The fall and rise of the Cotton Bowl

DALLAS – Dan Novakov has had a unique view of the rise and fall of the Cotton Bowl Classic.

As a football player at Notre Dame in the early 1970s, he helped take the annual New Year's Day game from a southern staple to a national attraction.

He watched its fall from grace as it got bypassed for the Bowl Championship System and returned to its regional roots.

And Novakov, a North Texas attorney, now presides over the Cotton Bowl as it rejoins its peers among the bowl elites again.

"Here we are," its new chairman proclaimed Wednesday, "we're back."

And Michigan State, Cotton Bowl officials feel, will provide an immediate national boost to its revival.

Glorious past

The Spartans and home state Baylor meet today at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, in a game which historically was on par with the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl among college football's major New Year's Day games.

The Cotton Bowl typically pitted the best of the old Southwest Conference against the best of the Southeastern Conference, usually the first game in a full afternoon and evening of college football. It now is one of the top six bowl games in the new College Football Playoffs.

"That was the game — there was a lot of Oklahoma versus Arkansas or whoever they were playing in those games," MSU coach Mark Dantonio recalled of the Cotton Bowls from his childhood. "I think it was a tremendous venue, and it was a national game and it was a game that everybody looked at on New Year's Day. That's just the history of it."

Then the Bowl Alliance, followed by the BCS for nearly 20 years, arrived in the 1990s. Things changed.

Venerable old Cotton Bowl stadium had become antiquated by modern standards by then. Dallas' unpredictable winter weather — an ice storm is predicted for New Year's Day this year — sometimes impacted play. Joe Montana battled both the flu and freezing rain in Notre Dame's 1979 win over Houston in one of the most memorable games in Cotton Bowl history.

Both factors caused BCS officials to gravitate toward warm-weather climates, stationing its major bowl games at the Rose (Pasadena, Calif.), Orange (Miami), Sugar (New Orleans) and Fiesta (Glendale, Ariz.).

From 1995 until this year, the Cotton Bowl was in the cold.

"We were really devastated when we were left out of the BCS and kind of in a no-man's land where we were trying to figure out our future," former Cotton Bowl chairman Tommy Bain said.

Yet as the old saying goes, "Don't mess with Texas." The Lone Star State would find its answer — in the helmet with one big, blue star on it.

Leaving town

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones got the rights to build a new stadium for his NFL team in 2005. Cotton Bowl Classic officials saw it as their chance to return to the spotlight.

"It didn't take us long to say, 'Well, this is the hand we've been dealt. We've gotta get to work to recapture the Cotton Bowl,'" Bain said. "We made a decision to move to that facility before he ever announced it. We knew that was the last piece to our puzzle. … From that moment on, it really kicked up our vision and efforts to get back to whatever the future was going to be."

The new stadium, an opulent 80,000-seat palace with a retractable roof, is in Arlington, 20 miles from Dallas. It opened in 2009 and the first Cotton Bowl Classic was played there on Jan. 1, 2010. That, despite renovations to the old Cotton Bowl stadium in 1994 and 2008. Progressives and traditionalists in Dallas clashed over the change.

"Some of our people do not like going out there (to Arlington)," said Roland Rainey, general manager of the Cotton Bowl Stadium — now home to the Zaxby's Heart of Dallas Bowl and a number of international soccer events. "They want their traditional part of it. And then there are others who've enjoyed it."

The move, however, proved to be one of the big reasons the Cotton Bowl Classic got back into the mix with the College Football Playoffs. It will rotate as one of six hosts (with the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Orange and Peach bowls) for the semifinals in the four-team playoff.

And almost as a welcome back present, Dallas and Arlington get two great games at AT&T Stadium this year — the MSU-Baylor contest and the first national title game under the new format, to be played on Jan. 12.

"I think it's gonna be a good game, too. This is the kind of game we want to see in Texas," said Earl "Coach" Thompson, a youth coach in Dallas who mentored former Michigan star William Carr as a kid. "I know Jerry has done a phenomenal job, and my hat is off to him for what he's done for Dallas and the Metroplex. But I'm also partial to the old Cotton Bowl, and I loved to see those games come in."

'Stock being rebuilt'

Texas holds tradition near and dear. And the Cotton Bowl remains cemented as the biggest college football event to the locals. But the renewed sense of optimism around the game is resonating in Dallas.

"Now that they've moved over to AT&T Stadium, they can see the stock being rebuilt," said Rick Gosselin, a sports columnist from The Dallas Morning News, a Detroit native and a 1972 MSU alumnus. "Everybody wants to come to this stadium, and the Cotton Bowl has this stadium."

MSU gets additional exposure now as being part of the first batch of six games under the new playoff system and another chance to finish the year as a definitive top 10 program.

It also brings its brand to the fertile football recruiting grounds in talent-rich Texas.

What the Spartans provide the Cotton Bowl is a big-name draw from a non-traditional area in its first year back in the rotation.

Only one Big Ten team before MSU (Ohio State in 1987) has played in the Cotton Bowl.

While the venue has changed over the years, that chance to restore some of its lost luster has arrived. And with the green and white of the Spartans, it's like a new cotton plant blooming from the ground.

"The Michigan State people have been great," Novakov said. "And I think the Big Ten exposure to that experience and them talking about it, other Big Teams are gonna want to come here. I think it's mutually beneficial to both of us to have this matchup."

Cotton Bowl

Who: No. 8 Michigan State (10-2) vs. No. 5 Baylor (11-1)

Where: AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas

When: 12:30 p.m. today

TV: ESPN

Radio: Spartan Sports Network

Today's other bowl games

Outback Bowl

Auburn (8-4) vs. Wisconsin (10-3)

When: Noon

Where: Tampa, Fla.

TV: ESPN2

Citrus Bowl

Missouri (10-3) vs. Minnesota (8-4)

When: 1 p.m.

Where: Orlando, Fla.

TV: ABC

Rose Bowl

Oregon (12-1) vs. Florida State (13-0)

When: 5 p.m.

Where: Pasadena, Calif.

TV: ESPN

Sugar Bowl

Alabama (12-1) vs. Ohio State (12-1)

When: 8:30 p.m.

Where: New Orleans

TV: ESPN