Nostalgia: Colorado takes five at Missouri

Many readers will not remember 1990, and even those that do should be warned: 1990 has not aged as well as you may think. Or, at the very least, you haven’t aged well, which you will realize when confronted with the wonderful 1990-ish elements of your youth: The box cut. The Big 8. Midriff-bearing Eric Bieniemy and his teammates slipping all over skin-shredding Astroturf. The patron saint of Colorado football, Bill McCartney, coaching alongside a young Gary Barnett, still more than a decade from being accused of allowing the Buff locker room to turn into Studio 54. The option from the power I. The option from under center. A defense in what appears to be a 5-2 front. Jankety-looking passing by kids who were recruited to read the end and had never heard of a 7-on-7 camp.

And, at least in one critical instance, historically incompetent officiating, culminating in Colorado’s infamous "Fifth Down" to beat Missouri en route to a share of the 1990 mythical national championship. The controversial sequence began with Colorado trailing 31-27 with 31 seconds to play, and CU quarterback Charles Johnson spiking the ball on first down at the Missouri four-yard line. Count 'em down from there along with bitter Missouri fans:

There was actually another down: As Johnson later explained, the victorious Buffaloes, having escaped the throng with a dubious triumph, were brought out of the locker room to attempt the PAT, which Missouri theoretically could have returned for a conversion to tie the game; a kneeldown ended it at 33-31, and a ruling from the Big 8 upheld it. CU went on to another controversial Orange Bowl win over Notre Dame to take No. 1 in the AP poll, still its only national championship to date; Missouri finished 4-7, the seventh of 13 straight losing seasons. The officiating crew was suspended indefinitely.

Missouri also had the uniquely torturous distinction of being robbed of victory over another top-ranked team in the very same end zone just seven years later, under perfectly legal but no less incredible circumstances against Nebraska. I wonder if anyone who rushed the field after Matt Davison's shoestring catch in 1997 had been in the crowd that poured into the end zone against CU, only to be shooed off again in stunned confusion and eventual misery, and if they began to look at that goalpost as a kind of white whale, haunting them at night, refusing to come down.