This story appeared in the 2025 College Football Playoff Semifinal at the 89th Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic Official Game Program
 
On Jan. 1, 1949, the Cotton Bowl Classic hosted a historic contest, marking the first appearance of a Heisman Trophy winner in the game as SMU, powered by Doak Walker, defeated Oregon, led by legendary gunslinger Norm Van Brocklin, 21-13.
 
A record crowd of 69,000 turned out to watch The Doaker, the hometown legend. But they also got another glimpse of history: the first appearance of the Kilgore College Rangerettes, a decade-old drill team from a junior college 120 miles east of Dallas, created by Gussie Nell Davis.
 
Outfitted in red tops, white hats and belts and blue skirts, fans were enthralled by their precision dance routine and legendary high kick line, with the Rangerettes' white boots meeting the brim of their hats.
 
The Rangerettes dazzled sportswriters who covered the game, with the Houston Post reporting: "They were the knockouts of the Cotton Bowl Classic between-half show at Dallas. They remind you of the Rockettes at Radio City, New York, except everybody knows no Broadway bunch of gals can rival our Texas plums."
 
After a star turn, the Sugar Bowl stole the Rangerettes away for a year in 1950, but the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association wouldn't let that mistake happen again. The next year, they signed an exclusive contract to return to Dallas, and they haven't missed a game since. They have become an iconic symbol of Americana in Texas' premier bowl game.
 
"They're synonymous with one another," said Charlie Fiss, the game's historian. "You think of the Rangerettes, you think of the Cotton Bowl Classic."
 
This year, the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic and the Kilgore Rangerettes — the first dance team to perform on a football field — are celebrating their 75th anniversary together, a unique partnership that no other bowl game can match. To mark the occasion, more than 700 members of the Rangerette Forevers, as alums are known, are dancing in the pregame show, including 93-year-old Betty Taylor, a member of the Rangerettes 11th line in 1951.
 
Rangerettes director Dana Blair is part of the lineage, performing in the 1982 and 1983 Cotton Bowl Classics before returning to work with the organization in 1987.
 
"I feel like I was there all 75," Blair joked. "I think it is classic Texas. It's football, it's red, white, and blue. We just know that we fit in there and I feel like we add to that bowl game. It's still one of the most special things that we do. The Cotton Bowl is very close to our heart because we've all been in it."
 
Every year, women from across the country descend on the small East Texas oilfield town, population 13,523, with dreams of wearing the iconic uniform. Now in their 85th year, the tradition and standard are the same. The only thing that's changed is the original knee-length skirt has gotten a little shorter.
 
Davis first started a dance team in her hometown of Greenville, Texas, called the Flaming Flashes. After getting her master's degree from the University of Southern California in 1938, Kilgore College dean B.E. Masters recruited Davis to come to Kilgore to solve two problems.
 
First, he hoped to boost female enrollment. Second, the boys were drinking and fighting under the stands at halftime, and Masters decided they needed somewhere to focus their attention. Davis signed up for the challenge and created the drill team that made her a legend.
 
"I never heard Miss Davis say that she got the idea from the Rockettes," Blair said. "She wanted to dance her whole life, and her parents wouldn't let her because they were Baptist. She was asked to create something to keep the fans in the stands during halftime. And that's what she did."
 
Davis ran a tight ship and nothing would change their precision routines. Rain or shine, the Rangerettes performed, including their famous jump splits. And a yearly bowl game on New Year's Day posed some weather challenges.
 
Pam Phinny of the 34th line remembers performing at the 1974 game between Texas and Nebraska with a wind chill of 18 below zero at halftime, when they did the high kick and a routine involving suitcases.
 
"I'll never forget Gussie Nell Davis, dressed snuggly with her big fur coat, fur hat, gloves & boots, telling us at practice before the performance, 'Beauty Knows No Pain!' Phinny said. "All our lips were blue, our hands were frozen to our suitcase handles, and the officers' hands to their batons. We performed without a single mistake, frozen smiles and all."
 
Diana LaRocca, a member of the 39th line, remembers arriving at Cotton Bowl Stadium in 1979 a day after the worst ice storm in 40 years had hit Dallas. Davis had her own solution to cleaning up the field's artificial turf, telling the girls to utilize the small staircases they used as props to help.
 
"Instead of setting our staircase down, she told us to put some muscle behind it to shatter the ice and give us better footing on the field," LaRocca said.
 
In what famously became known as the "Chicken Soup Game,"  Notre Dame star Joe Montana missed part of the game with hypothermia, returning after eating chicken soup in the locker room and leading the Fighting Irish to a 35-34 comeback win over Houston. Fewer than 7,000 fans remained in the stands by the end of the game due to the bitter cold.
 
"I recall someone asking Miss Davis that morning if we might possibly be able to wear pantyhose," said Dee Ann Peterson. "Her response: 'We never have and we never will.' That was one of the most profound honors of being a Rangerette, the respect for tradition."
 
As Davis demanded, they didn't flinch.
 
"We performed in the morning in the Cotton Bowl Classic parade, and later at halftime in temperatures that none of us had experienced wearing a Rangerette uniform. At kickoff of the football game, it was 22 degrees with wind chills below zero. In the extreme cold and ice, we showed our audiences — and ourselves — what Rangerettes are made of."
 
