Michigan had the Fab Five, Northwestern has the fat five. The difference?

Michigan never won a championship.

Granted, the Wolverines played in the NCAA tournament, and the Flying Penguins played in the Purple Division of the NU Intramural Championship. But both were comprised of Division I athletes.

This winter the Penguins’ opponents on the basketball courts at SPAC may call them fat, but they’re really just a group of lineman who love playing basketball.

“The other players really don’t say anything, but they give you a little look because they’ll run into you and bounce a little farther than they do off a normal person,” Derek Martinez said. “They think you’re trying to hurt them but you’re really not — they’re just a lot smaller than you.”

A large dinosaur may be smaller than the team that includes 305-pound Derek Martinez, 335-pound Zach Strief, 285-pound Trai Essex, 275-pound Ben Kennedy and 270-pound Ray Bogenrief.

When these players won the 2002 Intramural Championship last winter, they were listed as the B-Town Snappers, but they’ve always called themselves the Flying Penguins.

“Flying Penguins was a name Ben Kennedy came up with,” Strief said. “I believe it’s to signify the way Ray Bogenrief runs up and down the court.”

Strief said the group of football players hit the court almost every day in the offseason. All the players played basketball in high school and Strief said the team has more than just size.

“They can say we’re too big all they want. But then I’m going to start hitting the longball on them,” Strief said. “And then they’re going to realize we’re all ballers and they’re going to find that out the hard way.”

And Strief is not scared to back up his game. Recently 5-foot-8 Erin Flynn, a sophomore on the lacrosse team, challenged the 6-foot-7 Strief to a one-on-one game. He accepted the offer.

“I dunked on her because she was talking smack and badmouthing the Flying Penguins, so she had to deal with the consequence,” Strief said. “I dunked on her and I won the game. I don’t recall her even scoring a point.”

Flynn, who played high school basketball and scored more than 1,000 points in her career while winning a state championship, remembers it a little differently.

“I definitely scored, and on his first dunk, he completely missed,” Flynn said. “And his second dunk was nothing to brag about. I couldn’t get the ball away from him because I had to reach around such a wide radius. He had no skills, just size.”

Not too many people were able to get the ball away from Strief and the Penguins. The team went undefeated en route to its first championship since forming in 2000.

After losing in the title game in 2001 to Delta Tau Delta — an intense intramural rivalry — the Flying Penguins knocked off their nemesis in the finals under the leadership of Coach Kennedy.

“We had a very emotional postseason banquet after we won the championship,” Kennedy said. “It was held at The Keg, and we had our championship shirts on, had many toasts, gave awards and I handed out the rings.

“I made the rings from supplies I found at home, but it’s not really how precious the metal is. It’s how precious it is in your heart.”

The heart and soul of the team is its inside game since all of the front court players weigh more than 270 pounds.

But players insist they doesn’t abuse their size.

“We try not to play rough because that would just be cheap of us to go out there and push people around,” Bogenrief said. “We try to play fair and regular basketball.”

They may try to play a conventional style, but their offense doesn’t resemble the Princeton-style offense the NU basketball team runs under Bill Carmody.

“We hit the boards hard. Basically, we just threw the ball off the backboard and kept getting rebounds until we got one in,” Martinez said. “We did not have too many point guards.”

Kennedy, also the team’s general manager, recognized the Penguins’ lack of backcourt leadership and has made some key offseason signees.

Cornerback Marvin Ward has agreed to play point guard, but the team’s prized acquisition was Drew Long, who scored 80 points last year for the NU basketball team before leaving the squad because of health problems.

“We’re going to be the most stacked team in the history of the intramural league,” Strief said. “I think we will rival the current Lakers dynasty.”