When then-sophomore Chris Webber called a timeout that his team didn't have in the 1993 NCAA title game against North Carolina, he condemned himself to an infamous legacy that has served as an almost indelible mark against him. Yet, in the wake of the University putting itself on probation for violations that resulted from basketball players accepting illicit gifts, Ed Martin seems to have the eraser.

The University's self-imposed sanctions against its basketball program will officially nullify all games and accomplishments to which players who illegally received money from Martin contributed. In total, 117 victories will be forfeited and banners commemorating the team's trips to the 1992 and 1993 Final Fours and victories in the 1997 National Invitational and 1998 Big Ten tournaments will be removed from the rafters of Crisler Arena. Those offending gentlemen - Chris Webber, Maurice Taylor, Louis Bullock and Robert Traylor - comprised a core group of players in the 1990s who helped the University to its most consistent on-court successes since Cazzie Russell dominated the Big Ten.

The University's administration, however, deserves praise for its proactive decision. President Mary Sue Coleman, Athletic Director Bill Martin, and head coach Tommy Amaker made a decision that will finally begin to place the Ed Martin era in the program's rearview mirror. For too long, the uncertainty about the recourse from Martin's involvement with some players has hurt the University, malignantly festering and manifesting itself in lost recruiting battles and diminished prestige. The University's leadership also deserves admiration and respect for bearing the punishment stemming from problems for which they were not responsible or present.

More practically, and less quixotically, Coleman, Martin and Amaker should also be credited for potentially mollifying the NCAA, the organization which can still inflict its own wounds upon the University's basketball program. Pre-emptive admission of guilt can often mitigate the severity of a pending NCAA punishment, and the decision made yesterday seems quite expedient given this tendency. Hopefully, the lost games and banners - along with a repayment of money earned from those Final Four appearances and ban from this year's postseason tournaments - will be sufficient in the eyes of collegiate athletics' governing body. The state of the program could worsen significantly were the NCAA to revoke scholarships or extend the postseason ban.

Other prominent college basketball programs have survived sanctions and returned to prominence and success. Both the University of Kentucky and Syracuse University have endured the hardships of probation and emerged generally unscathed.

Despite the potentially limited damage that the University may suffer and the optimism which Kentucky and Syracuse might engender, the University's action yesterday was quite significant. The baggy shorts and black socks that defined an epoch in the University's athletic history no longer occurred. Gone are the gaudy win totals of the famed "Fab Five"; gone is the lone Big Ten Tournament title; gone, even, is the infamous timeout-that-wasn't. History has been rewritten and it no longer includes much of the University's rich basketball tradition.