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Desmond Howard celebrates with Roman Wilson after Michigan beats Alabama in Rose Bowl

IMG_6598by:Nick Kosko•01/01/24•

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Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Michigan legend Desmond Howard took off the commentator glasses for a second as he celebrated with Roman Wilson postgame.

The Wolverines defeated Alabama 27-20 in the Rose Bowl to advance to the College Football Playoff National Championship. The overtime victory had everyone on the edge of their seats.

You can see Howard’s moment with Wilson below.

Howard of course picked Michigan, his alma mater, to beat the Crimson Tide on College GameDay earlier Monday.

Desmond Howard addresses possible asterisk around Michigan national title

Before the Rose Bowl, Howard had to address the possibility of an asterisk associated with a Michigan national title, should the Wolverines win it all.

The latter half of the season was marred in a sign-stealing scandal that eventually led to the three-game suspension of head coach Jim Harbaugh. Still, Michigan prevailed and remained undefeated Monday.

“I believe that you’re gonna have what we call haters,” Howard said last week. “I mean, there’s nothing, there’s absolutely zero that will change their mind, no matter what happens moving forward, right?”

Still, as Howard continued, he also doesn’t understand why an asterisk would be necessary.

“If you look at the big picture? I mean, we’re all football guys,” Howard said. “We know the sport. This story broke, and they were playing Michigan State that night, right? The next week, they played Purdue. After that, they played Penn State, they played Maryland. After that, they played Ohio State. When we were on set when it broke and everyone was talking about this and that?

“I said, ‘Well, guys, you know what?’. I said the silver lining right now is that, moving forward? There are no more excuses because everything is out there, right? If you think they were stealing signs? It’s done now.”

Some critics of Michigan will denounce anything they do in the playoff or next week. If the Wolverines accomplish their mission after all of this season’s circumstances, though, Howard doesn’t know how one would even begin to do that.

“I would say with everything that they had going to against them, how could you put an asterisk by anything within the accomplishments they did?” Howard asked. “They’re not stealing signs no more. They did it with the interim head coach.

“If you beat Alabama and you win the national championship game? I think that’s probably one of the most incredible runs we’ve ever seen of any team that’s crowned national champs.”