My favorite Cotton-Bowl-at-the-Cotton-Bowl memory?

That’s easy. I didn’t even see it.

Indeed, I was there on New Year’s Day, 1986, when the great Bo Jackson of Auburn turned a simple screen pass into a 73-yard touchdown for one of the Cotton Bowl classic’s most unforgettable plays. It proved to be the highlight of an otherwise one-sided 36-16 Texas A&M victory.

But I never saw it.

The old Cotton Bowl, you see — the pre-1994, pre-World-Cup-refurbished stadium — had a cramped, corrugated tin press box that featured one — and only one — lavatory. Which meant that the entire media corps, whether you were Lindsey Nelson or Cotton impresario “Hoss” Brock himself, had to wait in line.

I heard the stadium’s public address announcer say, “Bo Jackson … for the touchdown …”

The crowd was still buzzing when I returned to my press box seat and asked, semi-innocently, “Did I miss anything?”

Ah, the memories.

They can move the game, but the memories are going to linger.

Memories such as Dicky Maegle’s run and the 1979 Joe Montana comeback and Sammy Baugh, Doak Walker, Ernie Davis, Roger Staubach and all the other college football greats who played in the stadium when the Cotton Bowl was king.

When the Texas Tech Red Raiders and Ole Miss Rebels walked off the playing field Friday, an era that spanned more than seven decades passed.

“The feeling is absolutely bittersweet,” Cotton Bowl president Rick Baker said on the eve of the game. “This is my 21st Cotton Bowl as an employee, and you can’t help but feel a little sad and melancholy.

“We are certainly excited about the future and what the new stadium will provide for our game. But we really worked hard to close this final chapter of our history in a way that brings dignity in the right way to our home of 73 years.”

Some Dallas city council members and former mayors might disagree, but the Cotton Bowl had no choice but to announce in February 2007 that it would be moving in 2010 to the Dallas Cowboys’ new stadium in Arlington. Without a new stadium, its future as a meaningful bowl would have been placed in jeopardy. And without announcing that it was moving, the Cotton Bowl organization would have been inviting some other group — the Fort Worth bowl? — to move into the new stadium and begin wooing the BCS.

Simply put, the Cotton was tired of being a second-tier bowl.

How it got relegated to non-BCS status could fill a book. The NCAA probations that befell Southwest Conference schools in the 1980s were probably the first domino to topple. The Fiesta Bowl’s precociousness was another.

But in today’s bowl climate, good games seldom inhabit bad playing sites. The Cotton Bowl was aging and uncomfortable, with poor locker room facilities and dubious parking accommodations.

And then there was that Montana and chicken-soup thing.

“Our Achilles’ heel has been the perception of us being a bad-weather site,” Baker said. “You and I know that the weather here on New Year’s Day can be beautiful. But unfortunately, some of our best and most classic games have been bad-weather games.”