Just to clarify for Utee:
I acknowledge and respect the Cotton Bowl's history. There have been some really great Cotton Bowls over the years. Also, it appears that the Cotton Bowl is now trending back up so twenty years from now they may well be one of the biggest bowls in the Country again. My posts about the Cotton Bowl are only in reference to the "last twenty years" time-frame established by the first post on the subject. In THAT time-frame specifically, the Cotton Bowl (as I have demonstrated) has been largely irrelevant. They lost their SWC tie-in and were not part of the BCS so they missed out on the highly ranked teams for most of that period.
The SWC's decline and eventual dissolution led to the Cotton Bowl's decline. They went from hosting a major conference Champion and frequently being in the NC discussion to hosting a B12 also-ran against either a WAC Champion or a PAC or SEC also-ran. That just doesn't match up with the Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, and Rose Bowls.
