Note: in the review that follows, title-contenders are shown in bold.

Not too many people were satisfied with 1990. Georgia Tech won a share of the national championship, but they weren't satisfied. Colorado, the Jackets felt, had horned in on their title despite a controversial win over Missouri and a poorer record. Colorado wasn't satisfied; its championship would forever be seen as tainted. The major schools weren't satisfied; in a year when the title was up for grabs, Miami, Washington, Florida State, and Florida all had two losses. The pollsters weren't satisfied - trapped between a rock and a hard place (the rock being the difficulty in voting for the Citrus Bowl champ and the hard place being Colorado), they nonetheless had to vote for somebody.

The season started off with a couple of powers stumbling. In the case of Michigan, they were up against a superior Notre Dame team, who won, 28-24. The Irish would deal themselves a serious blow a month later by losing a shocker to then 1-3 Stanford, 36-31. The other pivotal early game was Miami's first game of the season, when the defending national champions lost to Ty Detmer's Brigham Young squad, 28-21. Two other early season games went virtually unnoticed at the time but would prove important later on. Virginia upended a good Clemson squad, 20-7, and Colorado lost 23-22 to an Illinois team that would finish 8-4. Having already tied Tennessee, the game put the Buffs off to a horrible 1-1-1 start.

Colorado's rather fascinating season then went through an interesting three game stretch: a narrow 29-22 defeat of Texas (a hard-to-figure team that would go 10-1 before being blown off the map in the Cotton Bowl loss to Miami), an impressive 20-14 win over then 3-0 Washington, and a 33-31 win over lowly Missouri. The last win would haunt them the rest of the year. Late in the game, the gutsy Tigers (who would finish the season 4-7) held the Buffaloes, but due to a clock-stopping spike during the series, the officials had lost track of the down and Colorado got a fifth down. They converted, winning 33-31. Coach Bill McCartney and the athletic department stubbornly refused to offer a forfeit, and the Big 8 office claimed their hands were tied.

Whether the Colorado-Missouri fiasco would matter depended on whether the other powers played themselves out of contention or not. The southern teams did just that. Florida State was knocked out in consecutive games, first, a 31-22 loss to Miami, and second, a 20-17 road loss to Auburn. After crushing Kansas, the Hurricanes hit the mat against Notre Dame (then 4-1 after the Stanford loss), 29-20. Auburn (6-0-1), who climbed as high as fourth thanks to the win over Florida State, were knocked out in spectacular fashion, losing 48-7 to the Florida Gators. The War Eagle was so disoriented by the loss that they stumbled the next week 13-12 to Southern Miss in one of the decade's more memorable upsets.

The effect of all this carnage was that only a few teams were left standing at midseason, and many didn't consider Colorado among them. They were: Notre Dame, Washington, and Texas with a loss, and Nebraska still undefeated. That, and one other strange thing: the sleepy, basketball-oriented Atlantic Coast Conference was suddenly the center of the college football world. That's because Virginia (7-0) of all teams was undefeated and ranked #1. Georgia Tech (6-0-1) was also undefeated after squeaking by Clemson, 21-19, and tying a mediocre North Carolina team, 13-13. When the Cavs played the Jackets, it was one of the biggest games ever in ACC history. The game lived up to its billing, with the surprise Yellowjackets winning a 41-38 thriller.

Virginia never recovered, losing 3 of its final 4 games. Georgia Tech took the baton, narrowly beating Virginia Tech (5-3) before blowing out Wake Forest and Georgia en route to a 10-0-1 regular season.

Notre Dame lost to a good Penn State team, 24-21, for its second loss, and Washington dropped a shocker to then 4-5 UCLA, 25-22. Nebraska, rolling, then lost to Colorado 27-12, and the once exposed Buffs were suddenly 8-1-1 with a couple of quality wins and without much competition left standing. When 7-3 Oklahoma dealt the Cornhuskers an embarassing 45-10 defeat in the last game of the regular season, the national title picture was an absolute mess.

Miami made a statement in the Cotton Bowl, winning 46-3, and they may have been the most talented team in the country then. Certainly they had exposed one-loss Texas. Colorado needed to make a statement but didn't, narrowly beating Notre Dame 10-9 in the Orange Bowl. Even that result was controversial when a last-second kick return touchdown by the Irish's Raghib Ismail was called back on a questionable (but probably legitimate) clipping call. Georgia Tech made as much of a statement as they could, pounding a suspect Nebraska team 45-21 in the Citrus Bowl. Washington was likewise hampered in statement-making facing a weak Iowa team (then 8-3) in the Rose Bowl.