BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Even through a rough start to the 1990 season and the highly debated “fifth-down” controversy, there the Colorado Buffaloes were in the closing seconds of the Orange Bowl, one stop away from a potential national title.

Defensive back Deon Figures intercepted a Notre Dame pass and ran around long enough for the clock to hit zero. His teammates piled on to celebrate, crushing his ribs with their weight. He could barely breathe and thought he might pass out.

A fond memory for sure, he said, because it paved the way to the Buffaloes' one and only national football title. Painful for a reason beyond his bruised ribs: They had to split that 1990 national title with Georgia Tech.

“We wanted it all,” Figures recalled. “We wanted to sit at the top of the mountain — by ourselves.”

On Friday night, the Yellow Jackets and Buffaloes will meet for the first time ever on the football field. It's a chance for bragging rights nearly 35 years after the programs became forever linked in the days when split titles were possible, long before major college football shifted to a tournament.

“It is exciting,” said Charles Johnson, a quarterback on that 1990 Colorado team. ”But it’s kind of like two great fighters in their prime and it was a great debate about who was the greatest and then years later, when they’re both kind of not in that spotlight, they finally match up. It’s like, ‘Oh, we finally get the great fight.’ The thrill of what that debate was 35 years ago, it’s hard to carry much of that over today.”

Back then, there was no College Football Playoff. Instead, it came down to votes, with the Buffaloes (11-1-1) crowned as champions in The Associated Press poll and Yellow Jackets (11-0-1) winding up on top in the coaches' poll.

They've would've preferred to settle things on the field.

“Hopefully the kids that are playing now will understand the ramifications behind (this game) a little bit more," former Buffaloes receiver Mike Pritchard said. “Just have it have a degree of importance.”

It's there, all right.

“We’re excited to go play Colorado. An opportunity to settle the 1990 national championship,” said Georgia Tech coach Brent Key, whose team is favored and was 12 at the time of that split title.

The title

Glance around Folsom Field and there it is between suite levels on the east side of the stadium, in bold lettering: “1990 National Champions.”

“Wow,” tackle Jordan Seaton said of learning the Buffaloes split it with the Yellow Jackets. “I’m very eager to play them.”

Before the CFP, co-champions happened, if rarely, with nearly a dozen since the early 1950s and the last coming in 2003 (LSU and USC). The split titles spurred arguments and eventually led to postseason changes in determining a true national champion. The College Football Playoff, which has expanded to a 12-team bracket, began with the 2014-15 season.

The Buffaloes sure wish that format would’ve existed 35 years ago.

“I guarantee you we would’ve whooped them,” said Figures, who was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as part of the 2024 class. “I would’ve bet the house on it.”

The Buffaloes received 39 of 60 first place votes in the AP poll (the Yellow Jackets had 20). Georgia Tech topped the UPI/Coaches poll with 30 of 59 first-place votes (Colorado had 27), which ultimately gave the Yellow Jackets a 847-846 point advantage.

Each squad beat coach Tom Osborne and the Nebraska Cornhuskers — the Buffaloes by a 27-12 score in Lincoln and the Yellow Jackets winning 45-21 in the Citrus Bowl on New Year’s Day.

“Both Colorado and Georgia Tech had fine teams that year and we lost to both of them,” Osborne wrote in an email. “Georgia Tech beat us more soundly than Colorado, but both teams were talented. Colorado won a controversial game in which they were given 5 downs at the goal line."

After a liver transplant in 2023, Figures will be watching Friday night's game on television. He will be thinking of his coach, too: Bill McCartney died in January at 84. McCartney assembled a star-studded group featuring names such as Darian Hagan, Johnson, Eric Bieniemy, Pritchard, Figures, Chad Brown, Alfred Williams and Kanavis McGhee.

“Coach Mac would have loved this game," Figures said. "I can hear him now with that rah-rah speech.”

The Georgia Tech path

The Yellow Jackets were coached by Bobby Ross and featured a group of players such as William Bell, Shawn Jones, Ken Swilling, Marco Coleman, Scott Sisson, Willie Clay, Greg Lester, Mike Mooney and Coleman Rudolph. Their only bump in the road was a tie at North Carolina. Two weeks later, they beat No. 1 Virginia on Sisson’s field goal with seconds remaining.

