Cotton Bowl Stories

[PhiI C]

During the 1969 season everyone knew that Texas vs Arkansas to be played in December would probably be against two undefeated teams. The Cotton Bowl would get the winner. At that time no one thought No. 1 Ohio State would lose. The Bowls were chosen ahead of time and the Cotton Bowl wanted Penn State. Penn State kept putting off their vote (Paterno left it up to the players). They knew they would get a chance to play a perfect record team in the Cotton Bowl but they chose to go have fun in the sun in the Orange Bowl and play Missouri who had lost a game or two. The Cotton Bowl invited Notre Dame who hadn't played a bowl game since 1924 and who had just recently discovered the airplane. :). Well Michigan pulled the upset on Ohio State 20 to 12 and Texas beat Arkansas 15 to 14 which put Texas as No. 1 and Penn State was howling and the loudest was Joe Paterno. Texas sealed the National Championship with a 21 to 17 Cotton Bowl win over Notre Dame while Penn State went for two points and got them and won over Missiouri 15 to 14 (they actually missed the two points but a penalty gave Penn State the second chance at the 1 and half yard line). Penn State howled about it but to no avail. After all they could have been in the Cotton Bowl but chose to have fun in the sun. Paterno was actually to blame because he could have put his foot down (football pun intended!) and took his team to the Cotton Bowl but they made a bad error in judgement. In fact Pennsylvania senators and politicians howled about that for a long time. At the time I wished they had howled about the Vietnam War where young men were being killed and wounded but I guess football was more important to them than the lives of our young men.

[TOPS1435]

Hard to compete with a story like that one, but my story comes from a January 1 strikingly different from today. A girl friend had been given 4 Cotton Bowl tickets by her father for a Chrstmas present. She invited my cousin whom she was dating and me to join her and a blind date for me to go to the game.

It was New Years, 1958 or 59, I think 59 without having a list in front of me. The opponents were the new Air Force Academy and TCU. None of us especially followed either team, which just looked forward to a special day in the big city.

New Years dawn sunny but with 3-4 inches of snow on the ground!!! The roads were fairly clear, so off to Dallas we headed. that was the era when girls wore skirts regardless of weather and we had not yet discovered the advantages of high top boots in such conditions. I also insistently worn the white leather jacket which had been my prize Christmas present. Quite the in thing to wear that year!!

My mother packed us a picnic lunch we could eat in the car before the game. To accomodate the New Year, she created marinated black eye peas fully 20 years before I saw my first serving of "Texas Caviar" for us to enjoy.

We were on the upper deck and by the second half were standing on a layer of 1" of ice from by our compacting the snow as we got up and down. The game was a scoreless tie. We spent much of the third quarter watching a young falcon sit on the top of the Hall of State. It had flown their during halftime demonstrations when the crowd noises frightened it. We never knew if the trainers got it down from its perch.

For four 16-18 year olds, it was a wonderful day.

[LH Panther Mom]

At the 1995 Cotton Bowl, the last year the Southwest Conference winner automatically played, there was a 3-way tie for first place. Texas Tech was the team selected to represent the SWC, since they had the longest period of time to not play on the Cotton Bowl (1939) and had never represented the SWC.

Hubby bought tickets for the two of us and my middle brother. Unfortunately, USC was the opponent & we got thumped 55-14. This was the early years of tortillas & some of the fans sitting around us almost got in a fight with a couple of Trojan cheerleaders over them.

On the way home to Lubbock, we stopped in Bridgeport for gas. There was a guy in the convenience store who commented on the final score & said he was feeling really bad for us over the horrendous point spread, but then he started thinking back and realized he was on the UT coaching staff when they had a worse loss at the Cotton Bowl - 46-3 in '91.

[Bullaholic]

I remember the 1957 Cotton Bowl Game between TCU and Syracuse. I was 10 years old at the time, and my brother was going to TCU. TCU won 28-27 in a really great game. Syracuse had a pretty good running back that year----let's see---his name was---oh, yea---Jim Brown.