'Split' title 35 years ago? Don't tell Colorado and Georgia Tech that

CHAD BROWN AND his Colorado teammates have gold rings. On each of them is a big number "1" filled with diamonds meant to commemorate their 1990 national title and the year they spent as the best team in the nation.

Across the country, Ken Swilling and his Georgia Tech teammates have their own gold rings, also with diamonds filling a big "1," also meant to commemorate their 1990 national title.

Though their rings are nearly identical, members of those Colorado and Georgia Tech teams refuse to acknowledge that their seasons have a shared outcome. Players still won't use the words "split" or "shared" when it comes to the 1990 season. Colorado points to its superior strength of schedule as the reason it is the rightful champ after going 11-1-1 and finishing No. 1 in the AP poll. Georgia Tech points to its unbeaten season as proof that it is the rightful champ after going 11-0-1 and finishing No. 1 in the coaches' poll by one vote. Thirty-five years later, trash talk dies hard for two schools that played in the pre-BCS era and had no way to settle things on the field.

"Oh no. I would never say it was a split national championship," Swilling said. "They can call us split, co- whatever they want to call it, but as far as Georgia Tech is concerned, we won the national championship in 1990. Heck, it took them five downs against Missouri to get the split anyway."

"We were the best team in the nation. I have no doubts about that," Brown says. "So people's opinion about the Fifth-Down Game and people's opinion about who should have won a national championship, it lands so poorly on me I don't think about it. When someone says, 'You won a national championship at Colorado?' I say, 'Yes, I did.' 'You don't say you won a split national championship?' No. Never once have I ever said I won a split national championship."

Perhaps old scores will be settled when 1990 co- ... er ... national champs Colorado and Georgia Tech kick off the season in Boulder (8 p.m., ESPN), in the first meeting between the schools.

On second thought, maybe not.

IN 1989, COLORADO went undefeated in the regular season and faced Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl with the national title on the line. It lost 21-6, but their failure fueled their offseason workouts.

That, plus the memory of teammate Sal Aunese, who died of stomach cancer in 1989, drove Colorado as it headed into the 1990 season. But the first three games of the campaign did not go the way the Buffs had expected. Colorado was a surprising 1-1-1 headed into a game at Texas, having tied the season opener against No. 8 Tennessee and lost in Week 3 at No. 21 Illinois. No margin of error remained. Coach Bill McCartney had the team meet at a hotel where it usually stayed before home games. Players thought they would board buses for the airport.

Instead, McCartney called a meeting. He proceeded to lay into the entire team, calling players out by name for not playing up to their potential.

"Coach Mac usually did not make things personal," Brown said. "This time, it was personal. He worked his way around the room, and I was the last one he got to. He turned to me and he said, 'Chad, you've hurt me the most.' He questioned my football character. For a guy who always prided himself on the way he played, that hurt."

Brown dove into his playbook on the flight, and before leaving for the game, stared at himself in the mirror. He said to himself, "No one will ever question my football character again."

Colorado trailed Texas 22-14 early in the fourth quarter, when running back Eric Bieniemy went into the defensive huddle and told his teammates, "Get us the ball back. We're going to score. We're going to win this game."

Sure enough, Bieniemy scored a 4-yard touchdown with more than 10 minutes left to play, then ran it in from 2 yards out with 5:47 left for the winning touchdown. Brown finished with 20 tackles. Colorado players and coaches point to that game -- and the speech McCartney gave his team -- as the turning point in the season.

"Everybody likes to talk about the Texas turnaround, saying that I came out there and saved the game," Bieniemy said. "No, it wasn't anything special because there were times throughout the course of the year they had to uplift me as well.'"

Colorado dropped from its preseason position at No. 5 to No. 20, but by October, the Buffs were back to No. 12 in the AP poll. They'd still need some help to get back into the national championship race.

Players probably wouldn't have guessed they'd need that help in Week 6 against unranked Missouri.

Before we discuss the infamous Fifth-Down Game, here's what the Colorado players want you to know: Missouri tried to sabotage them from the start. In 1990, Missouri played on AstroTurf packed with sand. Colorado players said the school should have watered down the field before use.

That did not happen, so as play began, Colorado kept slipping and sliding all over the turf, slowing down its option game. (The Tigers, on the other hand, were familiar with the surface and knew which cleats to wear to minimize slipping.) Missouri led 31-27 with two minutes left in the fourth quarter. Then Colorado, behind backup quarterback Charles Johnson and Bieniemy, started driving. On first-and-goal from the 3-yard line with 28 seconds left, Johnson spiked the ball.

