April 15, 2008 -- Michigan athletic director Bill Martin made an unusual comment at the Wolverines' season-ending banquet Monday night. Martin pointed to former Fab Five player Jimmy King in the audience, and said: "One of these days I want to host a reunion of that entire team," adding he wanted to do it as soon as possible.

Martin has always been a passionate Michigan basketball fan, from the days of Cazzie Russell through the 1990s, attending numerous games before he became the athletic director in 2000. Part of that is an appreciation of the Fab Five era, shown by his embrace of Jimmy King as a basketball radio analyst and the Jalen Rose ceremony this past basketball season.

He admitted he was struck last week in Denver when a cab driver told him how closely he followed the Fab Five and remembered their impact on college basketball.

But welcoming back the whole team continues to have one major obstacle -- Chris Webber.

In U-M's NCAA violations case involving the payments from booster Ed Martin to the players Webber "and his family received a total of approximately $280,000 in extra benefits from the representative between 1988 and 1993, a significant portion of which was received after the athletics representative became a representative of the university's athletics interests in the spring of 1992."

Part of the NCAA sanctions stated that U-M had to disassociate from Webber (and the other three involved athletes, Louis Bullock, Robert Traylor and Maurice Taylor) for at least 10 years from the date of the sanctions, May of 2003.

That means the disassociated individuals cannot: assist in the recruiting of athletes or helping an athlete while enrolled at U-M, they cannot donate money to the athletic department, they cannot get any benefit not available to the public at large, and their personal records were vacated.

While Bill Martin is making an effort to embrace the group -- the deep pockets of Rose and Howard could go a long way to raising the money for that basketball practice facility Martin said Monday they still need money for -- 2013 still seems a distant goal to be discussing a reunion now. Once Howard retires from the NBA, as Rose and Webber have in the past two years, the group may be able to get together independently, as they have for years on their own time.

But as a U-M event? Don't wait on it.

There may even be that new basketball practice facility before the U-M-sponsored Fab Five reunion occurs -- or maybe the two are tied closer than we know.

MARK SNYDER'S BLOG - DT Free Press