This story appeared in the 2025 College Football Playoff Semifinal at the 89th Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic Official Game Program
 
Walking toward the main gate at Cotton Bowl Stadium, Charlie Fiss and his Cotton Bowl Athletic Association co-workers realized something was falling on the asphalt around them.
 
With it being nearly midnight, they struggled to identify what was dropping out of the sky and pinging off the ground.
 
"So we hightailed it into the press box elevator," Fiss said.
 
They found out later that what they heard were bullets or shrapnel. It was New Year's Eve and people around Fair Park were shooting guns in the air to celebrate.
 
The thing is, New Year's Eve is also Cotton Bowl Eve, and on this particular night, Fiss, then the Classic's Vice President of Communications, and the rest of the CBAA staff feared they might have a bunch of proverbial bullets to dodge.
 
It was Y2K.
 
With the start of the 2000s and the coming of the new millennium, there was speculation and alarm that a problem with the coding of computerized systems might wreak havoc
around the world. Some feared massive failures of everything from the banking system to the electric grid when the calendar flipped from Dec. 31, 1999, to Jan. 1, 2000.
 
One of the first big events in the United States on that New Year's Day would be the Cotton Bowl Classic. Arkansas vs. Texas. 10 a.m. Central Standard Time.
 
"And we were concerned about what was going to happen," Fiss said. "The whole world was. Computers were going to stop and all that.
 
"We were trying to be proactive."
 
The result: a night spent sleeping in the press box. On this 25th anniversary of the Y2K Cotton Bowl Classic, it is fitting to rewind on a little-known story.
 
It is wacky. It is weird. Even the folks involved with it laugh about it now.
 
But in the months leading up to Y2K, it wasn't a laughing matter.
 
Some referred to the potential issue as the Year 2000 bug or
the millennium bug, but the heart of the issue was a computer programmer shortcut. Until the 1990s, many programs abbreviated four-digit years to two digits in hopes of saving memory space.
 
Computers, for example, recognized 97 as 1997 and 99 as 1999. Would they recognize 00 as 2000? Or would they interpret that as 1900?
 
Repairing or replacing software in affected computers became a global focus, something Fred Gruhn experienced firsthand. He finished college about a year before Y2K, and one of his first post-graduation job offers was a six-month project preparing a company in St. Louis for Y2K.
 
Well-versed in the field of information technology, Gruhn became an invaluable consultant as a member of the Classic's media operations team.
 
The potential impacts of Y2K became a regular topic of conversation and preparation as the staff readied for game day, but it wasn't until a week or so before the game that Gruhn
remembers hearing talk that some of the staff was considering sleeping in the press box the night before. They just wanted to make sure everything was OK.
 
"I'm just kind of shaking my head at first," Gruhn said.
 
He knew computers used for everything from in-game statistics to postgame quotes might be affected, but sleeping in the press box? After setting up at the stadium the day before the game, Gruhn remembers being back at the hotel heading to his room and asking one of his co-workers if they were actually going to stay overnight.
 
"Yeah," Gruhn was told. "Absolutely."
 
"All right," Gruhn said. "Sign me up."
 
The plan was for Fiss, Gruhn and four other staffers to leave early from the bowl's swanky New Year's Eve gala at the Hyatt Regency Dallas, drive over to Fair Park and check the press box computers once the clock struck midnight.
 
How long they'd need to make sure everything was OK was anyone's guess. But even if it was a quick job, no one was all that excited about driving back across the Metroplex to the media hotel just after midnight on New Year's Eve.
 
Seemed like it could be a good time for something bad to happen. Plus, with kickoff at 10 a.m., the media operations staff would need to be back in the press box by 7 a.m. at the latest.
 
"So by the time we figured out if the computers were OK and we drove back to Las Colinas," Fiss said, "Well, we'd probably sit down for 30 minutes and get back up and head back out there for the game."
 
Sleeping in the press box wasn't a great option, but it seemed like the best one. Darlene Irwin, the Cotton Bowl Classic's coordinator of press box operations, even took blankets and pillows to the stadium.
 
As the clock struck midnight, the lights at the stadium stayed on.
 
