1989 NCAA Division I-A football season
American college football season
The 1989 NCAA Division I-A football season ended with Miami (FL) winning its third National Championship during the 1980s, cementing its claim as the decade's top team, winning more titles than any other program.
Notre Dame signed a six-year, $30 million deal with NBC, granting the network the exclusive rights to broadcast Notre Dame football. However, the deal would not start until 1991.
Florida State began 0–2 but finished the season 10–2, having beaten the National Champions Miami earlier in the season and beating Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl.
Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer resigned June 19 after 16 seasons, during which he led the Sooners to three national championships (1974, 1975, 1985).
Michigan coach Bo Schembechler retired following the season. Steve Spurrier was hired by Florida away from Duke in an effort to clean up after a decade of NCAA sanctions.
Houston quarterback Andre Ware ran the run and shoot offense all the way to the Heisman Trophy and numerous records.
Rule changes
Use of a kicking tee for field goals and extra points is prohibited, repealing a rule put forth in 1948; all such kicks must now be made off the ground.
Five-yard delay of game penalties will be enforced on home teams when crowd noise is too loud for opponents to hear signals.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1989 NCAA Division I-A football season” as american college football season. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american college football season. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4585296. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1991, 1974 and 1975.
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