Jalen Rose lashes out at Michigan for not rehanging the Fab Five’s Final Four banners
One day after Michigan's school president adamantly reiterated she remains opposed to rehanging the school's 1992 and 93 Final Four banners, a prominent member of those teams expressed his frustration with that decision.
Ex-Michigan star Jalen Rose, now an ESPN analyst, tweeted Thursday he thinks the school shouldn't erase all evidence of the Fab Five's accomplishments even though the Wolverines later vacated those victories as a result of NCAA violations that occurred at that time.
Rose's anger came the day after the Michigan Daily asked university president Mary Sue Coleman whether she'd ever consider taking the banners out of storage and hanging them again at Crisler Arena. Coleman was the one who ordered those two banners come down three months into her presidency in November 2002.
"What happened was not good, and I don't think they'll ever go back up. I don't," Coleman told the Daily. "Some day, I won't be president anymore, and maybe someone else will have a different view. But I think you have to reflect on the larger meaning and that we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
"From my point of view, taking the banners down was the right thing to do because it was a very difficult time for the university and we were ashamed of what happened because the university has higher standards than that. We're the University of Michigan — that shouldn't happen."
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Michigan isn't the only school that has dealt with this dilemma. Memphis' 2008 Final Four banner now rests in a storage closet in athletic director R.C. Johnson's office because all 38 of the Tigers' wins that season were vacated as a result of an NCAA investigation into Derrick Rose's SAT scores.
Regardless, both sides of the Michigan debate are understandable.
On the one hand, Coleman doesn't want to appear as though she's excusing NCAA violations. On the other hand, Rose worked hard to help lead the Wolverines to back-to-back national title games, so it has to be hurtful that Michigan will not recognize those accomplishments.
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