The 1999 Southwestern Bell Cotton Bowl Classic was a post-season college football game played on January 1, 1999. It pitted the

Texas Longhorns The Texas Longhorns are the athletic teams representing the University of Texas at Austin. The teams are sometimes referred to as the Horns and take their name from Longhorn cattle that were an important part of the development of Texas, and a ...

against the

Southeastern Conference The Southeastern Conference (SEC) is an American college athletic conference whose member institutions are located primarily in the South Central and Southeastern United States. Its fourteen members include the flagship public universities o ...

(SEC) West champions

Mississippi State Bulldogs Mississippi State Bulldogs is the name given to the athletic teams of Mississippi State University, in Mississippi State, Mississippi. The university is a founding member of the Southeastern Conference and competes in NCAA Division I. Sports sp ...

. This was the first Cotton Bowl Classic broadcast by Fox. This game was the first time Texas had reached the post-season since the 1996 season. It was the first bowl game for Texas under new head coach Mack Brown. Texas had compiled an 8–3 season record. Meanwhile, Mississippi State had compiled an 8–3 regular season record under head coach

Jackie Sherrill Jackie Wayne Sherrill (born November 28, 1943) is a former American football player and coach. He was the head football coach at Washington State University (1976), the University of Pittsburgh (1977–1981), Texas A&M University (1982–1988), a ...

. They won the SEC West division title before falling to

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

, 24–14, in the SEC Championship game. The loss knocked them to 8–4 coming into the bowl game. Behind the rushing of

Ricky Williams Errick Miron (born Errick Lynne Williams Jr.; May 21, 1977) is an American former football running back who played 11 seasons in the National Football League (NFL) and one season in the Canadian Football League (CFL). After playing baseball ...

, who was declared the Heisman Trophy and

Doak Walker Ewell Doak Walker II (January 1, 1927 – September 27, 1998) was an American football player. He played college football as a halfback at Southern Methodist University (SMU), where he won the Heisman Trophy in 1948. Walker then played professio ...

award winner a few days before, Texas raced to a 14–3 lead by

halftime In several team sports, matches are played in two halves. Half-time (also written halftime or half time) is the name given to the interval between the two halves of the match. Typically, after half-time, teams swap ends of the field of play in ...

. They scored 24 unanswered points in the third quarter en route to a 38–11 victory. It was Texas's first bowl game win since the

1994 Sun Bowl The 1994 Sun Bowl was a college football bowl game played on December 29, 1994. The game pitted the unranked Texas Longhorns against the No. 19 North Carolina Tar Heels. The Tar Heels were led by eventual Texas head coach Mack Brown. The game was ...

, and their first 9-win season as a

Big 12 The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its f ...

team (Texas had left the

Southwest Conference The Southwest Conference (SWC) was an NCAA Division I college athletic conference in the United States that existed from 1914 to 1996. Composed primarily of schools from Texas, at various times the conference included schools from Oklahoma ...

and joined the

at the start of the 1996 season). It was also Texas's first New Year's Day bowl win since the . It was also the first Cotton Bowl Classic on

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

References

External links

1999 Cotton Bowl Recap: Texas 38, Mississippi State 11
Cotton Bowl Classic

Cotton Bowl Classic The Cotton Bowl Classic (also known as the Cotton Bowl) is an American college football bowl game that has been held annually in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex since January 1, 1937. The game was originally played at its namesake stadium i ...

Texas Longhorns football bowl games Mississippi State Bulldogs football bowl games January 1999 sports events in the United States 1999 in sports in Texas 1990s in Dallas 1999 in Texas {{Collegefootball-bowl-stub