“They believed in themselves; they believed in what they were doing,” Ross said in the fall 2021 issue of Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. "They were just that type of team. They had confidence and a little bit of a swagger, and that was good.”

The Colorado path

It was a rocky start for the Buffaloes, who tied with Tennessee, beat Stanford and lost at Illinois. They dropped from preseason No. 5 to No. 20 in the AP poll. They would win out, including the controversial “fifth-down” victory at Missouri. There was an error when the chain crew didn’t flip the down marker. It set up an extra down and the Buffaloes capitalized as Johnson scored the winning TD on a keeper as time expired.

“There’s so much back-story behind the down thing," Pritchard said. “We obviously would have executed differently. We were going by what the officials were telling everybody."

The Buffaloes caught another fortunate break in the Orange Bowl when a clipping call negated a late punt return for a score by Notre Dame’s Raghib Ismail. The Buffaloes held on for a 10-9 win.

“It was amazing how that season unfolded,” recalled Johnson, whose team lost to Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl the season before to finish 11-1. “I mean, just about every oddity or wrinkle that you could imagine would take place, took place.”

The Buffaloes of the past are anxious for this week's game..

“I’m definitely going to be out there on that field in spirit,” Figures said.

Deion Sanders calls for paying players who reach the playoff and Saban supports the proposal

Leave it to Deion Sanders to come up with an idea for the College Football Playoff that nobody has really mentioned yet: Pay the players for making the tournament, and pay them more when their teams win.

If they do that, then “now it’s equality, now it’s even and every player is making the same amount of money,” the Colorado coach said.

Sanders and former Alabama coach Nick Saban talked to The Associated Press as part of their unveiling of a new Aflac commercial that rolls out this week with a storyboard ripped from today’s headlines: It opens with Sanders complaining: “This game has gotten out of control. All the money. All the unpredictability.”

He is talking about health insurance, of course, and the commissioner he wants to see run it isn’t Saban, but that kooky duck who wears the same powder-blue sportscoat as the two football legends.

It’s an endorsement that Sanders says hits home after his recent diagnosis with bladder cancer, from which he says he is fully recovered.

“I’ve been walking with my coaches over a mile” after practice, he said ahead of Friday night’s season opener against Georgia Tech.. “Exercising, lifting.”

Saban will be back on the set with ESPN in his second year of “retirement” after leaving the Crimson Tide, where he won six national titles. He insists he wants to help college sports find its footing, but not via a commissioner job that was floated last year with his name coming up as the ideal fit.

“I don’t want to be in that briar patch of being a commissioner, but I do want to do everything I can to make it right,” he said.

He and Sanders agreed that there needs to be more structure around deals players sign. Since July 1, schools have been able to start paying up to $20.5 million each to their athletes over the next year under the House settlement alongside third-party NIL deals that have turned some players into millionaires.

Saban said he believes that forgotten amidst all the hype about name, image, likeness deals — deals Sanders says are a joke because “there are only three or four guys who you might know their NIL, and the rest you're just giving money to" — is what happens to the vast majority of these players after they leave school.

“For years and years and years as coaches, and when we were players, we learned this, we’re trying to create value for our future,” Saban said. “That’s why we’re going to college. It’s not just to see how much money we can make while we’re in college. It’s, how does that impact your future as far as our ability to create value for ourselves?”

Currently, conferences whose schools advance to the 12-team playoff receive $4 million for making the bracket, with payments increasing for every round they win.

Saban said Sanders’ idea about spreading the wealth with an NFL-style playoff bonus structure for players (winners of the Super Bowl got $171,000 last year) sounded like a good idea to him. He also had no love for proposals coming out of the Big Ten that would give that league and the Southeastern Conference multiple automatic bids.

“The NFC East has the Cowboys, Eagles and Giants, they have the biggest fan bases of anyone and they have to play their way in,” Saban said. “Everyone should play their way in. One year, a conference might get five teams in, another it might get three. But there’s no (scenario) in any competitive venue where you get a guaranteed playoff spot.”

