Fab Five "30 for 30"*
Can't believe this wasn't already posted. During his chat today Bill Simmons explained that ESPN is planning to do about 6 documentaries a year, at the quality level of the best "30 for 30" films. (Which I thought were excellent.)
He mentioned a few docs already in the works, the first of which is one on the Fab Five.
I'm giddy.
*yes, technically it will not be a 30 for 30 film but you know what I mean
EDIT: just found the exchange:
Jeff (NY)
30 on 30 was great television. I hope ESPN stays in the documentary business. There are so many more great stories to tell.
Bill Simmons
Thank you. We have some superior projects in the works right now - our goal is to run between 6-8 sports docs per year on par with the best "30 for 30" docs. And there are so many good ideas and good filmmakers that I think we can pull it off. Four good ones that I can mention are definitely coming down the pike: The Fab Five, Bartman, Renee Richards and the 86 Masters. The Bartman one is going to be incredible.
January 21st, 2011 at 6:50 PM ^
How I long for good Michigan MBB.... sigh... :(
January 21st, 2011 at 8:36 PM ^
no doubt about that, we havent been the same since those guys left. Cant wait to see that doc and relive the glory days.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:07 PM ^
January 21st, 2011 at 10:43 PM ^
Chill out bro...
January 21st, 2011 at 11:35 PM ^
January 22nd, 2011 at 1:13 AM ^
Did you like it when a team of Michigan basketball players who were in elementary school when Chris Webber was getting a payday had to stay home from the NCAA tournament because of the sanctions?
Our program was tanked for a decade for this mess. No, not even that. We're STILL paying for it today. And we'll pay for it more when this documentary comes out and we go through another round of negative publicity for this scandal.
Just amazing. But, hey, they had cool socks and baggy shorts!
January 22nd, 2011 at 9:07 AM ^
completely flopped in the championship games. Karma=Bitch.
I'm curious as to why so many people who proclaim love for Michigan and a corner on the morality market overlook the failings of the Fab Five and act as if they were anything but money grubbing chokers who never really won anything important.
January 22nd, 2011 at 10:37 AM ^
and one covering the Fab 5, that episode would be nothing short of excellent
January 22nd, 2011 at 1:35 AM ^
You are acting very undude like. Nothing is fucked.
January 21st, 2011 at 6:51 PM ^
That will be bought by me so I can watch it repeatedly.
January 21st, 2011 at 6:51 PM ^
Thats going to be awesome. Wow can't wait.
January 21st, 2011 at 6:57 PM ^
6 to 12 after reading that...
January 21st, 2011 at 6:58 PM ^
How is the Bartman related to sports?
January 21st, 2011 at 7:44 PM ^
Bartman's impact on that game was so ridiculously overrated.
If anything, the incident spoke to sporting society's need to sensationalize and its tendency to contrive legands and "curses."
January 21st, 2011 at 7:49 PM ^
His impact on the game is debatable, but you make a great point on the public sensationalizing that play.
January 21st, 2011 at 7:57 PM ^
Even if it was a no-doubt catch for Alou, the impact is highly debetable. It was far from a no-doubt catch.
The national revisionist history of that game would really piss me off if I was a Marlins fan. Their bats were ON FIRE that inning. Some of the best clutch offense I have ever seen in baseball.
January 21st, 2011 at 8:16 PM ^
Cubs defitinely choked that night. All the anger was released on Bartman. I think the guy ended up changing his name.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:05 PM ^
That is the great thing about the documentary. I suspect they are doing some major research and trying to get the back story and where is Bartman now??? He won't do interviews, so I wonder if 30 for 30 will be able to get him. Anyway, it may not have impacted the game all that much, but the lore and legend (which is part of sports) from the incident is INCREDIBLE for sure. I can't wait!!!
January 21st, 2011 at 11:33 PM ^
Yeah poor bartman got all of the blame, where it was more Alex Gonzalez that lost the game for the cubbies
January 21st, 2011 at 8:24 PM ^
That will probably be the point of the show.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:03 PM ^
nice one!!!
January 21st, 2011 at 7:09 PM ^
I was 14, watching the game at the home of my JV BB coach. A lil piece of me died that day. I effen hate Eric Montrose!!
January 21st, 2011 at 7:39 PM ^
in New Orleans. It worse than the worst. Fisher came to the Alumni hotel and met with us in the ballroom -- it was like attending a wake. "So sorry, coach..." "So sorry, for your loss..." "How are the kids holding up..." I gave Fisher a lot of credit of staying there and speaking to every person who came up to him. He was obviously broken hearted for his team, wouldn't pass the blame off to Webber and was an all around classy guy.
