Michigan Athletic Director Bill Martin has urged people to remember that the allegations in the Ed Martin case have yet to be proven. But most people didn't listen.

Now former Michigan basketball player Chris Webber has made them take notice - by publicly denying he accepted any money from former Michigan booster Ed Martin.

"There's no way in the world that I took $280,000 from someone," Webber told ESPN Classic. "I've said this a million times. We had to actually go to court to testify about it, so if the judge, if the lawyers, if everyone else respected it, I thought it would get out to the media outlets as well. So, no, I didn't take anything."

Webber, now a member of the NBA's Sacramento Kings, was accused of receiving $280,000 in loans from Ed Martin, who allegedly loaned more than $600,000 to four Michigan basketball players.

According to the indictment, Ed Martin used the loans to conceal the money he made in an illegal gambling ring, which he allegedly operated out of Detroit auto plants.

"And in no way do I want to mess up the name of college basketball, especially my university, the University of Michigan, which is the greatest university ever in the world," Webber said on the program. "I don't want to put a bad mark on my family's name, so as I said before, no, I did not accept the money. And how can you take the word of a criminal anyway?"

Ed Martin and his wife plead innocent to charges of conspiracy, running an illegal gambling ring and money laundering after the two were arrested March 21. These charges led many people to call for immediate action within the athletic department, but Bill Martin urged patience, saying that any University action would be "premature" at this point.

"These are allegations, and we can't lose sight of that," Bill Martin said last week. "Our judicial system talks in terms of proven guilty, and we're dealing with allegations."

But Webber is not the only person involved with the program to comment on the alleged monetary ties between Ed Martin and himself. Webber's former teammate Jalen Rose, who currently plays for the Chicago Bulls, told his version of the story on the Jim Rome show: "Now, I don't know if Chris was getting that kind of cake or not," Rose said. "I really don't have anything negative to say about this scenario, and I really don't know how much money that he was giving, if he was giving, to other players."

Steve Fisher, who coached Webber at the University and now coaches at San Diego State, stressed that he knew nothing of the scandal while he was working in Ann Arbor. "I knew Ed Martin, and I knew of him for 20 years," Fisher said on ESPN's "Unscripted: With Chris Connelly." "The one thing I do know is, the way that I conducted my business and handled myself at Michigan, both in the recruiting process and the coaching process, I take great pride in. I did it the right way. I did it with honesty and integrity, and I did it in a fashion that I will continue to be proud of."

Regardless of whether the charges are proven to be true, Gov. John Engler told the Associated Press yesterday that he doesn't believe that the scandal will hurt the University as a whole.