Back when the Cotton Bowl was home to Your Dallas Cowboys (File photo)
For now, at least, the Dallas Independent School District 2014 varsity football schedule shows Lincoln and James Madison high schools squaring off November 7 at Forester Field, the regular site of their annual rivalry game. Officially, though, that will change tomorrow: At 12:30 p.m. Wednesday city and DISD officials will gather on the steps of the Cotton Bowl to announce that this year’s game — the so-called “South Dallas Super Bowl” — is moving to the Cotton Bowl.
Council member Carolyn Davis, who went to Madison, publicly began pushing for the move back to the neighborhood — “the community,” as she puts it — in December, during a council committee briefing on the latest Cotton Bowl makeover that looks every penny of its $25-million price tag. Less than a year later she got what she wanted, thanks, she says, to her Park Board rep (Tiffinni Young), Park and Recreation Department Director Willis Winters, Fair Park Executive Director Daniel Huerta and DISD trustee Bernadette Nutall. Among the issues that needed resolving, she says: “making sure everything was in place, and making sure everyone was safe.” It didn’t take too long.
“We’ve been working with a number of people here at the city, and then both schools wanted to see it stay in the community,” she said Tuesday morning. “We’ve been having to go outside of the community for the South Dallas Super Bowl, but because Fair Park is in the heart of the South Dallas-Fair Park community I thought it would be fitting for that. We don’t ask Fair Park for a lot of things. That community minds its business when it comes to the park. But I thought it was right that this ‘super bowl,’ even though it’s a high school game, be at Fair Park. It’s going to be exciting. And it’s the right time to do it.”
And then some: The move to the Cotton Bowl comes just as Mayor Mike Rawlings’ Fair Park task force is suggesting turning over the park to a private nonprofit that might — might — better utilize the historic property. Bringing high school football back to the Cotton Bowl would be a significant win for Fair Park; after all, if it’s good enough for AT&T Stadium, where high school playoffs kick off the following week, it’s good enough for the most historic stadium in Dallas.
“From my understanding, the Park Department wants to look at doing more high school games there,” says Davis. “This will be the first to see if it’ll work. It used to happen at Texas Stadium, and they have them at Jerry’s stadium. It’s time for it.”
Of course, there have been high school games at the Cotton Bowl recently: As our Corbett Smith notes, the Cotton Bowl hosted two different weekends of playoff games two years ago, and is likely going to do so again in 2014, according to Mesquite ISD’s Steve Bragg. And high-schoolers played there, on and off, though the 2011 season.
Winters says the park department hopes to put as many high school games in the Cotton Bowl as possible in coming years, though that could be difficult during the three weeks when the State Fair of Texas takes over the fairgrounds.
“When I was a kid, it was exciting when you had the South Dallas Super Bowl,” says Davis. “It was fun. People were happy. The PTA was involved. These are all the things I am hoping will instill some pride in the community.”