January 21st, 2011 at 8:13 PM ^
The whole tournament was an emotional roller coaster that year. I was almost in tears when we were down to UCLA by almost 20 points in the second round, may have been 20 actually. The overtime Kentucky game was awesome, and obviously the heartbraking championship game.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:07 PM ^
I was at Parris Island, SC for MC boot camp and had to hear about it the next morning from the Drill Instructors and then received the newspaper story in the mail a week later. I wasn't even there and it was a crushing event...
January 21st, 2011 at 7:11 PM ^
Five Times
January 21st, 2011 at 7:48 PM ^
Wearing Nike kicks...the way it was meant to be
January 21st, 2011 at 7:14 PM ^
butttt, it was posted about a month ago when the news came out
January 21st, 2011 at 7:46 PM ^
Bando Calrissian will watch it with a slow burn gaze while shaking his head in disgust. If he has a child he will point to the television and say "Not Michigan. That's NOT Michigan. Not what we're about!"
January 21st, 2011 at 7:55 PM ^
Good to see they will continue showing quality documentaries on ESPN
30 for 30 was one of the best things ESPN has done in a long time. There were very few uninteresting documentaries and many of them were intriguing
Look forward to watching more of these documentaries in the near future
January 21st, 2011 at 8:04 PM ^
I actually saw rumors of this a couple months ago. I'm really pumped that it's actually happening. ESPN has done an awesome job on these so I can't wait to see how this one turns out.
January 21st, 2011 at 8:06 PM ^
I need this in my life, now more than ever.
January 21st, 2011 at 8:19 PM ^
This should be great to watch!
January 21st, 2011 at 8:35 PM ^
I think im going to buy the whole 30 for 30 on dvd. Never have been able to catch any of them but hear so many good things on them.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:00 PM ^
Netflix carries a bunch of them for you to preview first. I liked them but you have to be very hard core sports nerd to like them all.
January 21st, 2011 at 8:41 PM ^
Should be amazing
January 21st, 2011 at 9:11 PM ^
I've only seen a couple but they were done very nicely. I look forward to seeing the new ones. Any word on a release date?
January 21st, 2011 at 9:58 PM ^
I really liked the 30 for 30 docs and reliving the past 30 years of sports, many events of which I was not all that aware. the Fab Five, 86 Masters and Bartman is a great combination of documentaries. Way to go ESPN and great job BS.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:03 PM ^
They're doing an ESPN documentary on Bart Simpson's alter-ego?... (to everyone who just freaked out, don't worry I know the documentary is on Steve Bartman. To everyone who gets the Bartman Simpsons reference +1 to you!)
January 21st, 2011 at 10:17 PM ^
It astounds me that out of four shows including F5, Renee Richards, and the '86 Masters, the one about Bartman is the one Simmons cited as "incredible." Superficially, with no further info other than the subject matter, I would go in this order: Fab Five, 86 Masters, Richards, and Bartman.
The Fab Five is obviously more importan to us, and would have to be #1 to any Michigan fan. It didn't end well for us, but we did get to watch them change the game forever.
The '86 Masters was the most impactful victory in a golf tournament since Arnold Palmer drove the 313-yard first hole at Cherry Hills on Sunday in 1960 on the way to winning the US Open. This was in the days of steel shafts, wooden clubheads, and golf balls that probably flew about thirty yards less than modern equipment. If Tom Watson had won the British Open a few years ago, it still wouldn't have had the same impact as Nicklaus' victory. Tiger Woods' broken leg US Open win pales in comparison.
Richards was both a pioneer and a travelling circus at the same time. What he/she did took a lot of courage at a time when that kind of courage was not appreciated by about 99 percent of the American public.
Bartman is just a drunk Cubs fan who is probably still crying in his beer. I wonder if they made a tear-jerker out of it? I guess we'll find out.
January 22nd, 2011 at 9:16 AM ^
Did the Fraud Five change the game "forever"?
They were fundamentally weak--couldn't hit a jump shot to save their lives (or championship hopes), choked in the biggest games, and in the end proved to be a bunch of self absorbed, self congratulating cheaters.
They couldn't even win a Big Ten championship. They're more famous for wearing baggy shorts, acting like assholes, and being paid to play college basketball than anything they "accomplished"
January 22nd, 2011 at 12:58 PM ^
"They" did not get paid to play college basketball, "they" did not cheat. Chris Webber did, but the rest of them were the baby that got thrown out with the bath water.
