John Mackovic was in his third year in Champaign. He inherited an Illinois program that, after early 1980s success that included a Rose Bowl trip in 1983, had suffered a couple of losing seasons and then went on NCAA probation. Mackovic got things turned immediately back upward, going to a bowl game in 1988. In […]
1990 Michigan State football entered the season on a good run for the program under George Perles. The Spartans won the Rose Bowl in 1987. They had good seasons in the two ensuing years and had made five bowls in the past seven seasons. A 1990 season that was crazy across the country, and especially […]
John Cooper came to Columbus in 1988 after Earle Bruce stumbled to a 6-4-1 finish in 1987. But at least Bruce had produced Rose Bowl teams in 1979 and 1984. Cooper’s first year with the Buckeyes produced a losing season. 1989 saw improvement and an eight-win regular season. But that wasn’t why Cooper was hired. […]
The 1990 Texas football team was looking to get back onto the national radar. The proud program hadn’t won a national title since 1969. They hadn’t made a serious run at the top since 1983. The Longhorns fired Fred Akers following a sub-.500 season in 1986, but the first three years under new coach David […]
Don James had already enjoyed a successful coaching run at the University of Washington. He went to the Rose Bowl in 1977, 1980 and 1981, winning it twice. He won the Orange Bowl in 1984 and finished #2 in the country. But the latter part of the 1980s saw the Huskies slip a bit, with […]
The era of football excellence in Tallahassee began in earnest in 1987 when Bobby Bowden took Florida State to a #2 national finish. From 1987-89, the Seminoles did two things—they finished in the national top five and they won major bowl games. The downside was they always found themselves chasing archrival Miami, who won the […]
To say the University of Virginia football program had a dry history prior to the arrival of head coach George Welsh in 1982 would understate the case. The Cavaliers joined the ACC in 1954 and had never won it. Only sporadically were they even a good team. It didn’t take Welsh long to turn things […]
The Colorado Buffaloes had a breakthrough season in 1989. They picked the Nebraska-Oklahoma lock on the old Big Eight. The Buffs had an undefeated regular season and played for a national championship before losing to Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl. The 1990 Colorado football team was back for more. And in spite of one […]
The 1990 Miami Hurricanes came into the season atop the college football world in every way. They won their third national championship in seven years in 1989, each one under a different coach and making Dennis Erickson 1-for-1 in winning titles in his first year. The Hurricanes were ranked #1 to begin the 1990 college […]
Georgia Tech football was in desolation when Bobby Ross arrived in 1987, with only two bowl appearances in the last seventeen years. Even after a seven-win season in 1989, there was little inkling that the 1990 Georgia Tech football was about to become one of college football’s great stories. The talent in the lineup didn’t […]
The 1980s had been good to the Iowa Hawkeyes. Hayden Fry took the program to the Rose Bowl in 1981 and 1985 and went to eight bowls overall in a nine-year stretch. But 1989 had been the outlier year, when the Hawkeyes struggled to a 5-6 finish. The program needed a comeback season and the […]
The 1990 college football season started with defending national champion Miami being upset by BYU and its soon-to-be Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Ty Detmer. That should have told us we were headed for a year that would be on the bizarre side. The BYU-Miami game unleashed a year of upsets and upheaval not seen since the seminal year of 1981.