On Demand Weekly

Media savant T Tara Turk goes deep inside cable TV to reveal Video On Demand's Hidden Gems so even the busiest of our readers can get the most out of On Demand TV. Tell Tara what VOD shows you think deserves her attention.

30 for 30's Fab Five

By T. Tara Turk

My home town, Detroit, has been in the news an awful lot the last few years and it’s been hard to watch. The Motor City in the news in definitely not the one of my youth. I clearly remember a community of black people living like the Cosbys before there even was a Cosby Show - smart, working class, cultural people who just wanted better for their families. The buildings didn’t look like horror skeletons, the small businesses thrived, education came first and cars, teachers and cops made the Motor City run. And in the late 80s/early 90s, basketball was the sport we all watched coming off a Detroit Pistons championship that rocked the world - well, our world anyway.

This is the backdrop of ESPN On Demand’s 30 for 30 series that features the Fab Five of University of Michigan. The doc is On Demand after premiering last year I’m assuming in time for March Madness or it could be celebrating the fact that a few of the key players in the doc are still either playing or doing sports commentary.

Like their namesakes The Beatles, the Fab Five - Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson - took the state by storm in 1991, igniting a college basketball frenzy across the nation. They arrived on the U of M campus with high top fades, hip hop on their tape decks, GQ smiles, and talent mostly harnessed in the inner city (Webber actually came from the prep school Country Day but still played like he could hold his own in the public housing projects). These five young men were poised to take over the NCAA.

They were so electrifying that it was as if they really were a rap group - everybody wanted autographs, basketball jerseys with their numbers, shout outs and championships immediately. No time before had the world of college basketball taken center stage as it did this time around. I remember a girl in my high school used her mother’s church connections to get Chris Webber to take her to prom. We all spent the whole night trying not to look like we were staring at him. There were girls, stories, claims of being a second cousin twice removed, fab five haircuts and a local pandemonium not unlike Biebermania. If there was even a hint that one of them, let alone more than three of them were at the TGI Friday’s in Southfield (a suburb of Detroit) there was sure to be a traffic jam on the way there.