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Ok, so in the 40's-70's, we played at the Cotton Bowl, big crowds blah blah blah, and then moved to Texas Stadium for the late 70's-80's.

1989, we come back from the DP playing at Ownby back on campus. Team is obviously bad, but we have an on-campus setup in a stadium that's more suitable for the crowds we drew. I think a couple of the 'big' games were played during the Fair at the Cotton Bowl, right?

Why in the mid-90's did SMU decide to go BACK to the Cotton Bowl for the full season? We hadn't shown much progress, the conference was about to fall apart, and we didn't need a 70,000+ seat stadium at that point, so I'm curious what the thinking was there. Just a couple years later, they announce the new Ford Stadium, and it opens in 2000. Was Ford planned as far back as 1994, and they wanted an off-campus stadium to allow for construction, etc?

Ownby was an emergency measure to get football back on campus and out of "Professional" Texas Stadium. It also only held 26,000 or so and with the west stands, the rest of the stadium was temporary bleachers; the offices and locker rooms were ancient and in bad shape. It was in no way a suitable stadium for a Div. I program (which I think the minimum stadium size is 30,000 and we got a special waiver to play there). It was never intended to be the long-term solution for where we played. I don't know when the idea for Ford on campus originated, but we could not have stayed playing at Ownby. I think Ownby also had some structural issues.

You may be right about requirements at the time, but FWIW there are currently 18 stadiums in FBS football that are smaller than 30k capacity. Idaho plays in a 16000 seat stadium.

In addition to Ownby getting to the point where it was unsuitable, I believe moving to a 30k+ stadium was part of the deal to join the WAC.

IIRC the WAC told us not to play in Ownby