A Sun Bowl Story
by Cassandra Yardeni

On the northeast corner of North Mesa Street and Mills Avenue in Downtown stands the 80-year-old Cortez Building. In the lobby of the landmark building hangs a historical plaque whose inscription tells the tale of a rich and extraordinarily celebrated tradition in El Paso.

It all began on Thursday, Oct. 18, 1934, when a meeting of local Kiwanis Club officers and directors forever changed El Paso’s history. Convening in the Cortez Building (then Hotel Cortez), the group discussed means of raising money for the city’s Under-Privileged Child Fund. To generate revenue for the cause, Kiwanis Club Director Brice Schuller suggested a New Year’s Day football match-up between an El Paso all-city high school team and a worthy opponent. Luckily, the motion was unanimously approved and the first-ever Sun Bowl Game was born. Now, 74 years later, the annual event has become engrained in El Paso tradition and has emerged as the city’s largest money-maker and tourist attraction.

Of the club’s initiative, says Nancy Peters, El Paso’s Kiwanis Club secretary and treasure (and former president), “If it was not for our club and this board meeting that took place, the Sun Bowl may never have been started. It took a club with a vision and a desire to ‘Serve the Children of our Community’.”

After the initial conference, a committee was assembled to draft a winning strategy for the game. At a stag dinner the following Monday, area high school coaches, along with Bob Ingram, Sports Editor of the El Paso Herald-Post and Paxton Dent, El Paso Times Sports Editor, selected the most talented football players from El Paso, Austin, Bowie and Cathedral High Schools. Mack Saxon and Harry Phillips, football coaches for the Texas College of Mines (now UTEP), were chosen to coach the team.

As Peters explains, “After considerable correspondence and contacting the various high school teams in Texas and New Mexico, Ranger, Texas, was selected as our opponent.” As the 1934 runner-up for the Texas state football title, the Ranger High School Bulldogs were a well-suited rival for El Paso’s all-star team.

El Paso High School’s football stadium was chosen to host the game and the match-up was slated for Jan. 1, 1935.

Although the game-plan was set and preparations were well underway, the event lacked a catchy title comparable to California’s Rose Bowl. “It was decided to ask for public city-wide suggestions as to the name of this Annual Game,” says Peters. After leafing through countless submissions, the committee chose El Paso football enthusiast Dr. C.M. Hendricks’ proposal which paid tribute to the Sun City’s famously warm weather. The New Year’s game was officially christened “The Sun Bowl”. As Bob Ingram wrote in the 1935 Sun Bowl Football Program, “‘Sun Bowl’ was chosen as the name of the game, because its sponsors felt that it was most symbolic of El Paso’s chief stock and trade—sunshine.”

On a balmy New Year’s Day, eager fans packed the stands while the football players positioned themselves on the field. By all accounts, the game was an exciting one. Enjoying home-field advantage, the El Paso All-Stars trailed for a bit, then came from behind in the third quarter to defeat the Ranger Bulldogs in a 25 – 21 thriller.

The following year, the first collegiate Sun Bowl game was played and the rest, as we say, is history. In 1938, the game was moved to Kidd Field, a 15,000-seat stadium located on the Texas College of Mines campus. In 1963, the new 30,000-seat Sun Bowl Stadium welcomed the Bowl and was then expanded in 1982 to hold 51,000 spirited fans.

The resounding success of the first game led to the founding of the Sun Bowl Association, whose threefold purpose was to present an annual football attraction of national importance, promote the Borderland and generate tourist income for the area. A weeklong series of events known as the “Sun Carnival” would later become a part of the Sun Bowl custom.

Although the Sun Bowl Game has evolved from its humble beginnings to a multi-million dollar annual event, the game itself is still deeply rooted in early El Paso tradition. Echoing the words etched in the Cortez Building plaque, “From this modest start emerged the great southwestern Sun Carnival and the annual Sun Bowl Game.”