On second down, Bieniemy ran for a gain of 2 down to the 1-yard line. Colorado called timeout. The person working the down marker never changed the down. Colorado center Jay Leeuwenburg noticed and told McCartney, who insisted it was still second down. Meanwhile, a fan sitting behind the Colorado bench had a heart attack and was moved down to field level for medical attention, causing further distraction.

Colorado ran three more plays -- and scored on its fifth down -- as Johnson crossed over the goal line. The Missouri crowd chanted "fifth down," and when the game ended, started throwing bottles and other objects onto the field. Starting quarterback Darian Hagan, who missed the game with an injury, said he took off his rib cage brace to shield quarterbacks coach Gary Barnett from getting hit.

"A lot of people say that we cheated and we should have given the game back and all this stuff," Hagan said. "My response to that is, 'Why did we cheat and what were Missouri's coaches doing? Why didn't they know what down it was? Everybody was out of it. The referees didn't know. So they can blame a lot of people, but at the same time, we got a national championship out of it.

"It was human error. It wasn't like we were trying to try to pull a fast one on anyone."

Bieniemy said he legitimately had no idea that Colorado had used five downs until he saw highlights on ESPN. But he had to hear about the game constantly later in his career, when he became an assistant coach and worked 10 years for the Kansas City Chiefs and Andy Reid, who was the offensive line coach at Missouri in that game.

"Do you think I heard about it for 10 years?" Bieniemy says with a laugh. "I will say this, it was a great game. It's one of those games that'll be talked about for eons. But we're not gonna give it back."

ONE THOUSAND, FOUR hundred miles away in Atlanta, No. 18 Georgia Tech prepared to face No. 15 Clemson the week after the Fifth-Down Game. The Jackets began the year unranked, but players felt confident headed into the season after finishing 1989 with wins in seven of their final eight games.

Their defense began the season on a tear, giving up just 31 total points in the first four games. Once again, their defense came up big against Clemson, making a goal-line stand after the Tigers drove down to the 1-yard line. On eight trips inside Georgia Tech territory, Clemson scored just one touchdown. Still, the Tigers had a shot to win, down 21-19.

Chris Gardocki lined up for a 60-yard field goal attempt with a minute left.

"I was 10 feet away from him on the sideline, and I was telling everybody, 'We're done,'" Georgia Tech kicker Scott Sisson said.

But Gardocki missed, and Georgia Tech was off to its best start since 1966. That start got even better on the first weekend in November when the Yellow Jackets headed up to Charlottesville to play No. 1 Virginia.

Vandals had gotten into Scott Stadium the night before the game and burned a section of the turf, leaving questions about whether the game could be played. Georgia Tech quarterback Shawn Jones also said that same night, the fire alarm was pulled at 2 or 3 a.m. at the team hotel, forcing players to get up and evacuate.

"The atmosphere was like a championship playoff game," Jones said.

But the game did not start out that way. Virginia led 28-14 at halftime, having flummoxed the staunch Georgia Tech defense.

"Some of our offensive players, they were asking us, 'Hey, man, can y'all stop them? Just slow them down because we're coming," Swilling said. "And the look on our faces was like, 'Man, I don't know. This might be a long day.' It just so happened that things began to turn offensively."

Georgia Tech tied the game after two Virginia turnovers, and then it was back-and-forth until the end. Georgia Tech got the ball with 2:30 to go and the score tied at 38. Jones remembers feeling calm as the offense took the field.

He drove Georgia Tech 56 yards in five plays, setting Sisson up for a 37-yard field goal attempt with 7 seconds left. Sisson was affectionately called "Never Missin' Sisson" by his teammates. Pressure never seemed to get to him. But as he was warming up on the sideline, he overheard punter Scott Aldridge asking the linemen, "How many diamonds do we want in our championship rings?"

"I kept hearing that, and I thought, 'I don't have a choice. I've got to make this kick," Sisson says with a laugh. "These guys are designing the ring. So, like, no pressure, right?"

Sisson nailed the kick. The unbeaten season lived on for another weekend.

COLORADO ENTERED THE Orange Bowl No. 1 in both polls at 10-1-1. It was facing Notre Dame in a rematch. Georgia Tech entered the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida, ranked No. 2 at 10-0-1 and facing Nebraska, which Colorado had beaten earlier in the season.

The Buffaloes thought a win over the Irish would seal their championship season in both polls. Georgia Tech, however, felt a win over Nebraska could possibly leap them ahead.

"I didn't really think that Colorado was better than we were," Jones said. "So when we went into the game, I thought, 'If we handle our business, we should be No. 1.' We didn't know how it was going to turn out. We just believed it would."

Georgia Tech handled Nebraska 45-21 to finish a remarkable season without a loss. The team returned to its hotel in Orlando to watch Colorado in the Orange Bowl later that night.

