Jalen Milroe responds to question of whether or not Michigan cheated in Rose Bowl
By Paul Harvey
Published:
Jalen Milroe was not in a forthcoming mood when asked about this past season’s Rose Bowl.
The star quarterback for Alabama, Milroe was the player with the ball in his hands for the final play of overtime. Michigan ultimately stuffed Milroe on 4th down as the Wolverines would roll into the College Football Playoff title game.
Recently, Milroe appeared on “Bussin’ with the Boys” with Will Compton and Taylor Lewan to discuss a wide range of topics. That final play of the Rose Bowl came up, and Milroe said the biggest takeaway for him personally was how much the Alabama coaching staff trusted him.
“I’ll be real, that truly made me really love the coaching staff to see how much they believe in me,” said Milroe about the 4th down play. “This is probably one of the most impactful plays of our whole season, and the ball is in my hands. That speaks to how much the coaching staff believes in me. So I took it as a positive, even though we came up short. But after that game, I went back to the hotel room and reflected on the season, reflected on the game. That made me believe really to see how confident they were with me. I actually called coach (Tommy) Rees after the game to tell him thank you.
“Yeah, we wanted to win. We wanted to win the national championship. We had goals set for ourselves, of course, and this is me speaking after the game. I wanted to score… unfortunately we didn’t do that, but that’s the positive I saw from it. They believed in me so much. Not just (the coaches). No one was like ‘Why are you calling that?!’ Everyone said ‘Alright, bet.’ We just came up short.”
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Shortly after that breakdown, Compton and Lewan could not hold back about the most controversial question of all. Does Milroe believe Michigan cheated?
That’s a clear reference to the sign-stealing investigation into Jim Harbaugh’s program that resulted in the mid-season resignation of a staffer. Ultimately, Milroe had a telling smile, but all he would say is that it doesn’t matter with the Wolverines coming out on top.
“It don’t matter, they won. They done it. It doesn’t matter, they won,” said Milroe.
Here’s the full episode with Milroe’s comments about the Rose Bowl beginning around the 24:17 mark:
Milroe was certainly not about to get into any excuses or deep comments on the matter related to Alabama’s loss, but he didn’t exactly deny the question. Ultimately, Milroe is right that it didn’t matter for the outcome of this game, but it will be interesting to see if the NCAA has something to say when that investigation wraps up.
Paul Harvey lives in Atlanta and covers SEC football.
