Cotton Bowl Stadium: Where Texas and Oklahoma Come to Fight

Inside Fair Park, one structure stands apart from the Art Deco pavilions around it: Cotton Bowl Stadium, a ninety-two-thousand-seat colossus that has hosted some of the loudest and most contested sporting events in American history.

The stadium opened in nineteen thirty as Fair Park Stadium, originally built for the SMU Mustangs football program and seating just over forty-five thousand. It was renamed in nineteen thirty-six to honor the Cotton Bowl Classic, a new bowl game that began play on January first, nineteen thirty-seven. For the next seven decades, the Cotton Bowl Classic was one of the marquee postseason games in college football, playing out right here against the Dallas skyline.

But the game that truly defined the stadium is one played not in January, but in October: the Red River Showdown, also called the Red River Rivalry, between the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma. Played every fall during the State Fair of Texas, it is a neutral-site game that splits the stadium nearly evenly between burnt orange and crimson, generating a noise and intensity that makes it unlike almost any regular-season college football game in the country. The stadium has hosted this rivalry for decades, and its mid-State Fair timing means it unfolds amid funnel cakes, carnival rides, and the iconic Big Tex figure looming over the grounds.

The venue's history extends beyond football. Cotton Bowl Stadium hosted the nineteen sixty-seven NFL Championship game. Twenty-three Heisman Trophy winners have played on its grass. Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, and Willie Nelson have all performed here. In nineteen ninety-four, FIFA chose it as a venue for World Cup soccer matches.

The Cotton Bowl Classic itself moved to AT&T Stadium in Arlington in two thousand ten. But the stadium remains, hosting the Red River Showdown each fall and cementing its place as one of the true landmarks of American college football.