Willis McGahee Wants Championship Ring from 2003 Miami-Ohio State Title Game

Former Miami Hurricanes running back Willis McGahee is still chapped about a delayed call in the 2003 National Championship Game against Ohio State and wants his title ring. Asked by Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports for his reaction if it is found out that Ohio State won the game with ineligible players, McGahee told him he would “like to have my ring.”

McGahee then changed his focus from the ineligible players aspect of the issue to the pass interference/holding call made in overtime. “I feel we were cheated anyway. We beat them. The pass interference with the eligible, ineligible players. It wouldn’t have made any difference. I can’t get my money back that I missed out on a second ring. If they did [cheat] I’d like to have my ring.”

Here is the call in question in case you forgot about the issue. Jimmy Sharpe was called for pass interference on the play against Chris Gamble, but the officials later said the real infraction was defensive holding:

There is no way a penalty should have been called on the play. There wasn’t defensive holding and there wasn’t pass interference. Any contact Ohio State fans want to argue about should be negated by Gamble’s push off before he made his cut inside. It was just a bad call and the referee threw the flag late not because he wanted to double check the play, but because he did not think the game should have ended.

Separate from that issue, McGahee differs from Warren Sapp in that he likes the hire of Al Golden as the team’s new coach.

“He turned Temple around,” McGahee said of Golden. “The fact that he turned that program around says a lot about his character, his coaching staff. The good thing about it is, he came to the University of Miami.”

Take that, Warren Sapp!