Cotton Bowl naming rights: The city is ready to sign someone up

This day has been creeping closer and closer for the past few years, and finally the city has decided it's time to bring in some money by attempting to sell naming rights to the Cotton Bowl — this courtesy of the Dallas Observer. The city says the "Cotton Bowl" aspect of the name must remain as part of any deal (i.e., it will be the Federal Express Cotton Bowl rather than the FedEx Bowl), and it's casting about for a 10-year deal in the neighborhood of $500,000 to $1 million annually. Apparently, the city isn't concerned that the Cotton Bowl game itself is moving to Jerry Jones' Arlington palace in 2010 and the Texas-OU game is only signed through 2015. Additionally, the city council and the landmark commission will have to sign off on any proposed deal, so this whole thing is likely to take a long time and become kind of messy. On the other hand, it might not happen: We wrote about the city looking for naming rights on the Fair Park Esplanade fountains in April and haven't heard any further developments on that front.