Steve Fisher
From Hoopedia
Steve Fisher (born March 24, 1945 in Herrin, Illinois, U.S.) is a basketball coach currently at San Diego State University.
Fisher attended Illinois State University, where he helped lead the Redbirds to the 1969 Division II Final Four. After school, he became a high school coach in Park Forest, Illinois. In 1979, he accepted an assistant coaching position at Western Michigan University. In 1982, he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan and took another assistant job at the University of Michigan.
Coaching Career
In 1989, during the final week of the regular season, Michigan head coach Bill Frieder agreed to take the coaching job at Arizona State University. Though Frieder intended to coach Michigan through the end of the 1989 NCAA tournament, athletic director Bo Schembechler ordered Frieder to leave immediately and hired Fisher as interim coach, declaring that he wanted "a Michigan man to coach Michigan."
Initially, Fisher was not expected to retain the position after the season. However, Fisher led the Wolverines to an improbable NCAA championship that season, thanks to a strong performance by forward Glen Rice. Schembechler hired him as the school's permanent head coach a week after the championship game. Michigan credits the 1988-89 regular season to Frieder and the NCAA Tournament to Fisher.
In 1991, Fisher signed one of the most talented incoming freshman classes of all time. High school stars Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Ray Jackson, Jimmy King, and Juwan Howard all signed with Fisher and Michigan, forming what became known as the "Fab Five". Together, they helped lead the Wolverines to the national title game in their freshman year, only to lose to Duke. As sophomores, they again reached the title game, this time losing to North Carolina when Webber was called for a technical foul after, with 11 seconds remaining in the game, he signaled for a timeout that Michigan did not have.
After the title-game loss to the Tar Heels, Webber went pro; Rose and Howard followed a year later. The Wolverines never reached the same heights again. While they reached the postseason each of the next five seasons and won the 1997 National Invitation Tournament, they never advanced further than the Final Eight in the 1994 NCAA Tournament.
In October 1997, Michigan fired Fisher as a result of an off-court scandal (see section below).
In 1999, Fisher took over as coach of a San Diego State program that had suffered losing records in 13 of the previous 14 years. In the season before he arrived, the Aztecs had won just four games, but within two seasons Fisher had brought the team up to a .500 record, and led them to a 21-12 record and an NCAA Tournament appearance in year three of his regime.
Ed Martin
In 1996, Michigan star Maurice Taylor suffered a car accident on his way from a party in Detroit. One of his teammates, Robert Traylor, was in the car and suffered a broken arm, ending his season. Also in the car was high school phenom Mateen Cleaves, who ultimately went to rival Michigan State. When it was revealed that Taylor had visited Ed Martin, a retired Ford electrician and Michigan booster, the school launched an investigation. After the investigators questioned Fisher's role in arranging complimentary tickets for Martin, Fisher was fired a week before practice was to start for the 1997-98 season.
Later, additional facts surfaced surrounding Fisher's stint with the Wolverines that damaged his reputation. In 2002, an indictment unsealed in a Detroit federal court charged Ed Martin with running an illegal gambling operation and money laundering. Additionally, it claimed that Martin gave Webber $280,000 in illicit loans while Webber was in high school and college, with another $336,000 allegedly going to three other former Wolverine players - Taylor, Robert Traylor and Louis Bullock. Martin ultimately pleaded guilty, but died in February 2003.
As a result of the revelations, Michigan imposed its own sanctions on the basketball program in 2002. Michigan vacated its two Final Four games from the 1992 NCAA Tournament and its standing as the tournament's runner-up. It also forfeited the entire 1992-93 season, as well as every game from 1995-96 to 1998-99. Michigan also withdrew from postseason consideration for the 2002-03 season, and removed the banners hanging in Crisler Arena that commemorated the 1992, 1993, 1996 and 1998 NCAA tournaments, the 1998 Big Ten tournament title and the 1997 NIT title. All four players' records have been officially removed from Michigan's record books, and Traylor had to vacate his most valuable player award in the 1997 NIT. The move came because the payments may have compromised the four players' amateur status. The NCAA accepted Michigan's sanctions, and additionally placed the school on probation until 2006. It also ordered Michigan to disassociate itself from the four players until 2012.
While the discoveries have not impacted Fisher's career with San Diego State (and no new allegations have occurred in conjunction with that program), they have caused his reputation to be tarnished in the eyes of some, as is true for other coaches whose schools were found guilty of major NCAA rules violations. However, Fisher denied any knowledge of the Martin misconduct. The NCAA ultimately faulted Fisher for allowing Martin access to his players, but otherwise cleared him of wrongdoing.