Being the first all-freshman starting lineup in DI college basketball history was an accomplishment. Getting to the Final Four two consecutive years and to the Finals in one of those years was an accomplishment, despite them being removed from the record books. People didn't catch on to the trend of baggy shorts because wearing baggy shorts was cool. It was cool because the Fab Five wore them. People talked about the five of them before they ever set a foot on campus. They had swagger, no doubt, which the fan base loved and, I have to say, was pretty justified based on how they played on the court.
Rose, Howard, Jackson and King are good guys who do a lot for underprivileged kids and charities. Don't rope them in with Webber's crimes.
January 21st, 2011 at 10:25 PM ^
Bo and Woody would be good to
January 21st, 2011 at 11:10 PM ^
But I always thought a broadstreet bullies 30 for 30 would be cool.
January 21st, 2011 at 11:20 PM ^
So... Let me guess how this is going to go:
Lots of discussion about socks and haircuts, Webber making excuses for taking cash (if he even makes an appearance), the rest of them lobbying for the banners hanging again, and the University staying silent on the whole thing, made out by the filmmakers to look like a backwards monolithic evil empire hellbent on erasing their legacy. Sentimental shots of a library employee unfolding the banners on a table in the Grad. Shots of an empty Crisler with dramatic voiceovers about glory and winning and NCAA sanctions.
I'd rather this not get dredged up again. Those banners are gone, they're not coming back, and if the University has a shred of integrity (which they do), Chris Webber will never be let anywhere near this program again.
The Fab Five was a hell of a ride, I enjoyed being in Crisler back then as much as the next guy, but this period ended up being nothing but an embarrassment to our program, and started off a string of guys taking cash. And Webber has been publicly completely and totally unrepentant in its wake. He doesn't care, he got paid, in high school AND college. And I doubt the 10-year disassociation means much to him anyway.
At the end of the day, I'd rather this documentary not happen. There's got to be something else about Michigan worth making a documentary about that will actually paint our University in a positive light.
I know that's an unpopular opinion, but I loathe what the Ed Martin scandal did to this program, to this community, to this University, and it drives me crazy seeing it get spun and rehashed. It was wrong. Let's move on.
January 22nd, 2011 at 12:42 PM ^
The Fab Five were incredible and so much fun to watch, but Chris Webber left an indelible stain on them as a group. The Michigan legacy of Jalen, Juwan, Jimmy and Ray is forever tarred by and tied to Webber's acceptance of ill-gotten money from Ed Martin's illicit gambling and money laundering operations. The banners taken down from Crisler Arena and the record books that reflect that Michigan basketball won 0 games in 1991-1993 that Webber played in was an appropriate self-punishment for Michigan, but the wide scope of sanctions unfairly cast the other four as complicit in Webber's crimes. They, along with the other players on the teams of Robert Traylor, Maurice Taylor and Louis Bullock, are victims, not villains.
Let's not forget that Chris Webber lied to a federal grand jury about his relationship with Martin, not exactly "Michigan Man" stuff. The feds allowed him a plea bargain to cop to a misdemeanor obstructing a federal investigation with fines and probation, instead of trying him on felony perjury charges that could have landed him even briefly in the federal pen. Lord, people vilified Rich Rodriguez for mistakes (not deliberate flouting of NCAA rules) that occurred on his watch, and that wasn't even in the same universe as the Ed Martin scandal. How would headlines of "Ex-Wolverine Webber gets 18 months imprisonment" have played in Peoria?
I don't care how much Webber claims to "love" Michigan. He singlehandedly brought disrepute to the University and athletic department, and his conduct (along with the other 3 recipients of Ed Martin's largesse) almost killed the basketball program. He is, as you noted Bando, unrepentant, even expressing that he deserved the money because Michigan made so much money* from ticket sales, increased interest in U enrollment because of his success and his no. 4 jersey. That may be true, but breaking the rules and being indifferent to the turmoil caused to others because of it earns you contempt, not applause. Instead, become the example of the unfairness of the NCAA's obsolete rules regarding student-athletes and try to change them. That's what "the leaders and best" do.
The trouble Webber caused to my school was both humiliating and infuriating. Let him remain a pariah, but give the other Fab Four their due. That's long overdue. But if ESPN does the story, that won't be the focus.
*Michigan had to give back nearly 1/2 million dollars it earned from NCAA tournament play as part of the sanctions.
January 22nd, 2011 at 12:55 PM ^
January 21st, 2011 at 11:34 PM ^
I was the same class as the Fab 5. The win over Kentucky in 1993 was one of the most fun nights I ever had on campus. Everyone was pouring out of the dorms and storming the Union and then down to South U. It was incredible. The North Carolina game...not so much...and all the stuff that came out in the following years ruined it. I have enjoyed the 30 for 30 documentaries I have seen so far, I will be interested to see this when it comes out.