Cotton Bowl officials have stadium decision to make in March
By CHUCK CARLTON
The Dallas Morning News
February 21, 2007For the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic, the world changed two years ago.
A New Year's Day tradition since 1937, the bowl suddenly realized that its place in college football was anything but secure. Houston and glitzy top-of-the-line Reliant Stadium emerged as a real threat to claim the Cotton Bowl's teams.
Officials learned that a storied past and a sterling reputation might not be enough to maintain a place in the bowl hierarchy. A slip to second-tier status would have been a major blow to the game's prestige, one from which it might never have recovered.
The lessons have stayed with the bowl and made it reach hard decisions, including a $500,000 obligation if it does not move to the Cowboys' new stadium by 2010.
The Cotton Bowl Classic board continues to face difficult decisions. By the end of March, the board is expected to vote on a recommendation to move from its namesake Dallas home to the Cowboys' new stadium in Arlington.
"For the first time, it really opened our eyes that it was a real threat," Cotton Bowl president Rick Baker said. "The danger of losing our picks, and quite frankly, a great deal of our stature in the bowl community, was a real one."
In 2005, Cotton Bowl officials thought they were in routine negotiations to extend their contract with the Big 12 and Southeastern conferences. While they understood that the bowl world had become more competitive, especially with new stadiums like Reliant, nothing prepared them for what they heard during a meeting with Big 12 officials in May 2005 at the D-FW Airport Hyatt Regency.
At a meeting with Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg and several Big 12 athletics directors, a small group of Cotton Bowl officials discovered that Houston was making a major pitch for their teams. The Cotton Bowl was guaranteed the first Big 12 selection and the second SEC pick after the Bowl Championship Series.
Houston offered a retractable roof, lavish amenities and revenue streams that allowed it to offer payouts of $1 million per team each year.
Everything from the game experience to the climate control to the money favored the striking steel-and-glass construction. No longer would schools have to worry about cold or ice or cramped fan conditions in a stadium built during the Great Depression.
Baker remembers thinking it was "a watershed moment" as he left with Cotton Bowl board executives Gayle Earls and Fin Ewing III and board attorney Mike Baggett.
The feeling was similar on the other side.
"It was a different world for the Cotton Bowl Classic than it had faced before," said Oklahoma's Joe Castiglione, one of the Big 12 athletics directors who attended the meeting.
The Cotton Bowl immediately checked with people in the college football and bowl communities to see if Houston really was a legitimate threat. Maybe the Big 12 was merely trying to get a larger payout as part of the negotiating process.
Take Houston very seriously, the Cotton Bowl was told.
"It was a very competitive landscape," said Derrick Fox, president and CEO of San Antonio's Alamo Bowl. Houston "took a very serious run at moving up and targeted those bids. They were very aggressive in going after that spot."
SMG-Reliant officials did not return phone calls seeking comment. Reliant had made no secret of its attempt to land marquee games, having made a try in 2003 for the annual Texas-Oklahoma football game. The SMG-Reliant management company had a new stadium and a desire to get as many big events as possible.
David Bradley, manager of the Reliant-based Texas Bowl, said he wants to run the best bowl possible, develop a solid reputation and improve its selection position in the next negotiations.
For the conferences and the Cotton Bowl, it was serious business.
"We're always interested in trying to maximize the dollars associated with these games," the Big 12's Weiberg said. "That's part of how we grow revenue with our members and part of how we pay the expenses to cover all bowl opportunities."
Weiberg wondered how much the negotiations served as a Cotton Bowl catalyst for future stadium improvements and a possible move to Arlington.
"I think there has been a long-term interest on the part of the Cotton Bowl folks for being in the mix for the Bowl Championship Series," Weiberg said. "I personally believe there is more to it than the position they have with the conference currently."
I think perhaps that last negotiation was a factor in considering how the bowl can make improvements, but I don't think it was necessarily the only factor."
Certainly, it forced the Cotton Bowl to scramble during the two months remaining in the negotiating process.
"At that point, we realized that we really needed to dig deep [on] where we were going to go from here and what was going to be our future," Baker said.
Baker said the Cotton Bowl took "a leap of faith" to continue to keep its teams and bowl position.
Even though the Cotton Bowl had maximized the revenue from the aging stadium, it agreed to increase its payout per team from $3 million to $3.5 million
And as part of the contract, if the game has not relocated to the Cowboys' new stadium by 2010, it must pay an extra $500,000. Baker likened it to a balloon payment in a mortgage.
"Things were changing, and we needed to be very aggressive," Baker said.
Asked if he would feel comfortable going into the next negotiations without any changes to the Classic, Baker hedged.
"Some might say the stadium situation has hindered our efforts to remain competitive in the college football postseason landscape," Baker said. "We've learned through this last negotiation that history and tradition will only take you so far."
