But no, Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel doesn't sound too keen on the idea.
“Juwan Howard is hired to coach our basketball team and lead us to tremendous success. He’s not here to reunite and raise banners. That’s not what I hired him to do," Manuel said at Howard's introductory press conference on Thursday.
Michigan took down the banners in 2002 as a self-imposed sanction following the Ed Martin scandal that implicated, among others, Fab Five member Chris Webber. It remains one of the largest pay-to-play scandals in NCAA history.
“The issue with the banners is an issue of the decision the university made, consistent with other NCAA practices, to take down banners because of the issues that were found during that time,” Manuel said. “This is not about me not respecting or wanting or desiring the Fab Five. I welcome all the members of those teams back, including the Fab Five.
"I love those guys. I watched them, cheered for them and want them to be back. I hope that we see in this arena, this year coming up, all five of them together."
Howard wasn't the only member of the Fab Five present on Thursday. Jimmy King was in the building as well. When the question of re-raising the banners was posed to Howard earlier in the press conference, he was much more open to the idea.
"I knew that question was coming," he said with a smile. "I look up there, I see those beautiful banners and I’m like, 'Wow. Michigan has a rich tradition. Been a lot of great, special things in this building.' ‘92, ‘93 were fun times. Jimmy can attest to this. Worked extremely hard to make it all possible, sacrificed a lot, been through a ton of adversity, earned minute of it.
"That is something on the table that we as a staff -- myself, Warde and (Michigan president) Mark (Schlissel) -- will definitely revisit. When? I don’t know. Can’t make any promises. That’s all I can say at this moment."
If and when that conversation takes place, it's safe to say Manuel will respect the decision Michigan made 17 years ago. The hire of Howard was never about harkening back to the Fab Five, anyway.
“This is not about the banners. That’s a university decision that was made," said Manuel. "We may display them, we may think about it in a different way. But we took them down permanently as a part of expunging the records, not only from that season but from other seasons that were affected too. Jimmy, to his credit, in all our conversations, has never said he wanted a Fab Five banner. That’s not what they’ve been asking about or talking about.
"I understand their frustration with what the university did back then, but it’s nothing we can change. We just can’t. We can’t put the records back in the book and decide on our own to do that. We said we were going to take the banners down. Let’s let (Howard) move on from that.”