An Open Letter to Chris Webber

It amazes me that there are folks out there - Michigan alumni, no less - who can hold such viciously anti-Webber views.  He shouldn't be associated with the program!  He's an EMBARASSMENT!  I AM STILL ANGRY!

Really?

The argument, as I understand it, is that Chris Webber shouldn't even appear on a jumbotron screen because he accepted booster money and then lied about it under oath, and this caused the basketball program 20 years of wandering in the desert. 

First , even ifWebber caused the basketball program to collapse, the analogy to Exodus holds, in that the program could have - and should have - been rebuilt quickly.  That our time in the wilderness was an inexpliciable 20 years was the fault of a heck of a lot of "Michigan Men"   - but NOT Chris Webber.

Second, why Webber?  Lets not rationalize what he did - Webber broke rules and committed perjury.  But is Jimmy King also radioactive? What about Jalen Rose?  I wasn't aware that players who had committed crimes should be abandoned by their alma maters.  Does Georgetown pretend that noted perjurer Bill Clinton never attended their university?

Third - and this is the most important point - Webber, while complex, is in many ways a credit to the university.  His influence on American pop culture is outsized, not just as a member of the Fab 5 but during his NBA career.  He's carved a successful second career for himself as a commentator, and he's damn good at it.  He's not just "an athlete", and his intelligence and public life are a credit to Michigan or any university that helped shape him.  But as an athlete - he was terrific.  The great Sacramento Kings teams played as beautiful a game of basketball as you'll ever see, and Webber ran the show.  He was skilled and intelligent on the floor.

Now, I'm not arguing to beatify Webber.  He's a complicated guy.  He did, after all, break the NCAA rules and perjure himself.  He was viewed as a chemistry killer for the first part of his pro career.  He really, really liked marijuana.  But there are a lot of positives along with those negatives.  No realistic assessment of Webber can conclude anything other than  "its not all good or all bad, but he's a interesting and influential guy".  And this is a guy who should be banished, because he wont wash our feet and accept responsibility for every bad thing that happened to Michigan basketball since 1993? 

Personally, I'd rather have Michigan athletes be Chris Webbers rather than guys who follow all the rules, never say or do an interesting or intelligent thing and teach gym to 10th graders for the entirety of their post-Michigan lives.  But even if you disagree with my personal preference, having the opinion that this is OBVIOUS and he SHOULD NEVER BE BACK probably means you never really "thought" about Chris Webber.

To all those folks out there who justify UNIFORMZ with the statement "the kids like them":  Do you apply the same reasoning to the question of whether or not Webber should be welcomed back?   Because I'm pretty darn sure that the current players (who we all love) would be beside themselves with glee if they had a chance to meet Chris Webber, a member of the team that changed college basketball forever.  So, by your own standards, I hope you all are in the "Welcome Webber" camp.

Back in the late 80s-early 90s my wife and I would regularly habituate an elaborate pregame tailgate. So elaborate, in fact, that Steve Fisher would regularly bring BB recruits by to sample some grub and to chat briefly with the tailgaters about what a great place M was.

One such tailgate I particularly remember was when Fisher showed up with a tall kid from Country Day whose name by that time was familiar to all of us. Chris Webber was not just the most highly recruited high school kid in Michigan. He was probably the most highly recruited in the United States. In the brief time Chris mingled with us at least a dozen people --- mostly other kids --- asked for and received his autograph. Three or four attractive girls who apparently had been following him in his pregame progression hung on him like flies on paper.

My point here is that in those days Chris's universe was light years away from yours or mine. He was used to people befriending him, doing favors for him, promising him stuff. His moral compass, such as it was, easily accommodated monetary advances from Ed Martin. In fact, we now know that even by the time I saw him at the tailgate he had already accepted a boatload of cash from Ed Martin. And yes, Chris continued to accept cash after he became a student-athlete at Michigan --- just another of the many favors people continued to extend to him. Was it wrong? Only by about a hundred different standards ranging from legal to moral to ethical. But to Chris and to his father Mace, the slope had become so slippery that they had little or no reservation about continuing to accept Ed Martin's money.

Did Chris understand he was wrong to lie to the grand jury? Of course he did. Did Chris luck out when Ed Martin's timely (for Chris) death nullified the fed's case against him? You bet. Did Chris ultimately get off lightly? Yes, but that's what happens when you get lucky and have good lawyers. That's life. Chris paid his fine and performed his community service. But the championship banners remain tucked away in a Clements Library secret location. They will come out again only over Mary Sue Coleman's dead body.

The University community suffered a great wrong from what Chris did and from what the other non-Fab Fivers who took money from Ed Martin did. Still, that was a long time ago. Ed Martin is dead. Robert Traylor is dead. The moving finger has writ. Let's just accept that what happened happened and let Chris rejoin the university family.   

I have no interest in forgiving (or not forgiving) him.  He didn't do anything to harm me. 

If I thought he was a real bad dude, I wouldn't want him repping Michigan, but no one argues that Webber is a real bad dude, at least by athlete standards.  Seems to be in the muddled middle.

I have no interest in forgiving (or not forgiving) him.  He didn't do anything to harm me. 

If I thought he was a real bad dude, I wouldn't want him repping Michigan, but no one argues that Webber is a real bad dude, at least by athlete standards.  Seems to be in the muddled middle.

Our program was pretty bad for a long time, and you want to blame Chris Webber for that.

And the Ed Martin scandal did cost us.  One year of post-season play and a sholarship.  But you want to blame all the rest of it on him too.  The shitty coaching.  The shitty facilities.  The non-existant marketing.  None of that had anything to do with Chris Webber.  There is one man to blame for that.  And he never played ball for Michigan.

Can we please stop talking about the fab five that won absolutely nothing.  Let's celebrate true champions like the 89 team and hope our boys can duplicate that result.   I watched the 89 final last night and loved every minute of it.  They played a fab five game a while ago and I watched ten minutes of it and found something better to do.

Colas is actually the problem here.  One of my roommates had him as prof, his classes are a joke and border on the kind of bullshit academics designed to keep certain people athletically eligible.  Twenty years on staff, 4 publications listed, 2 of them about basketball, etc.  The average Michigan grad student leaves with multiple publications in more prestigious journals than Colas has been able to accomplish in 20 years of sucking on our tuition dollars.  

In 2007 he was running some kind of "self graded" class that was somehow justified via Zen.  No idea if he's still doing it, but if you need some slack off credits when you're a fifth year senior and doing a victory lap, sign up his for class.  

He's also from Duke, which helps explain the basketball fixation.  

I want a mea culpa and a sincere apology from Chris Webber.  When he became the first to take Ed Martin's money, he set a culture into motion that put the program in a position where it has taken 20 years to get back to where it used to be, and ten of those years were borderline pathetic.  

I respect the piece, and the fact that the prof loves the basketball program, I don't want a Chris Webber who can't take responsibility and show contrition for his actions to become a de facto representative of the current program.