re: Guys coming back?

The Cotton was one of the major bowls until the Big 12 was created. Don't really care that it wasn't a so called NY6 for the 2012 season when it became one the a little over a year later Considering the ranking of the teams involved and the star power on the field it was functionally a NY6 that season. Also, a big game is a big game. If there was a NY6 that had a team w/a mediocre record in it I wouldn't consider it a big game anymore like when a 6-4-1 Notre Dame made the Fiesta Bowl in 1995. It was a Bowl Alliance game but ND was shite and shouldn't have been there. A forced label doesn't mean much at the end of the day. Kind of like how I'm never going to called our Peach Bowl the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. Was it technically that name in our year? Sure. But it was still the Peach Bowl.