BOULDER - More than three decades later, Darian Hagan still remembers the strange, vivid dream that hit him the night before Colorado played Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl.
He woke his roommate, Charles Johnson, around 4 a.m. and told him he thought he was going to get hurt in the game and that Johnson would have to finish the job.
Charles Johnson wasn't thrilled.
"I just had this dream," Hagan told him. "I'm going to get hurt in this game, and you're going to have to come in and win it for us."
Johnson told him to go back to sleep.
"I believed it," Hagan recalled more than three decades later.
By the end of the next day, the dream had become reality.
On Jan. 1, 1991, Colorado beat Notre Dame 10-9 to win the consensus national championship, and the game landed at No. 6 on the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame's Top 150 Colorado Sports Moments list as the state marks its 150th anniversary. The Buffaloes wound up with 12 moments in the top 150, plus four more involving CU alums.
The championship didn’t arrive in a vacuum. Colorado had been chasing that payoff for two years, and the road started with the crushing loss to Notre Dame in the 1989 Orange Bowl after an undefeated season. That team, though, became about more than wins and losses after quarterback Sal Aunese was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer.
"The light switch went on for every person on our team," Hagan said. "We all started rowing in the same direction."
"Every time we stepped on the football field, we were honoring Sal."
That mindset carried the Buffaloes through 1990, a season packed with defining moments: the comeback at Texas after a rough start, the goal-line stand against Washington, the controversial Fifth Down win at Missouri, the rally at Nebraska in Lincoln and the strong finish that sent them back to Miami.
Notre Dame was waiting again.
"It was a chance for revenge," Hagan said. "It was a chance to right the ship."
Before kickoff, Hagan had already told Johnson what he thought was coming. Then, late in the first half, it happened. After sliding at the end of a run, Hagan dislocated his kneecap.
"I just felt instant cold in my knee," Hagan said. "I couldn't feel my kneecap... I knew I was done."
Johnson took over at quarterback to open the second half and led Colorado on the game's only touchdown drive, putting the Buffaloes ahead 10-9.
"He was always cool as a cucumber," Hagan said. "He knows who he is.
Doesn't try to do too much. Doesn't try to do too little."
Hagan watched the rest from the sideline on crutches, and that part was tougher than the injury itself.
"I just kept saying to myself, my legacy is going to be a guy that got hurt in the national championship game and let his team down," Hagan said.
Colorado’s defense made sure that was not the ending. Ronnie Bradford blocked Notre Dame’s extra point after the Irish scored their only touchdown, keeping the lead at one. Then, with 13 seconds left, Deon Figures intercepted Rick Mirer to seal the Buffs’ first football national championship.
"He saved our season," Hagan said.
The win capped an 11-1-1 season and a two-year stretch in which Colorado went 22-2-1, won consecutive Big Eight titles and reached back-to-back Orange Bowls.
Hagan says the title was about more than talent. He sees it as the product of sacrifice, trust and a tight bond inside the program.
"The memories, the tradition and the brotherhood made everyone stay here," Hagan said. "It's a true brotherhood."
And the lesson he takes from that run still holds up.
"When your moment is called," Hagan said, "you've got to be ready for your moment because you never know when that moment's going to happen again."
Colorado’s football program showed up six more times on the Top 150 list. No. 14 was the Sept.
24, 1994 “Miracle at Michigan,” when Kordell Stewart’s last-second Hail Mary found Michael Westbrook for a 27-26 win over No. 4 Michigan.
No. 20 was Nov. 23, 2001, when Colorado stunned No. 1 Nebraska 62-36 to claim the Big 12 North Division title before winning the Big 12 Championship the following week.
Rashaan Salaam’s Heisman Trophy season checked in at No. 26 on Dec. 10, 1994, while Travis Hunter’s second Heisman for Colorado landed at No. 50 on Dec. 14, 2024 after what the list described as one of the greatest two-way seasons in college football history.
The other football entries were No. 57, Colorado’s 27-21 win over No.
3 Nebraska on Nov. 4, 1989, which ended a 19-game losing streak to the Cornhuskers and set up the program’s first Big Eight title since 1976; No. 86, the 20-10 upset of No. 3 Nebraska on Oct. 25, 1986, known as “The Turning Point” in Bill McCartney’s tenure; and No. 116, the Nov.
6, 1990 “Fifth Down” win at Missouri that helped push Colorado toward the national championship season.
The Buffs’ list also included No. 61, the Dec. 13, 1969 Liberty Bowl win over Alabama, 47-33; No.
65, Byron “Whizzer” White’s 17-point performance in a win over Utah on Nov. 6, 1937; No.
67, Colorado’s National Invitation Tournament championship over Duquesne, 51-40, on March 15, 1940; and No. 128, freshman pitcher Bob McGraw’s Colorado collegiate-record 20 strikeouts against Colorado College on May 22, 1914.
Former Buffaloes also accounted for five individual entries.
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