1.16.2007

Cotton Bowl

As the Dallas City Council foolishly considers investing $50 million in upgrades of the Cotton Bowl, it is time to come to the realization that the stadium's days are numbered. The Cowboys' new stadium will open in about three years - it will be a showplace of showplaces - and the New Year's Day Game and the OU/Texas game will move there at the drop of the hat. I love the Cotton Bowl. I have a very vague memories of my parents taking me there when I was in elementary school to watch the Cowboys play the Green Bay Packers. I was just a junior high kid when I watched SMU and Houston play there (I took a bus with a bunch of other kids from the Bridgeport Methodist Church, but that's all I remember.) I was there when Baylor played Alabama in 1981 in the Cotton Bowl Classic - a disturbing loss. I went to other New Year's Day games just for the heck of it: A&M and Notre Dame, BYU and Kansas State (an 80 degree day), Oregon and Colorado (with an empty stadium in freezing weather), and Texas Tech vs. Alabama. I was there about six years ago when OU's Roy Williams hit UT's Chris Simms in the end zone as the game winning interception was thrown. And I was there with good friends in the late 1980s when we decided to watch a Carter High School playoff game simply because we had heard so much about them. But tradition is only tradition. And time moves on. Far too quickly.