In the last blog I wrote about the demise of the great Southwest Conference. To me that was the National Championship because as a kid I hardly knew that any other teams existed. I did mention that the Southwest Conference Champs always played another great team in the Cotton Bowl. Out of concern for one of my blog readers, I want to mention that one of those great teams to play in the Cotton Bowl was the Nebraska Cornhuskers who played in 1965 and 1974. The other foreign team that made many appearances was Notre Dame. They were also great.

The first Cotton Bowl was in 1937 and the Southwest Conference team was TCU featuring the great Slinging Sammy Baugh, who was born in Temple, Texas. UT and A&M have made the greatest number of appearances. Not only is the Southwest Conference now history, so is the Cotton Bowl. The game is now played in Cowboy Stadium.

As a kid I didn’t even know pro football existed. There was no TV and not one single team from Texas or the South, so I had no way of knowing. I had several football heroes as a kid. The football I owned had a printed autograph of Sid Luckman. Someone told me he was a great quarterback for the Chicago Bears but I had no ideal who the Chicago Bears were. My other heroes were Doak Walker of SMU and Bobby Lane of UT. Both of those guys played together at Highland Park High School in Dallas. Other heroes were Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis of Army. I also knew that Army and Navy had teams but that was about the extent of it. All of these heroes went on to play pro ball but I lost track of them because pro ball didn’t exist in my world. It was later that I learned of the curse of Bobby Lane on the Detroit Lions. After being a star for Detroit they traded him and he said that the Lions wouldn’t win another championship in 50 years. He has been right, it is one of the losing teams of pro ball and they have never been to a Super Bowl.

That’s about it for me and football. I have now completely lost interest and don’t care about a bunch of millionaire jailbirds playing between commercials on TV. I do want to go on record saying that the Nebraska Cornhuskers is a great foreign team.