SWAG

“The Fab Five” is a documentary film aired on March 13, 2011 on ESPN’s 30 for 30 about the five freshman starters on Michigan’s 1992 and 1993 basketball team.  The story line is of all five freshman, Juwan Howard, Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson, and their road to becoming known as one of the greatest group of boys to ever work together.  Not only is the story line great but how it is about how these group of boys started a revolution.  They changed the way college basketball is looked at today.  There was never a group of boys like them before, and there never will be.

Throughout all the years of college basketball, every athlete of every team had to wear the required attire for each game, which was not very comfortable.  A pair of thigh hugging shorts that nearly showed a quarter of the players legs, and a tight shirt to throw on top was what every player wore for every game.  Michigan’s five new freshman did not believe they had to wear this uniform.  They looked at the kind of shorts Michael Jordan wore in the NBA and asked their coach Steve Fisher if they could wear the same type of shorts that were hanging down to the knee.  The coach replied that if the team decided to win games, he would do something about it.  After winning games and showing the coach they deserve to get what they asked for, they got these baggy shorts.  The baggy shorts gave college basketball an entirely different look around the whole county.  The new look was cooler, more comfortable and was more in style.

For the first time ever seen in all of basketball was when the fab five wore their black socks and shoes to a regular season game their sophomore year.  No one has ever seen this and if they did, they would laugh at the person wearing them, but this started another trend.  Kids across the country would watch the fab five play and they would start copying them by also wearing black socks and shoes to games.  They made this concept of all black become fashionable not just to college basketball, but all levels of the game.  Now you see almost every kid wearing black socks and shoes to games because it is “in style.”

One of the most influential things the fab five did as a group was un-categorize the stereotype of a African- American male.  People throughout the country thought that if someone were wearing baggy clothes, listened to hip-hop music, had tattoos and wore earrings were categorized as a thug.  All five of these young men had almost every single one of those traits, and they were not thugs.  They were successful, young, black males who had fun just like everyone else in college.  They weren’t criminals and thugs that hung out on corners of streets selling drugs, they were teenagers just like everyone else in college and they made this very clear to the public and media.  They showed they can have fun doing things a regular teenager would do and this helped out the youth to be more open about who they really are and what they like.  They didn’t care if people stereotyped them, they put smiles on their faces, had an awesome time and they stood up tall.

This group of remarkable young men did not just change the way college basketball is looked at today, they started a revolution.  A revolution for all levels of basketball, whether it is youth, high school, or pros, that started this era of... swag!