Fisher and Frieder

Steve Fisher, the head basketball coach at San Diego State University is two victories away from becoming national news all over again after 20 long years.

Second Acts aren't guaranteed in American sports and this one is certainly an oddity.

In 1989, Steve Fisher was a rather anonymous assistant on a Michigan team that was heading into March Madness.

Overnight, he was thrust into the news as his boss, Coach Bill Frieder was fired by Athletic Director Bo Schembecler, who had learned that Frieder planned to ditch Michigan for Arizona State University in Tempe as soon as the tournament concluded.

"A Michigan man will coach Michigan." Bo reasoned and Steve Fisher got the job.

Six games later, he had done something Bill Frieder never accomplished at Michigan or anywhere else.

He coached Michigan to the national championship.

And what about the relationship of Frieder and Fisher?

It would seem likely that a friendship could hardly survive one man getting dumped from his job seconds before his hard work would have brought him to the threshold of greatness in the college basketball world.

It would be easy for many to conclude that Steve Fisher had stolen in six solitary games something that Frieder had worked for his entire career.

Could Frieder live with the fact that he was moments from greatness and the man he had hired at Ann Arbor had snatched away from his his rightful legacy?

Well, if you think there is an ounce of jealousy in the bones of Bill Frieder you don't know the man.

And if you think there is blinding ego in the character of Steve Fisher, you don't know him either.

These two men remain as close today (their wives are best friends as well) as they were 25 years ago.

Frieder is not only happy for his former assistant's good fortune this year at SDSU (the Aztecs had never won a single tournament game before Fisher breathed new life into the program), he actually was responsible for getting Fisher the job.

After Fisher had become memorialized at Michigan winning with the Glen Rice edition Wolverines that Frieder had assembled, he had continued his walk of fame by recruiting five freshmen studs who became known as the Fab Five.

Although these 5 freshmen were hailed as he greatest basketball players to ever enter college, somehow they never repeated the success Fisher had found in those historic first six games.

In fact, in one championship game, one of the most famous of the five, Chris Webber became linked with one of the dumbest mistakes in the history of sports. He cost his team a chance at the championship be calling time out with seconds to play.

The problem was that Michigan didn't have any more time outs left and the gaffe buried Michigan's chances and was representative of the hope and failure of the coveted freshmen who left campus much heralded for their NBA careers, but without any championships and then a slew of questions and a storm of controversy as to whether they ever took money from UM backers wile competing as amateur athletes.

Fisher could not survive such controversy and the Michigan Man was kicked out of basketball.

Years later, the same "goat" Chris Webber rescued Coach Fisher and helped him get an assistant job coaching the NBA Sacramento Kings who Webber starred for.

And that's where Frieder (now out of the game himself and a broadcaster) found him.

San Diego State University, one of the worst college basketball programs in the nation, was conducting a national search for a new basketball coach.

And Bill Frieder, who was friends with the SDSU Athletic Director, Rick Bay, knew who would be best for SDSU.

But he wasn't promoting himself.

He told Bay only one man fit the criteria for this job.

Steve Fisher.

And Bay ignored his friend's suggestion.

Each and every day, Frieder started his day, calling Bay and reminding him how Steve Fisher could lead the moribund Aztec program back into glory.

How the former Michigan Man was the perfect man for such a mission.

And somehow, some way, Bay relented and hired Fisher to take on perhaps one of the toughest challenges in sports.

It wasn't easy.

In the first year, Fisher's team lost almost every game.

Attendance was barely 2,000 a night.

But slowly, inexorably the vision and belief that Bill Frieder still had in his former assistant nd lifelong friend, began to take root.

Fisher's teams began to win and win with regularity.

A new arena which had been constructed on campus went fron 2,000 fans to a capacity 12,0000 plus.

The Aztecs home court which sounded more like a library than a home court years earlier became known as a den of horrors and the Aztecs had their best season in the history of the school with over 30 wins and only 2 losses to rival BYU. Losses they avenged by winning still another Mountain West Tournament (BYU and the new legend Jimmer Fredette joins SDSU in the Sweet 16).

And Steve Fisher is two wins away from going to his third Final Four with the least likely of squads.

And all the while, Bill Frieder working for radio, beams while watching his forner second in command try fo make history a second time around.

Steve Fisher is 65 years old. Soon, he will be thinking more about retirement than recruits. He has earned that.

He has alos earned his legacy at SDSU.

When he retires, construction will shortly begin on a statue outside Viejas Arena on the campus of SDSU.

Of that, there can be no doubt.

What is in doubt is whether Fisher can get his team to play at a level to beat Big East champion UConn and ACC Champion, Duke.

Win or lose, Bill Fieder and Steve Fisher are friends for a lifetime.

We can all learn something from their loyal bond.

When they say, nothing will get get in the way of their friendship, they are applying a model which was truly tested.

And ultimately friendship prevailed.