In the early 1990s, there existed a basketball team at the University of Michigan that the whole world fell in love with. College basketball games are the most boring, disappointing thing in the world unless you actually go to the school. They're slow and dumb. Absolutely a waste of time. Notre Dame vs. DePaul features a bunch of turds who pass and hold the ball for the extent of the 35 second shot clock, before throwing up some shot that, if it goes in, exciting, and if not, some big tall lanky dork who's 6'11'' and 260 and huge as hell but can't jump gets a LAYUP!!! Hooray! Man I've been to about 10 or 15 college basketball games and I don't remember not a one. I'll tell you later on about the greatest basketball experience ever. It cost 50 cents, and was a high school game. Lord the money I've wasted trying to see teams I thought would really bring it like the Michigan Wolverines of the early 90s.

They started five freshmen and reached the national championship game not only as freshmen, but as sophomores. Not only did they reach the Final Four, they smoked a beast in the Final Four. That last game would elude them. There was a time, when I was a kid, when I was a fan of the Atlanta Braves, the Buffalo Bills, and the Michigan Fab Five. And during this time, I kid you not, they went 0-8 in the final championship game or series of their league. We'll get to the Bills later because I liked them even more then the Braves, but I didn't like anybody like I liked the Michigan Wolverines of the early '90s.

The princely starting five was as follows -- Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, Jimmy King, and Jalen Rose.

As high school seniors in 1991, Webber was ranked as the No. 1 player in the country.

Rose was ranked No. 3

Howard was ranked No. 5

Jimmy King was ranked like No. 47

and Ray Jackson was around No. 284.

Michael Jordan is credited for the baggy pants, but the black socks? That's a Fab Five invention. This group dunked on people all day long, threw skillful alley-oop passes without looking, and offended everybody.

Freshman year they got to their first Final Four, beat Cincinnati, and lost to Duke.Duke would play them against the next year and beat them, making the Blue Devils the only team the Fab Five couldn't beat.

The next year, Indiana beat them for the Big Ten title but they beat Coastal Carolina, came from 18 down in the second half against UCLA to beat them, beat George Washington, beat Temple and made John Chaney angry, and then beat the Kentucky team that lost on the famous Christian Laettner shot the year before with Jamal Mashburn and Jay Ford. After this OT win in the National Semifinal, the Wolverines would head once again to the National Championship Game.

North Carolina. Eric Montross, George Lynch, Donald Williams, they didn't have Stackhouse or Wallace yet and were still #1 in all the polls and invincible and it was foolish.

The Wolverines went up by 10 at one point, but North Carolina kept coming back. Williams couldn't be stopped and George Lynch, who the heck is this guy? He played every position in both college and the pros, was one of the starters on the Philadelphia 76ers in 2001 with Iverson in the Finals, and the Fab Five just looked stupid.But they still had a chance to win the game...

Pat Sullivan of the North Carolina Tarheels misses a free throw and Webber rebounds with about 14 seconds left in the game and the Wolverines down 73-71. Webber stands and waits for everyone to get down court and set up. He travels!!! But gets away with it. Amazingly. And so he continues down the court and sees Jimmy King out of the corner of his eye holding up his hands, signalling for Webber to call a time out. He does. The problem is they have no timeouts remaining, and it's a treated like a flagrant foul. They lose the ball, and North Carolina gets to shoot free throws. It was so stupid.

Sure enough, North Carolina wins and Chris Webber goes pro. He's replaced by Dugan Fife whose younger brother Dane many years later would almost cost Indiana the upset of upsets against the unbeatable Duke Blue Devils in the 2002 Sweet Sixteen. We'll talk about that soon.

But anyway, this group does pretty good, ends up a 2 seed, and loses to Arkansas in the Regional Finals in 1994 with Corliss Williamson and Scotty Thurman. That was the end of it. Jalen Rose was drafted by the Denver Nuggets after their incredible upset of the Seattle Supersonics, making the Nuggets, like Webber's Golden State Warriors, appear alot better on paper then they were. They had talent, but did they really have talent, or were their starters simply very very very famous individuals?Juwon Howard was drafted by Washington and would later be at the center of a controversy in which Pat Riley tried to steal him for the Heat and pay him 100 million dollars. How studly do you have to be to be at the center of THAT kind of controversy?

Jimmy King was drafted by Toronto in the second round and played for four seasons. He did okay.

Ray Jackson was drafted by Miami in the second round and did just that...jack, son.

Today most of the evidence of these wonderful years for young fat fanboys around the basketball universe have been removed from Chrystler Arena in Ann Arbor, Michigan. About ten years later, in an act of extortion, the guy who had given these guys upwards of a million dollars on loan would be indicted. He died during the proceedings, but not before Webber managed to be caught lying to a grand jury about their relationship. They had to pay alot of money back. The bookie/guardian who extorted Webber and company also tried to do the same with future Michigan stars like Robert "Tractor" Traylor and Lewis Bullock.

Michigan was banned from tournament play and hasn't been competitive since.

This one below's not about the Cubs, but about Notre Dame football and when the NCAA screwed them because of Lou Holtz in 1993...

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Cubs-Suck-But-Its-So-Much-More-Than-That

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Story-Of-The-Legendary-Fab-Five-Of-Michigan-1991-93