Dallas entrepreneur J. Curtis Sanford founded the Cotton Bowl Classic in 1937. As he sat among the fans watching SMU battle Stanford in the 1936 Rose Bowl, the thought occurred to him that Dallas deserved a bowl game of its own. It became Sanford's dream to stage a college football event as big as Texas every New Year's Day. A wealthy oilman, he dipped into his own financial reserves to fund the game, and in less than a year's time Sanford's dream came true and the Cotton Bowl was born.