasons covering U-M basketball, I was moving on to other things. Before I did, I told Fisher that one of his players had told me that "golden handshakes" - boosters slipping players money after games - were sometimes happening in the Wolverine locker room.
I didn't have enough on-the-record sources to write about it, but this player was one I trusted, and I thought Fisher should be alerted.
Fisher's reaction was mildly angry disbelief. He would never believe U-M boosters or players would do such things, he told me.
An example of Steve Fisher's naivete? I don't think so. Steve Fisher was not that naive. Steve Fisher is an intelligent man. More likely, I think, was that if Fisher didn't know about such goings-on, he was perfectly content to continue not knowing.
The media - myself included - made a fundamental mistake in covering Steve Fisher from the beginning. We bought into his "nice guy" image immediately and maintained it even when we should have known, or at least suspected, differently.
We should have known, and remembered, that college basketball and/or football coaches can't be that nice and that successful, too. When Fisher almost immediately pushed the media back more than an arm's length, when he closed practices and restricted access to his players, we should have been more suspicious."
FWIW, Beckett was NOT one of those journos who had it in for U-M sports or tried to make a name for himself by ragging on the program—he was an excellent journalist who covered the program fairly and honestly.
There is lots of hot takes in this article. Yeah a player told you they were getting golden handshakes but you didnt have enough to write about it. But yet you talk about it? Come on man.
You forgot Duke. Never forget Duke. Coach K cheats big.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:56 AM ^
Hi David!
March 30th, 2021 at 11:56 AM ^
Dude - you are way off. The banners were taken down in 2002 which was eight years before DB became the athletic director.
https://www.mlive.com/wolverines/2019/05/a-fab-five-reunion-will-happen-next-season-as-for-the-banners.html
March 30th, 2021 at 11:58 AM ^
Watch the documentary again. The vigor with which he basically slanders the Fab Five and Chris Webber, especially, is abhorrent when these men actually should be defended, in my view.
Also, MSC was POTUS of Michigan in 2002.
March 30th, 2021 at 12:06 PM ^
Huh? What does that have to do with who's decision it was to take down the banners?
Edit: Also, I've watched the documentary several times. I remember DB having about 30 seconds where (I'm paraphrasing) he said that it was not fair to each player individually to remove the banners but it was the only way to handle the problem institutionally and it would be great and probably go a long way towards smoothing things over if CWebb would step forward and apologize. I get that none of us like DB, but I fail to see what he said there that was so wrong or 'slander', I guess.
March 30th, 2021 at 12:10 PM ^
You do know what POTUS stands for? Here's a hint it isn't Twitter shorthand for President.
March 30th, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
Maybe he meant POTUM....
Wow, I had no idea. Thank you so much.
MSC was President of the United States of Michigan? That's pretty cool...
She was, but then there was a scandal involving a private email server or some such thing. She had to vacate her own election and remove all mention of her term from the history books due to self-imposed sanctions.
March 30th, 2021 at 12:04 PM ^
Mary Sue Coleman was president at the time those steps were taken (November 2002), but David Brandon wasn't in the picture yet (though he was a Regent). Bill Martin was AD then.
Honestly though, I can't say I blame MSC or Martin for how they handled the situation. They did what they had to do to mitigate the NCAA repercussions. The NCAA said that there was a point in their discussions when the death penalty was on the table, due to the sheer amount of money involved and the level of access Steve Fisher allowed Ed Martin to have. If piling on symbolic self-imposed penalties helped them avoid more severe actual penalties, then the decision was a no-brainer.
I don't think the death penalty was on the table. NCAA officials have said that it is unlikely to be levied again, and by 2002 all of the key people involved were long gone from our program.
That said, they were prepared to punish us more harshly than we ultimately were. Originally they gave us a two-year postseason ban, but we appealed and got it reduced to one year. Our contrite attitude probably helped us win the appeal.
I suppose MSC and Martin did what they could but the word on the street (and in most every newspaper) from start to finish was that Ed Martin gave significant cash to Detroit area athletes including some that went to Missouri and Illinois. Missouri and Illinois got off entirely. How can they justify the punishment for Michigan given the money sent elsewhere.
Previous posts documented the unfair treatment of Michigan BB by the NCAA. Hang the banners and make up a few if you want. I suppose we should be too big to mock the NCAA but the NCAA deserves some serious push back. Jamal Crawford was so much fun to watch.
Martin himself had no known ties to the Missouri or Illinois programs. He paid Detroit high school basketball players who ended up going to Missouri and Illinois, but there's no evidence that Martin was in any way connected to Missouri or Illinois' recruitment of those players. I'm no fan of the NCAA, but the idea that we shouldn't have been punished because Missouri and Illinois weren't punished is grasping at straws. As I said, part of what we were punished for was the level of access Steve Fisher allowed Ed Martin. It was Fisher's job to make sure guys like Ed Martin didn't go near his players. Not only did he fail at that, he actively facilitated Martin's actions.
Frankly, we're lucky we didn't get hit with the dreaded 'lack of institutional control' charge, and Fisher is lucky he wasn't hit with a show cause order.
Back in '13 and '14 there were many folks on this board who felt that the Fab 5 needed to stay out of the spotlight. Juwan appears to have bridged that gap.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:32 AM ^
I would slap your hand for typing that second paragraph.....
WTF is wrong with you?
March 30th, 2021 at 11:36 AM ^
“Is there anyone who would argue that this team didn’t deserve a Final Four banner?”
The haters would. But just like the haters in my life (wife, baby, parents, dog) I don’t pay ‘em any attention.
March 30th, 2021 at 11:57 AM ^
I get that sometimes the wife, baby, and parents will hate you for something you say or do. But man, your dog should NEVER hate you! WTF did you do to it??? Dick.
Cue is never around so the dog aligns with the haters - who lay around the house, sponging off our boy and give the dog attention. Naturally, the dog remembers walks, scratches behind the ears, treats, etc. It happens.
Bingo. Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Word has it you threatened the dog with the BBQ treatment, ala war of the roses. You monster...
March 30th, 2021 at 11:38 AM ^
This is just an awful hypothetical anytime, but today? Why the whiny tone? We are in the Elite 8. Championship in sight.
Go Blue! Beat UCLA (my other alma mater)!
March 30th, 2021 at 11:43 AM ^
First banner was the 2021 B1G Champions
March 30th, 2021 at 11:58 AM ^
Illinois would like a word...