Jimmy King climbed the stage steps and as he shook hands and hugged professors and counselors at the University of Michigan’s Black Celebratory ceremony in April, he heard what he had waited more than three decades to hear.
“Jimmy King, LSA,” it was announced to the crowd.
At the event that supplements the traditional Michigan commencement, he greeted and thanked those who had helped on his path to graduating, 32 years after he arrived at Michigan as a freshman about to become part of basketball lore as a member of the “Fab Five.”
After the last hug, King turned toward his family in the crowd, dribbled an imaginary ball between his legs, made an air shot and held his arms out wide before signaling thumbs up.
“I made that air shot, too, by the way,” King said, laughing. “That was a long-ball three.”
And it was a long time coming.
King, 49, was a teenager when he promised his grandmother and parents he would earn his college degree. When he left Michigan after the 1994-95 season had concluded, he was 24 credits short of fulfilling that promise. In 2009, he took 21 credit hours through the University of Phoenix, but only 16 transferred, and he remained eight credits shy of his Michigan degree.
“Then, of course, life got in the way again,” King said.
Until King found inspiration last fall as his middle child, Madison, was about to begin her final year at Michigan. Madison King was working toward a degree in communications, like her father, but added a minor and another year. He joked he couldn’t have his daughter graduate from Michigan before he earned his degree.
“So, I asked her, ‘What do you think about me coming back to school and we graduate and walk together?’ ” he said.
Madison didn’t hesitate.
“I was never like, ‘Dad, graduate with me,’ but he saw opportunity; he saw an avenue,” said Madison, now in Barcelona, Spain, on an internship. “He knew that I was going to get an extra year and that’s when he started concocting his plan. It was very organic and natural and perfect. It was a great idea."
If he needed any motivation, that proved enough for Jimmy.
“That's what made me want to do it even more,” King said of Madison’s reaction. “Because when I asked her, I didn't know what her reaction was going to be, and she kind of lit up, so it made me feel even better about it. Then, I was like, ‘Now I can't let her down.’ ”
Beginning in January, King took two classes: a six-credit upper-level writing course and another two-credit course on American culture and history. By mid-April, he had fulfilled his requirements for a degree in communications.
“After he started his program, we talked about how much courage it took for him to do that,” Madison said. “He says I gave him a lot of courage — which I think is very flattering — but I think he found that in himself. Maybe he did derive some from me, but he had to have found that in himself, because it takes a lot.
“The technological differences, him not knowing all the programs we use now and all the things you can do on the computer for school, he had no idea the scope of it. That’s part of why I thought this was really brave. He knows how to use a computer, but he didn’t know everything was going to be online. His first day, he tried to write handwritten notes and realized that’s not going to work, he had to use his computer to write his notes.”
King embraced college mode, parked off campus and utilized the Spin electric scooters scattered around Ann Arbor. On Day 2 of his return to school, he was zipping past the Michigan Union, when he spotted Madison walking with another student and yelled his daughter’s name as he sped by.
“My friend was extremely freaked out, because she’s like, ‘Why is this grown man screaming at us and why does he know your name?’ ” Madison said, laughing. “She was horrified. It actually was freakier because he was on a scooter, and he was zooming right past me, and I would never, ever have known who that man was.
"We both screamed back at him because (we were wondering), who is this man yelling at me at high speed? He looped back with his little scooter and my friend’s like, ‘Do you know this man? Yes, this is my dad,’ and she’s like, ‘What?' ’’
King continued to use the scooter to get around campus — he only wiped out once and was sore for four days — and at least briefly was able to attend class without people recognizing him.
“I think I was undercover for a week,” he said.
It was eye-opening for him being on campus and in class. It wasn’t just about the change in technology and using his laptop for all classwork.
“I was sitting in class, and the students are anywhere from 18 to early 20s, and we're discussing and studying a little history, and it's the ‘90s,” King said. “I'm looking at them and I'm like, ‘Damn it really has been 30-plus years.’ I guess back in the ‘90s, we were looking at the ‘60s like it was ancient history, but it made me feel a certain kind of way. I was like, ‘Damn, wait a minute.’ ”
That might have been a culture-shock moment for King, but during class a week later, the students began sharing their backgrounds as part of the group conversation.
“And I said, ‘I'm a former athlete, I came here 30 years ago,’ and then they just started putting two and two together,” King said.
His cover was blown.
“It was sweet the first week. I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is great,’ ” he said of being unrecognized. “And then the next week, it was a wrap. It was cool, though. They respected what I did during my time, and it was intriguing to them. They would ask me, the old head in the group, about things that I would do differently the first time I came to school.
“I told them I would have taken the opportunity to use the resources at Michigan, meaning I would expose myself to different opportunities. I would go to more social events outside of athletics, outside of the normal and take advantage of learning about different coalitions or different organizations, community organizations to get involved in. That's what I would have definitely changed about my time versus now.”
King said he often felt more insulated while a student the first time around and as a member of the Fab Five, which captivated the country and college basketball. The players have often described how fans treated them like rock stars.
“We never shied away from anybody or anything, but sometimes it was just too much where we just wanted to lay low and just decompress,” he said. “We were social, but we were just comfortable in our normal circles, the same groups of high school people that we knew from the old neighborhood. We didn’t intermingle as much with other classmates, and that's what I did that was different this time. I was interacting with them, being more involved with our class projects, being more engaged in the classroom, so people opened up more to me. It was a give and a take.”
He experienced college in a way he was never able to three decades ago.
“It was about why not do something or try something that you’ve never done before,” he said. “I’d tell myself, ‘That's what you're here for, right? To complete something that you didn't do,’ and that's why I tried to take advantage of all of this.
“It was pressure, too. Some of those days I was like, ‘Damn, what am I doing? All this reading and writing, what am I doing?’ Some days, it was tough.”
King also has his business career. He’s vice president and chief operating officer of TruChampions, a sports recruiting firm, and a year ago, he started a line of Fab Five apparel at fabfive.com
