National Hockey League Lights The Lamp At Cotton Bowl Stadium

The historic Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas, Texas is the site of the 2020 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic on New Year’s Day between the Dallas Stars and the Nashville Predators.

A classic contest deserves a classic atmosphere, and the 12th NHL Winter Classic promises to add to the storied history at the trademarked Cotton Bowl. The outdoor hockey and entertainment extravaganza is reportedly sold out at the ninth-largest football stadium in the country.

In March, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said at the host-site press conference, “The 2018 NHL Draft in this city was such a success that we couldn’t stay away when given the opportunity to come back.”

Bettman continued, “Come January 1st, 2020, you are not going to believe what this iconic stadium is going to look like. There are very few places in sports as synonymous with New Year’s Day as the Cotton Bowl.”

Cotton Bowl Stadium is located in Fair Park, which is designated a National Historic Landmark and a Texas State Antiquities Landmark. As part of the Dallas Park and Recreation system, Fair Park today spans 277 acres, and possesses one of the largest exposition-era collections of Art Deco architecture anywhere in the world.

Described as the most visited attraction in Texas, more than 5.3 million people visit Fair Park annually, attending its 1,200 special events, sports, concerts and performances — and of course, the State Fair of Texas, which got its start on these same grounds back in 1886 on 80 acres of land owned by the Dallas State Fair and Exposition Association.

By 1904, after a merger and a subsequent name change, and a fire and financial woes, the Texas State Fair deeded the property to the City of Dallas under a win-win arrangement. In exchange for the grounds as a park, the City would pay off the outstanding debt and allow the State Fair board to run the annual exhibition for a percentage of receipts.

In 1921, a football field was built with a wooden, 15,000-seat stadium. After a decade of signaling the bright future for football at the fairgrounds, Dallas and the State Fair planned for a more substantial stadium.

In his book Fair Park (Arcadia Publishing, 2010), author Willis Cecil Winters wrote about the origins of a concrete, single-tier stadium for football and multi-purpose use, at a cost of $328,200. “Architect Mark Lemmon designed a bowl, partially recessed in the ground, with a 46-foot-high landscaped embankment that completely encircled the field. The seating capacity was 46,200, making it the largest stadium in the South. Construction began in May 1930, with the official groundbreaking taking place in the center of the racetrack infield.”

A few years later, when State leaders selected Fair Park to host the $25 million World’s Fair at the Texas Centennial Exposition of 1936, followed by the Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition of 1937, more improvements were made to the young stadium under the guidance of the Centennial’s lead architect and visionary George Dahl.

As luck and ingenuity would have it, remodeling the stadium for the World’s Fair fortuitously took on greater significance thanks to one Texan in particular, J. Curtis Sanford. After having attended the 1936 Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, California, Sanford — an entrepreneur in oil, real estate and sports — formed the idea for a comparable New Year’s college football game to be hosted in Dallas.

Sanford advocated for city leaders to rename Fair Park Stadium to the Cotton Bowl, and he organized the event in time for the collegiate matchup on January 1, 1937 between Texas Christian University and Marquette University. Sanford funded the first four Cotton Bowl championships, after which he assigned the rights over to the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association. The Cotton Bowl Classic was played on New Year’s Day in Fair Park through the year 2009, before moving to the then-Cowboys Stadium, now AT&T Stadium, in Arlington.

Throughout the 90-year history of Cotton Bowl Stadium, depending on the economy and the tenants, the seating capacity expanded, and later contracted, and then grew once more. Upper tiers on the east and west were added to the stadium in the late 1940s. In 2008, as part of $57 million in upgrades, the upper deck was expanded and made continuous, eliminating sectional voids for a full oval effect, and increasing the official seating capacity to 92,100.

In 2019, new video boards were unveiled at both end zones, plus a ribbon board system, all of which will enliven festivities for this New Year’s Day.

Cotton Bowl Stadium has served as home field for stretches of time for the likes of the Southern Methodist University Mustangs, the Dallas Texans and the Dallas Cowboys.

Music concerts have also taken place in the Cotton Bowl. In 1956, a young Elvis Presley drew 27,000 spectators to the venue, which up to that point was the largest attendance for an outdoor concert in the Lone Star state.

Even a fictional character, the oil baron himself, J.R. Ewing in a 1981 episode of the TV series Dallas, rolled into the stadium in his Mercedes to meet up with a nemesis near midfield on the Astro Turf of the Cotton Bowl. Had there been an NHL referee present for the crude exchange, J.R. and Dusty would’ve heard a whistle and a stern reminder, “Keep your sticks on the ice, gentlemen!”

Legacy athletic events at the Cotton Bowl attract much attention, like longstanding college football rivalries; there’s the Red River Showdown between the Texas Longhorns and the Oklahoma Sooners, who’ve squared off annually in Cotton Bowl Stadium since 1932; and, the Southwest Airlines State Fair Classic between the Prairie View A&M Panthers and the Grambling State Tigers.

The NHL Winter Classic arrives at the Cotton Bowl at a point in time of long-anticipated improvements, inclusion and green space at Fair Park. Voters recently passed a $50 million bond referendum for improvements, and work is underway. A master plan process has been reinitiated, too, with an eagerness for engagement and implementation. The new managing entity is Fair Park First, a nonprofit organization that will oversee operations and revitalization with its partners, while the City of Dallas retains ownership of the property. The mission is “to reestablish Fair Park as a place of activity, opportunity, and pride for all of Dallas and beyond.”

For this New Year’s holiday, Fair Park and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex have hockey and hospitality to celebrate.

This appointment-viewing television event will be broadcast live nationally at 1:00 p.m. Central Time on NBC in the U.S., and on Sportsnet and TVA Sports in Canada.

Drop the puck.