COMMENTARY : Colorado Will Carry an Asterisk Along With Its No. 1 Designation

Neatness be damned. Somehow, some way, this is the way it had to end--with an asterisk.

And with a national champion, Colorado, that will be remembered for one play that should not have counted but did--the infamous fifth-down touchdown at Missouri--and another that might have counted but did not--the last-minute, 91-yard touchdown on a punt return by Notre Dame’s Rocket Ismail, erased because of a questionable clipping call.

Perfect.

“It was fitting that it should end this way,” Coach Bill McCartney said, providing a postscript for the zany season just ended with the Buffaloes’ 10-9 win late Tuesday night over the Fighting Irish in the Orange Bowl.

“Because all year long we’ve been having to reach deep to find a way to scratch out a victory, and one more time they did it. I couldn’t be prouder of them.”

The 1990 season was strange, but not just because a flawed Colorado team managed to hold onto the No. 1 spot. And not because Notre Dame, the best team over the long haul of college football’s history, came to Miami with the No. 5 ranking and a long shot at the title, then uncharacteristically shot itself in the foot on the final day. Or because twice-beaten and fourth-ranked Miami, the best team of the last decade, was left out in the cold of Dallas and the Cotton Bowl.

Or even because unbeaten and second-ranked Georgia Tech, with as legitimate a claim to the title as anybody else, was inexperienced at politicking and its coach could hardly be concerned about the final poll while his mother lay in a coma several hundred miles away.

No, the 1990 season was strange because it proved that what was once the province of few will hereafter be the province of many. There were five different No. 1 teams over the course of the season and nearly a dozen others merited first-place votes at one time or another.

There is more talent, but less being stockpiled by the traditional powers because of scholarship limits and tougher academic standards. There is more television money, and because of the networks’ free-spending desperation to hold onto a dwindling audience and cable’s determination to continue making inroads, it is lining more pockets than ever before. Parity is just around the corner.

Kansas State, the school with the worst record in the history of major college football, went 5-6. Six teams picked in the preseason Top 25--Arkansas, Pitt, Ohio State, West Virginia, Alabama and UCLA--are nowhere to be found today.

Underdogs won no less than seven major games in which the spread was 17 points or more, the most stunning, perhaps, being Stanford’s 36-31 victory over Notre Dame at home.

The most fitting champion for the 1990 season would have been Georgia Tech.

Had the Yellow Jackets prevailed--and some will no doubt argue for a long time to come that they should--it would have validated what arguably was the fastest turnaround in college football history (they were 2-9 in 1987 and 3-8 in 1988) and set the tone for the decade ahead.

Even so, Colorado is hardly without merit, and its climb to the top is reflective of the same trend. The Buffaloes were 1-10 as recently as 1984, 6-6 in 1986 and the victory Tuesday night was their first in eight tries at bowling.

But whether they’ll shed the asterisk is another story.

“I think the fifth down has been belabored a little bit,” said backup quarterback Charles Johnson, who scored the winning touchdown in the Missouri game and, taking over for injured Darian Hagan, led Colorado to victory in the Orange Bowl. “I hope this puts it to rest.”