Broncos kick returner Marvin Mims Jr. avoids injury scare, expected to practice Monday

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Broncos coach Sean Payton said Thursday that All-Pro kick returner and wide receiver Marvin Mims Jr. checked out fine after leaving practice a day earlier so doctors could see if he had a groin injury.

“Marvin, good news,” Payton said following practice ahead of the team's kickoff luncheon. “We have a bonus practice Monday, and he’ll be at work Monday so we’re fortunate. Pretty good week considering. There’s a lot of moving parts and to have the full 69 (players, including the 16-player practice squad), actually 70 with our international player.”

Mims caught six touchdown passes last season and led the league with a 15.7-yard average on punt returns. He averaged 16 yards per punt return his rookie year, when he had a 99-yarder for a touchdown to go with one TD from scrimmage.

Mims is expected to have an even larger role on offense this year, especially with the trade last week of wide receiver Devaughn Vele to the New Orleans Saints.

Also Thursday, general manager George Paton addressed the media for the first time since extending wide receiver Courtland Sutton and All-Pro defensive lineman Zach Allen, but he declined to address the ongoing contract talks with edge rusher Nik Bonitto.

Allen signed a four-year, $102 million extension.

“Zach, obviously, makes this thing go up front,” Payton said. "He has had a tremendous few seasons here. (He is) really good on the field, even better off the field. Obviously a priority to get Zach done. We feel good that he’s going to be here hopefully for the rest of his career.”

Sutton signed a four-year, $92 million extension.

“Courtland, since I arrived he’s been a huge piece of this team, this organization. He’s been through the ups, and the downs, the injuries, the lack of continuity and the coaches," Paton said. "He stayed the course. He’s been a leader despite all this. So it was really important, especially the way he played last year, to keep Courtland.

“We have a young (wide receivers) room. It’s ‘Court’, and then the rest are 24, 25 and (younger). He sets the tone really for that room. He sets the tone for this offense. It was important to keep him.”

As for extending Bonitto, however, Paton demurred when asked if he was waiting for a resolution in the Micah Parsons situation, which occurred later in the day when the Dallas Cowboys dealt the star defender to the Green Bay Packers.

“As far as any other stuff, we’ve done a good job of keeping these things quiet and respectful,” he said. "We’re just going to keep it that way.”

Christian Walker homers twice to lead Astros over Rockies 4-3

HOUSTON (AP) — Christian Walker homered twice, capped by a tiebreaking solo shot in the eighth inning to lift the Houston Astros to a 4-3 win over the Colorado Rockies on Thursday.

The game was tied 3-3 with no outs when Walker sent the first pitch from Luis Peralta (1-2) into left center field. Walker also homered in the first inning to make this the 15th multi-homer game of his career.

Jose Altuve also homered for the Astros, who won a second straight after dropping the series opener.

The Rockies had a chance to take the lead when they loaded the bases with two outs in the seventh. Jordan Beck reached on a catcher’s interference call on César Salazar, but Kaleb Ort struck out Brenton Doyle to leave everyone stranded.

Bryan King (4-3) threw a scoreless eighth for the win and Bryan Abreu allowed one hit in a scoreless ninth for his fourth save.

Altuve and Walker hit back-to-back homers with two outs in the first inning to put Houston up 2-0. Mauricio Dubón scored on a bunt single by Salazar to push the lead to 3-0.

The Rockies loaded the bases with one out in the third and made it 3-1 when Mickey Moniak grounded into a force out that sent a run home.

Ezequiel Tovar homered into the seats in right field with two outs in the fourth.

Yanquiel Fernández tied it when he belted his second homer this season to right field in the fifth.

Key moment

Walker’s second home run.

Key stat

The Rockies left 10 men on base.

Up next

Colorado RHP Germán Márquez (3-11, 5.67 ERA) is expected to come off the injured list Friday to oppose RHP Cade Horton (8-4, 2.88) in the opener of a three-game series against the Cubs.

Houston RHP Cristian Javier (1-1, 5.40) opposes LHP Tyler Anderson (2-8, 4.73) when the Astros open a four-game series with the Los Angeles Angels Friday night.