There's a billboard at 7 Mile and the southbound Lodge Freeway in Detroit that shows the Michigan jerseys of Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Ray Jackson, Jimmy King and Juwan Howard, with "Timeless..." underneath.
Michigan, of course, can't put up billboards promoting the Fab Five -- it can't even acknowledge the existence of the Fab Five. So who paid for the billboard? It was Jalen Rose himself.
I lived 20 miles from Michigan's campus in 1991, and I loved the Fab Five. So it makes me a little sad that Rose acknowledges that if he had put the billboard up in Ann Arbor, it wouldn't be so widely celebrated. But Rose seems to think Webber is blameless in what the Fab Five has become -- a symbol of what's wrong with college sports -- and there he's wrong. There are lots of stupid rules in the NCAA, but they're rules that Webber agreed to, and if Webber's refusal to abide by those rules taints the Fab Five's legacy, that's Webber's fault."The motivation for that speaks for itself," said Rose, who didn't tell the other guys until after it was up, wanting it to be a surprise. "Being this (2006-07) is the year of the Fab Five 15th-year anniversary, people nationally are talking about it -- about how we changed college basketball and the landscape of the sport. We have no banners and representation at U-M, almost like we didn't go there."
That's where Rose pauses, emphasizing the location.
He wants the billboard to be a celebration, not a distraction. That's why he placed it on Detroit's west side, near where he and Webber grew up.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-16-2007 @ 1:28PM
PTBAIL said...
Regardless of what happened off the court you can't take away from them what happened on the court and for that they should be celebrated. But alas, the world is filled with pencil pushers who hand down their version of a punishment that doesn't come close to fitting the crime. It is very sad that in a country that allows the oval office to be desecrated with immoral behavior we erase the accomplishments of these boys (they were boys) and the fans who are the base for any program suffer for it.
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10-16-2007 @ 9:31PM
Stinge said...
When Webber was a freshman at Detroit Birmingham Country Day, I had the pleasure of watching this young man play in a district playoff game. And all everybody talked about, was how a Michigan scout was at the game, and how Webber knew he was going to be a Wolverine when he graduated. I don't think Ed Martin had a hand in any of that, that early in C-Webb's career. And Jalen was busy at the time winning states at Detroit Southwestern, with Voshon Leonard and coach Perry Watson. Anyways, HAIL TO THE VICTORS, GO BLUE!!!!
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10-18-2007 @ 12:42AM
ADMan said...
Fab Five never won the big one, too dumb. Rightly so, they were a bunch of guys on the payroll of Ed Martin, who funded UM basketball players and disgraced the program.
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