The Fifth Down Game Between Missouri and Colorado: Still Resonating 25 Years Later

Football officials are in the news today: a batted ball in Seattle, a phantom first down in the Oklahoma State-Kansas State game that preceded a touchdown. Twenty-five years ago, it was one of the most memorable and infamous officiating blunders that dominated the discussion: The Fifth Down Game.

On October 6, 1990, the Colorado Buffaloes traveled to Columbia, Missouri. The Buffaloes had been a top 5 preseason, but a opening tie against Tennessee (remember when they had those?) and a loss at Illinois had them at 3-1-1, and ranked #12. Another loss would basically end their national championship hopes.

Missouri, meanwhile, was a young team in head coach Bob Stull’s second year, and coming off the biggest win for the program in a long time, beating #21 Arizona State by 21 the previous week. It was the first victory over a ranked opponent for Missouri since a win over #11 Oklahoma in November of 1983. They looked like they were in position to pull an even bigger upset with a minute remaining against Colorado, leading by 4.

Mike Ringgenberg was a sophomore linebacker who played a key role on that day. You’ll see his #47 show up in the screen on the final play, hitting Colorado quarterback Charles Johnson just short of the goal line, only to have the line judge come in and signal touchdown. Twenty-five years later, he still thinks about the events that led up to that play. He now lives what he describes as a “normal life, and this surfaces up, and get to have a 5 minute limelight.” I met Mike a few years ago, when our sons played in sports leagues together in the Kansas City area. You would never know about his participation in one of the more memorable plays in college football history, but he was kind enough to talk to me about his memories of that day.

“It’s certainly gotten to the point that I can laugh about it, it’s great to be part of the history aspect,” Ringgenberg said, “but 25 years, I’d still rather have a win.”

Still, he says, he thinks about all the things that could have happened before the infamous ending. “One of the big downs, I believe we had them 3rd and long, and we end up giving a deep in route. There’s little things here and there.”

Then, the final sequence. It went like this after Colorado picked up a first and goal with only one timeout remaining

• 1st down, spike the ball to stop the clock at :28;
• 2nd down, run the ball on a lead up the middle, where Eric Bienemy is stopped short of the goal line. Timeout is called at :18 left (however, it was at this point that the down marker didn’t get changed and the man on the chain crew was my insurance agent, Rich Montgomery);
• 3rd down, Eric Bienemy tries to leap over the pile for the touchdown, where he is met by Ringgenberg and other Tigers and thrown back, resulting in a pile;
• 4th down, with the clock almost ticking down, Johnson spikes it again with with just :02 left on the clock;
• 5th down, Johnson sprints right, tries to cut back, and is ruled to have just crossed the line for the touchdown.

The confusion never got corrected. No one seemed to have noticed either. This exchange involved two different spikes of the football. “That was the first year they allowed spiking the ball stopping the clock,” Ringgenberg explained, “that’s kind of what threw everything off, no one had dealt with that rule before.”

After that, it was Ringgenberg who met Bieniemy at the top of the leap on what should have been 3rd down. “Once I make that tackle on Bieniemy trying to go over the top, we were laying on him, as any smart player would.” Ringgenberg also is convinced that Buffaloes coach Bill McCartney worked the officials in the final timeout, in case the attempt came up short, “He says to him, he grabs the official, ‘make sure you don’t allow them to lay on our players and stop the clock.'” You can see in the video that the officials do temporarily stop the clock while allowing the pile to clear, before Colorado is able to stop the clock.

After that spike, the final play would even be controversial today, and probably overturned with review. Johnson appears to hit down before he bends back over the line, as the line judge rushes. “If it got reviewed today, there’s no way he goes in,” Ringgenberg said. “He spun backwards. They complained so much about the field. I slipped on that last play, if I don’t slip, I catch him cleanly. He lands on his back.”

The pain still lingers, even if it wears off a little. One of the biggest things, as Ringgenberg said, that bothered him was McCartney’s response after the game, where he harped on the field conditions. McCartney was a Missouri alum, and in the 2010 ESPN piece on Fifth Down, acknowledged that he was “ashamed of how he handled it.”

As for Missouri, they went downhill. They got destroyed the next week at Nebraska, still haunted by what could have been. “There’s no doubt the next week when we went into Nebraska, that week of practice, it probably wasn’t the most energetic week of practice, the most focused, as a young team we didn’t know how to deal with that,” Ringgenberg said.

Colorado, meanwhile, actually dropped in the polls after the controversial finish, going to #14. They wouldn’t lose again, though, eventually rising to #1 and winning a share of the national championship.