An Honest Celebration

An anecdote which I was once told and am having difficulty verifying, but the sentiment is right:


When they were working the final exhibitions on the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin, one of the project leaders was laying out the final walk-through for the former President when they began discussing the section on Vietnam.  The original plan called for a very small section and Johnson did not agree.  He said that Vietnam was one of the single most important part of his presidency and to shove it off into some corner somewhere would be lying to the American people.  He then said "They screamed at me about how we fought the war, I'm damn well not letting them scream at me about how I exhibited it."  To this day, the LBJ museum has a large, extensive, and balanced take on the entire Vietnam era, respectful of all of the American points of view of the conflict

With all due respect to Mr. Rose, and I do mean all due respect, you can't rehang the banners at Crisler, no matter how much you may want to do so.

The reason is simple: No matter what one may think of the NCAA investigation and sanctions, they are sanctions, Michigan made the list of things they wanted to do based on the best advice they could get from lawyers paid large amount of money to provide wise counsel on this matter and agreed that this would be one of the sanctions and it's because the banner represents a celebration.  It represents an accomplishment, but that accomplishment is tainted within the rules and regulations of an organization of which Michigan is a member institution.  You can't rehang the banners in Crisler proper.

That said, the banners should be in Crisler.  Allow me to explain.  They serve no meaningful purpose being stored away in the stacks at the Bentley like some basketball Ark of the Covenant.  They should be displayed in the new Crisler Center somewhere, attention drawn to the awkward placement of them outside the arena along with an honest, detailed, and complete telling of what happened during the Fab Five era.  It does not serve us to avert our eyes to the ugly parts of history any more than it does to celebrate a lamentable part of the past.  The best choice one can make going forward is to split the difference, acknowledge that the past happened, that mistakes, errors, poor decisions, what have you, did occur, and that you learned from them.  Let the past become an object lesson to future generations to say "We're never going to let this happen again because this is not who we want to be."  Not the Fab Five, mind you, but the NCAA violations part of the Fab Five.

Let's be honest about the past.  Let's be honest about who we are.  Let us tell all feasible sides of the story to tell and allow the individual to make the decision as to what they take away.  We can't simply pretend that because the banners aren't there doesn't mean that the games didn't happen, but it doesn't mean we need to celebrate the circumstances under which they occurred.

Besides, we have a new day, a new banner, a new era, and new honor to be won.

"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down."

I went in to the Fab Five documentary, in the words of MGoBlog's Brian Cook, "preparing to be conflicted." On the one hand, it was a flood of memories and "Oh yeah!" and "Wow, I do remember that." On the other hand, there just feels like something wrong about celebrating the Fab Five as a part of Michigan's legacy if the school, as a part of NCAA penalties, has disassociated itself with the era because of the actions of Chris Webber. But it was the closing shot that summed it all up for me and has crystallized in my mind my new sense of what the Fab Five means.

Very late in the documentary, as we race through the Ed Martin situation, as Jalen Rose tries to talk his way through it, as Mitch Albom attempts to defend how he could write an entire book about the Fab Five and not know Chris Webber was on the take, we see the camera slowly pan down the long aisles of the Bentley Historical Library's archives. It's a tremendous visual and ties the whole documentary together, as we got a snippet of the same shot early in the film. There, sitting on the shelf, are the 1992 and 1993 Final Four banners, sealed, labeled, preserved for perpetuity, like some NCAA violations Ark of the Covenant. Why do you save the banners? I am sure it's an official University policy in that regard, that the banners are an historical relic and they must be preserved, even if no longer acknowledged. But couple that with the fact that 2013 was mentioned several times in the last segment, that the University had to officially disassociate itself with Chris Webber (and Taylor/Traylor/Bullock, which, honestly, in addition to Michael Talley, were the people most thrown under the bus in the film, although really, rightfully so.) President Coleman and Mr. Brandon say all the right things, about why the University had to do it, and about that if Chris Webber will acknowledge what he did wrong, and apologize, Michigan would welcome him back to the family, something that the other members of the Fab Five don't see happening. Which is exactly what you're supposed to say in a recorded document like this, acknowledge the NCAA punishment, talk about how you feel it's fitting, pay due deference, etc. But, between the Legends Classic acknowledgment of Rose, Jackson, and King this year at Crisler, the fact that Crisler will be all shiny and new for 2013, the hints David Brandon has laid down about building the foundations for the future of the basketball program, it becomes clear, at least in my mind, that 2013 is just a target date now, that Michigan is just waiting out the next two basketball seasons, focused on what the present can be (and how that present arrived much sooner than we expected) and then, in 2013, reintegrating the history of the Fab Five into the fabric of Michigan basketball.

What bothers me about this is that it feels like having one's cake and eating it too. There's a fair point to be made about how it seems unfair that the actions of one individual destroy the legacy of the others (fairly counterpointed by the acknowledgment that it's a team game and it's the only fair way to do it.) There's a fair point in the fact that Michigan made a lot of money off the Fab Five and the Fab Five as a whole, did not benefit from that in a symmetrical manner. But maybe the biggest problem with this is the shame of "vacated wins" and taking down banners and rewriting the record books. You can't change history, no matter how much you want to try. You can tell the story in an official way, like what was done in the old Soviet Union, but as long as the memory remains alive, as long as there is archival footage of what happened, you can't expect me to buy in completely that it never happened. So maybe this is some oblique way of Michigan reclaiming what it was, telling it warts and all, letting people judge the legacy of the Fab Five in the whole of the telling, and allowing them to render their decisions based on all the facts, not just the official record. Maybe that is why the banners sit on a shelf in the Bentley, because we cannot just destroy the past if we truly want to know what happened.

*-One quick note on the thing that bothered me most about the documentary, the Michigan merchandising revenue chart that makes it look like no one had heard of Michigan before the Fab Five. While I do not want to diminish the impact that Fab Five had on selling Michigan gear, 1991 was also the year of Desmond Howard's Heisman winning season, and 1992-93 was the year Michigan signed its huge Nike deal (want proof in the film? If you look closely, the 1991-92 edition of the Fab Five was wearing awful Rawlings warmup jackets and pretty cool Russell Athletic shimmer jerseys.) And while the Fab Five did move jerseys and merchandise nationally, it was also the first time that you could get, regularly, a replica Michigan football jersey. I distinctly remember a lot of kids in my high school days rocking their Tyrone Wheatley #6 Michigan jersey. So, it's a tad disingenuous to show that chart to make the case that the Fab Five was theonly reason Michigan moved more product. But it's a minor quibble.)