A good sign.
 
Gruhn started powering up the laptops and desktops the media ops team had in the press box, and he quickly verified that they were functioning properly.
 
Another good sign.
 
Other bowl staffers checked on the phones (landlines were still widely used), the electrical, the water and even the scoreboards.
 
Everything checked out.
 
"It didn't take us long after the stroke of midnight, as I remember it, to determine that we were A-OK," Fiss said.
 
Gruhn said, "We figured out the world's not going to end; now we gotta figure out sleeping arrangements."
 
It wasn't all fun and games at the traditional New Year's Eve party for the Cotton Bowl Classic's media operations team.
 
The year 2000 was celebrated at 11 p.m., and then it was off to the stadium to await the bewitching midnight hour.
 
Long rectangular tables skirted with fabric became prime options — the draping might keep out light and sound.
 
Or not.
 
Around 2 or 3 a.m., voices filled in the press box. Then all the lights turned on, waking up everyone.
 
"There's a cleaning crew that comes through, and it's coming through at 3 a.m.," Gruhn said. "They're vacuuming all the carpets. They're wiping everything down. We had no idea that there was a Fair Park cleaning crew coming in at that time.
 
"This is all kind of new to us. We've never stayed the night at the stadium before."
 
The cleaners eventually finished and left the press box crew in peace, but not long after, there were more voices. This time, it was a security detail doing a sweep of the facility, complete with bomb-sniffing dogs.
 
They, too, finished eventually.
 
"And just as we fell asleep again," Fiss said, "here comes the catering crew, and they're moving tables, setting up tables, putting out all their things to serve to 200 or 300 media.
 
"Finally we decided, we're not going to get any sleep because before long, the rest of our media operations crew would come rolling in because of the early kickoff."
 
Showering was out of the question. Even though someone suggested the showers in the locker rooms, everyone opted instead to change and attempt to freshen up in the press
box bathrooms.
 
Soon, the rest of the staff arrived, followed by media covering the game, and few if any of them knew that the press box had been used as sleeping quarters only a few hours earlier.
Everything went off without a hitch, even the game, won by Arkansas 27-6.
 
"It was almost a letdown," said James Smith, who works on the media operations staff and is also the Cotton Bowl Classic's lead photographer.
 
"Just because of all the prep you'd done, you wanted something to not go right just so you could say, 'OK, we were ready for it.'"
 
He chuckled.
 
"But I don't recall anything not working that day."
 
One crazy thing did happen, though. With the game almost over, one of the press box staff members approached Fiss a bit breathless with excitement.
 
"Charlie, Charlie, the President is on the phone?" she said.
 
"The president of what?" Fiss asked.
 
"Of the United States of America."
 
"What does he want?"
 
"I don't know. Maybe you should go talk to him."
 
By the time Fiss got to the phone, President Clinton had hung up, but Fiss later found out the President, a noted fan of the Razorbacks, was trying to make sure he could talk to
Arkansas coach Houston Nutt after the game.
 
The two did connect, despite Fiss's slow initial reaction time.
 
"We were all kind of delirious from being up so long," he said.
 
The night in the press box might seem a bit crazy now — Y2K has been pushed to the backs of memories and the pages of history — but the Cotton Bowl Classic staff was ready. Fiss, who used to drive routes and provide detailed turn-by-turn directions for visiting teams in the pre-GPS era, admits he believes in redundancy. He thinks it comes from growing up when the space program was taking off.
 
"They always had the backup to the backup to the backup," he said. "We felt like 98% sure things were going to be good. But the whole world was hoping that. We just didn't know. And we wanted to make sure if there was a problem, we were prepared to react."
 
Still, there was a running joke among the staff after the Y2K game.
 
"What would we have done if the computers and the electricity were all out? What are five or six people in the press box gonna do?"
 
They never had to answer those questions. Instead, they came away with Classic memories like no other.
 
"We thought we had the perfect plan: Determine the computers are OK, crawl under the tables and then six hours later, let's play football," Fiss said. "That didn't happen."
 
But …
 
"We had a memorable slumber party."