A Season of Perfection Is Torn Apart at the Seams

MIAMI —  Poor old Colorado never wins anything. Anything. And we don’t just mean the school Colorado. We mean the state Colorado. No NBA championships. No NFL championships. No NCAA championships, except in some sport where everybody sips brandy afterward in front of a fireplace, wearing plaster leg casts.

The last team from Colorado to put a trophy into a case was something called the Denver Dynamite--in arena football. Boy, America’s pulse raced that day.

For countless years, we have seen championship football come from California, from Pennsylvania, from Florida, from Texas and elsewhere. What we mostly got from Colorado was white-water rafting. Colorado wasn’t the state of champions. Colorado was the place our airplane got snowed in.

All this could have changed here Monday night. A chance came Colorado’s way that might never come again. The blocks of granite from Boulder were undefeated in college football. Nobody else could say the same. The national championship was the Colorado Buffaloes’ for the taking. Their era had arrived at last--the Bisontennial.

“We had the opportunity of a lifetime,” Coach Bill McCartney said.

One game with Notre Dame. That was all that impeded their stampede. They packed up their 11-0 record, their mascot, Ralphie the buffalo, their 41-point-per-game offense, their frisky little quarterback, Darian Hagan from Los Angeles, their even-littler tailback, Eric Bieniemy from West Covina, their fans and their fantasies and brought them to moonlit Miami for the 56th Orange Bowl, where the world could have been theirs.

No such luck.

If only a pass by Hagan hadn’t been volleyballed by his receiver and intercepted, setting up a score by Notre Dame. If only Bieniemy hadn’t made a rare fumble, costing Colorado a possible score. If only a faked field goal hadn’t backfired, or if another field goal hadn’t misfired, Colorado’s 21-6 loss could have been avoided. But the Buffs couldn’t believe how bad their luck was. They couldn’t even get an extra point right--and their kicker had made his last 66 in a row.

Why now? That’s what McCartney and his band went home asking themselves. Why now?

Why was Hagan, who had led Colorado to scores on 63 of 104 drives this season, unable to punch the ball into the end zone until it was too late? Why now?

Why would Bieniemy fumble on a breakaway just by changing hands while he carried the ball, when the whole 1989 Colorado team had lost only seven fumbles in 666 previous carries? Why now?

Why did Chad Brown, the excellent freshman linebacker from Altadena who also used to catch touchdown passes in high school, fail to execute the play when Colorado wanted him to release-block and then trot into the end zone for a possible touchdown pass on the fake field goal late in the first half? Why now?

What fates were conspiring to keep Colorado in such a rocky state?

“It looked like a broken play. . . it wasn’t,” McCartney said of the field-goal fake. Similar tactics have tested the ulcers of coaches from John Robinson to Bo Schembechler in recent weeks. “Chad said he got jammed at the line of scrimmage, couldn’t get free.”

In other words, holder Jeff Campbell still might have run the ball. What he lost was the option of throwing to Brown. Campbell had nowhere to go and nothing else to do when Notre Dame’s Stan Smagala showed up to slow him up, or when Troy Ridgley put him down, one yard short of the end zone.

Colorado ended up pointless for the half--something that hadn’t happened all season. This was a team that could score with its eyes closed, and not just against Kansas State. It hadn’t even gone two consecutive quarters before without scoring something. And here it was, taking the game to Notre Dame, dominating play, and not having even one point to show for it.

“Coming away from the first half without any points after controlling the game was too much to overcome,” McCartney said. “Anytime you’re playing a team like Notre Dame, you’ve got to capitalize on your chances. We didn’t.

“I didn’t think anybody could keep us out of the end zone like they did, but they did.”

Grab-bagging--that’s what Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz figured Colorado would end up doing when they fell behind late in the game. Ad-libbing, winging it, taking whatever they could get. The Buffaloes had little practice being behind. The most they had trailed anybody all season was 10 points, at Oklahoma State, and Colorado came back to win that game, 41-17.

But they never got much chance to grab-bag. They had the football in the fourth quarter Monday for exactly 10 plays, including a punt. Notre Dame stuffed the Buffs, stuffed them good. Took care of the nation’s alleged No. 1 team by more than two touchdowns.

“They were better than we were,” cornerback David Gibbs said.

“We felt very confident in the huddle, but we couldn’t punch it in,” Hagan said.

“Stuff happens,” offensive lineman Bill Coleman said.

Sure does. Happens a lot to Coloradans. Back they go to the mountains now, back to see if they can ever get this high again. It is going to be an uphill climb.