Georgia Tech, Colorado finally meet after 1990 split national championship

Imagine a time and place in which a college football team was unaware, in the immediate aftermath anyway, that it had done enough at the end of its season to be named a national champion.

Such was the case for the 1990 Georgia Tech football squad in January 1991.

A day after his team soundly defeated Nebraska on New Year’s Day in the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, Tech offensive lineman Mark Hutto recalled watching Jeff Hullinger on WAGA-TV announce that the Yellow Jackets had been voted the No. 1 team in the nation by United Press International, a poll conducted by college football coaches.

Linebacker Marlon Williams remembers sitting in a friend’s care and hearing the news over the radio.

“We actually rushed back to the Edge (Center) and kind of threw a miniparty right outside of the Edge,” Hutto said. “It was just a raucous late afternoon when we found out. It was a joyous time. The whole school joined in. It was great.”

That happy moment is not exactly part of a happy ending, for the Jackets or for Colorado’s football program.

Colorado, which had squeaked out a 10-9 win over Notre Dame on Jan. 1 in the Orange Bowl, was voted the No. 1 team in the country by The Associated Press, the Football Writers Association of America and USA Today/CNN. Thus, the Buffaloes could claim the national title as well.

But neither won it outright.

“I wish it would have been like today’s game and we had the playoff and had the best two teams at the end of it to see who really had it, but, hey, it will always be a question mark on who would have been that team,” said Marco Coleman, a defensive lineman on Tech’s 1990 team. “But we feel we had what it took. We didn’t lose no games.”

While Tech and Colorado didn’t get to settle things on the field 35 years ago — the schools have actually never met in football before — the Jackets and Buffaloes will open the 2025 season against each other at 8 p.m. Friday.

And while Tech coach Brent Key comes into this season with higher-than-normal expectations after a 7-6 record in 2024, Tech’s triumph in 1990 was built on the foundation of hardships.

Coach Bobby Ross took over the program in 1987 and coached a 2-9 team that went 0-6 in the ACC. The 1988 season wasn’t much better, with the Jackets finishing 3-8 and 0-7 in league play.

And in 1989, there probably weren’t many folks anyone paying attention to a Tech team that got its first win of the season Oct. 7, breaking a 15-game ACC losing streak in the process with a victory over Maryland.

“Tough times make tough people. You either go one way or the other,” Hutto recalled. “(In 1989) we started out 0-3 — you wanna talk about a test or character, not just for the players, but the coaches. Everybody dug deep and decided to turn it around from that point forward.

“We went 18-1-1 the next year and a half, so I always give a lot of credit to that group the year before us. That core group stuck together.”

Tech finished the ’89 campaign 7-4 with a loss at Duke, its only blemish over the final eight games of the season. The table was set for an unexpected rise to the top of the college football world in 1990.

Williams recalled how he could sense the tide had turned month’s earlier when the Jackets played each other to a 10-10 tie in the program’s annual spring game.

“That just kind of gave us momentum going into the season,” Williams added. “I just remember us being really selfless, guys being unselfish and doing whatever it took to win.”

Led by quarterback Shawn Jones, Tech went 3-0 in September, and a win over a ranked South Carolina team put the Jackets on the national radar for the first time. Wins over Maryland and Clemson allowed Tech to rise to No. 11 in the national polls.

On Oct. 20, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Tech needed a 27-yard field goal from Scott Sisson with 61 seconds on the clock to tie the score against North Carolina 13-13. That would be how that contest ended in an era before overtime existed.

“I think that was the best thing that could have happened for us,” Hutto said. “Here we are undefeated, we’re starting to have a little confidence but maybe a little overconfidence. That brought us back to reality a little bit as to who we were, that we still had to lock down and get back to the basics.”

Tech finished the season with five more victories, winning at No. 1-ranked Virginia 41-38 to start November and ending the schedule with a 40-23 win in Athens over Georgia.

No Tech team has gone undefeated since.

“Camaraderie. Brotherhood. Love. Competition. Competitiveness. Desire. Grit. Great leadership,” Coleman said of the ’90 squad, which is planning its 35-year reunion Oct. 11 when Tech plays Virginia Tech at Bobby Dodd Stadium. “We were just all in the moment. The coaching staff did a really good job of keeping our group of young men of staying focused on that practice, that day, that game and not getting too far ahead of ourselves.

“Of course, social media wasn’t around, and as young men we definitely wasn’t reading newspapers. It was a little bit easier than it would have been this day and age to just keep us focused and locked-in from week to week.”

Colorado, meanwhile, was having a storybook season of its own, rebounding from a 31-31 tie with Tennessee in California to open the season and a 23-22 loss at Illinois on Sept. 15. Both Tennessee and Illinois were ranked in the Top 25 at the time.

The Buffaloes ended the regular season on a nine-game win streak and defeated four ranked teams in the process. But one of those nine wins had an asterisk next to it.

On Oct. 6 at Missouri, Colorado trailed 31-27 late in the fourth quarter. The Buffaloes drove to the Missouri goal line and spiked the ball on first down to stop the clock, then ran the ball on second down before a timeout.

During the timeout, the official’s down marker remained on second down when it should have shown third. Colorado ran another running play and was stopped short of the end zone. On what would have — and should have — been fourth down, the Buffaloes spiked the ball again to stop the clock, a play that should have resulted in a turnover on downs.

Instead, Colorado quarterback Charles Johnson ran in a game-winning touchdown on the next play, the last of the game, a play that came to be known as “the fifth down” play.

Colorado had gone 11-0 in the 1989 regular season but lost the Orange Bowl, and a chance to win that season’s national championship, against Notre Dame. The Buffaloes got revenge against Notre Dame in the 1990 rematch with a 10-9 victory that allowed them to claim the national title.