The Buffaloes told themselves they could not lose to the Irish again. Adversity hit early, when Hagan went down with a knee injury. Johnson entered the game and strained his hamstring, but played through it. The game turned into a defensive showcase. Colorado clung to a 10-9 lead with 1:05 remaining.

The Buffaloes were forced to punt. Notre Dame had Raghib "The Rocket" Ismail, the best returner in the nation, waiting deep. Swilling, watching with teammates, turned to them and said, 'Watch this. Rocket is about ready to take it to the house.'"

Sure enough, Ismail took the punt and turned right, hit a crease and raced in for the touchdown. Georgia Tech players described their hotel vibrating and shaking in celebration.

"The crazy thing about that was, I remember Coach Mac telling our punter to kick it out of bounds," Hagan says. "It was a bad snap, and he got rushed, so he just kicked it right down the middle. And everybody just looked at each other like, 'Oh, no.' When he scored everybody was like, 'You've got to be kidding me. Here we go again.'"

But the wave of emotions tilted in another direction, for all three teams.

There was a flag down on the field.

"We knew it was against them," Hagan said. "We went from frustrated and hurt to elated all in a matter of two seconds."

Notre Dame safety Greg Davis was called for clipping. The touchdown came off the board. Colorado ended up holding on to win, capping what it believed would be a No. 1 finish in both polls.

"It was surreal," Johnson said. "It was the end of a journey that started two years before, and the way it played out was a metaphor for life. There was never a linear path to our championship. There were all kinds of fits and starts, disappointments, high points. As a collective, we got it done. And the party was on."

The final polls did not come out that night. Early the next morning, the phone rang in Sisson's hotel room in Orlando. His roommate shoved the phone into his hand.

It was a radio station Sisson had never heard of. First question: Do you think that you deserve the national championship? What Sisson didn't know when he answered, groggy and half asleep, was there was also a Colorado player on the line.

"I tried to take the middle of the road," Sisson said. "I said, 'I don't know what else we could do. We were undefeated.' I had no idea that they were setting me up. I don't remember who it was, I don't even think I got his name, but the Colorado player says, 'Oh, we deserve it, and he started ripping into us, like our strength of schedule. I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me. I am not awake. I am not up for this conversation right now.'"

The teams did not find out how the final polls had them ranked until they returned to their respective campuses. Colorado was the AP champion, with 39 first-place votes compared to 20 for Georgia Tech. But in a stunning reversal, Georgia Tech finished No. 1 in the UPI coaches' poll -- by one point. For the first time in UPI coaches' poll history, the No. 1 team entering its final game did not finish No. 1 after a bowl victory.

Colorado players always suspected Nebraska coach Tom Osborne had changed his vote to Georgia Tech. Osborne admitted for the first time this week that he did in fact do that, telling USA Today he changed his vote for two reasons: the Fifth-Down Game, and the fact that Georgia Tech beat Nebraska more handily than Colorado.

"That was extremely disappointing, that our rival and our fellow conference member did that," Johnson said. "We went into Lincoln under extremely hostile conditions to win that football game that propelled us to the national championship. I thought for someone who was, by all accounts, an extremely classy man, that was one of the most classless things I've experienced."

Without a unanimous champion, the question over who was better that season rages on. Neither team visited the White House, but Swilling said he and his teammates secretly wished they could have settled the debate with a game in the Rose Garden.

After his college career, Bieniemy was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in 1991. The following year, the Chargers hired Georgia Tech coach Bobby Ross.

"I used to argue with him all the time," Bieniemy says. "I'm going to say this out loud. I would say, 'We would have kicked y'all's ass.'"

Now 35 years later, the two teams finally get their long-anticipated meeting. And it is all thanks to Colorado athletic director Rick George, who was the assistant athletic director for football operations at Colorado in 1990. About a decade ago, George made a call to someone he knew at Georgia Tech and said simply: "We should play a game."

The series was announced in 2016, and George specifically chose 2025 as the first game in the home-and-home, knowing it was the 35-year anniversary of their championship(s).

"I just thought it would be fun and good for both schools, and it would be a good game that people would have a lot of interest in," George says. "It's a great opportunity to showcase what we both accomplished in that year."

Memories of their shared ... uh ... championship season are never far from the minds of the players and coaches who experienced it. After all, that was the last national championship each school has won.

But with renewed interest in Colorado and coach Deion Sanders, and rising expectations around Georgia Tech in Year 3 under Brent Key, their game Friday has turned into must-see TV. Their shared history is just a cherry on top.

"This is an opportunity for us to have a lot of get back, a lot of talk, a lot of pride and passion, winning that game," Hagan said. "Over the years, they've said what they've said. We've said what we've said. Now someone's going to be able to win the game."