Cotton Bowl Plunges Into Potential Gold Mine

While the news of the current bowl system being replaced with a 4-team playoff continues to sink in, the bowl landscape is beginning to shift. The Cotton Bowl has been trying to break into the BCS as a top tier bowl but continued to sit just on the outside due to "weather concerns". What it needed was for something to give and give something did! As a new format was approved, the Cotton Bowl fell into a potential gold mine.

The process is far from over in selecting potential sites for the playoff system but it can be said that there have already been winners and losers in the mix. Over time, the Cotton Bowl continued to play host to several highly anticpated games until the move to partner with Cowboy Stadium came to fruition in 2010. Now, the Cotton Bowl certainly sits in the winners bracket as it's partnership with the Dallas Cowboys Franchise as well as Cowboy Stadium has positioned it well. This is a stadium with all the bells and whistles which lends itself to marking a prime destination for not only semi-final games but also the national championship as one of the six rotating sites.

The Cotton Bowl will make a push to be in the running to host the National Championship Game and will continue to make that its number one priority for 2014 which is when the current BCS system comes to an end. But if the Cotton Bowl does miss out, there is a consolation prize possibly waiting in the wings.

A few weeks ago it was announced that the Big XII and SEC would birth a January bowl on New Year's Day for five years beginning in 2014. Not only did this provide stability for the Big XII as a whole, but it will be one of the more anticipated match-ups year in and year out assuming that the Champions of each conference DO end up meeting in this game. However, the likelihood of this is fairly unlikely and appeared to be an attempt to keep the semi-final games out of the bowl system.

The bigger news is that, assuming the Cotton Bowl misses out on the playoff games, the Champions Bowl between the winner of the Big XII and winner of the SEC could fall to the Cotton Bowl. The other option would be a rotation between the Sugar Bowl and the Cotton Bowl for this newly formed "Champions Bowl" when the respective stadium is not hosting a semi-final. Either way, it is a win-win for Jerry World.

The bowl outlook will continue to change but it continues to tip in favor of the Cotton Bowl.