Blair said it was memories like those that made it strange when the game first moved from Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas to AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
 
"At first, we thought, 'How can we pretend we're at the Cotton Bowl when we're not in the actual bowl?' Blair said. "But we got used to that really fast when it was always 75 degrees, and we didn't have to dig our yard lines out of the ice."
 
In 2020, the Rangerettes' streak nearly ended due to COVID restrictions. For the first time since 1951, they had to skip the game. Determined to keep the tradition alive, Blair and her squad learned a routine and the Cotton Bowl Classic filmed their performance in Kilgore, then played it on the giant video board at AT&T Stadium as halftime entertainment.
 
Breaking the news to her team gave Blair a fresh dose of perspective on how important the game is to them.
 
"I've been part of the Cotton Bowl so many times. I probably have taken it for granted just a little bit," Blair said. "I never realized that more than when we could not go. I remember having to tell those girls that they were not going. They were devastated over that as if they hadn't already been devastated by so many things that year. I really found out how important it was to them in that moment. Thankfully that hasn't happened again, and hopefully it never will in our lifetime."
 
The Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, too, has realized how special the Rangerettes are to them. At any official bowl event throughout the year — parties, luncheons, even their Hall of Fame announcement and induction ceremony — Rangerettes work the functions in full uniform. They are truly ambassadors for the game. Many go on to work for the Cotton Bowl Athletic Association in some capacity, including Lisa Fortenberry, working her 40th game this year, who became its Pageantry and Entertainment Specialist in 2007.
 
About 20 years ago, Fiss said he visited Kilgore and upon viewing the Cotton Bowl display at the Rangerettes' museum on campus,  realized they're just as integral to the game as the players. So for the past 18 years, every sophomore Rangerette who has performed in games both of their seasons at Kilgore receives a Cotton Bowl Classic watch, just as the players did.
 
Now, as they celebrate their 75th appearance at the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic this year, Blair still upholds Davis' motto:
 
"Never settle for less than perfection. Always remember who you are, you're a Rangerette!"
 
Davis retired in 1979 and died in 1993. Her creation went on to inspire thousands of precision drill teams across the country. The Rangerettes have performed at presidential inaugurals and for world leaders across the globe, as well as making regular appearances at showcase events like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. But they're most closely associated with the Cotton Bowl Classic, a source of pride from their East Texas roots.
 
The day before the 1966 game that marked the 25th birthday of the Rangerettes, Davis was the featured honoree at the Texas Sports Hall of Fame luncheon for her contributions to the Cotton Bowl Classic and the pregame show featured high school marching bands that spelled out "GUSSIE" on the field. She was also inducted into the Cotton Bowl Classic Hall of Fame in 1999.
 
In 2015, Blair was asked to perform the coin flip to celebrate the organization's 75th anniversary, calling it "one of the coolest things on the planet."
 
"Kilgore is a very special place," Blair said. "There's no place like it, I don't think, anywhere else. There are other dance teams,  there are other teams that do similar things to what we do. But we know we were the first, and we have worked hard to keep those traditions up and to keep raising the bar on what the girls can do."
 
The stadium changed. This year, the date changed as college football keeps changing, with the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic serving as a College Football Playoff Semifinal. But there's one constant: the Kilgore Rangerettes will be there, delivering perfection in red, white and blue.
 
"The great thing about college sports is the pageantry that's involved," Fiss said. "They are so intertwined in our game's history and the spectacle of the Classic. I just can't imagine our bowl game without the Kilgore Rangerettes."
 
FAVORITE COTTON BOWL CLASSIC MEMORIES
Sheila McAninch, 42nd Line
1982 - Bear Bryant walking by us on the sideline smiling and saying "break a leg". My first performance. The sound of the crowd and performing a "finale" with both team's bands with us in the center with flags! Oh that flag routine!
 
Shelly Roper-McCaslin, 45th Line
My sophomore year Cotton Bowl was especially memorable: First the night before, seeing Mrs. Bolton returning to the hotel all dressed up from a New Year's Eve out, I realized she had a life outside of us...I was floored! Then pregame, I made eye contact in the tunnel with Bo Jackson who'd just won the Heisman and still noted as one of the greatest athletes of all time...thrilled and felt like I was jumping, but never actually broke my position. Finally, we had taken the field for pageantry and the stands in front of us, filled with A&M fans, started to move, it was almost dizzying. I didn't know then about the tradition to sway at the end of the Aggie War Hymn. I didn't expect it at all and was bound to be completely still of course. So, sophomore year Cotton Bowl had me regularly feeling off my center!
 
Janeen Rose, 25th Line
January 1, 1965 - I was 2nd to the end…the cameraman stood so close, Pam Skelton and I kept telling him we were going to kick him during our high kick. When I got to my Grandparents in Gladewater, Texas that evening, they and my Aunt were so excited to share that they had seen me on TV.
 
Haleigh Franck, 72nd Line
Standing in the tunnel looking into the crowd right before walking out was the moment I knew as a freshman I truly was living a dream.
 
Eleanor Geeslin, 83rd Line
My favorite cotton bowl memory is performing my freshmen year because that was the first time I had ever performed on a field/in an arena that large. I was also performing our sassy pom routine that I loved so much, and it was the first time I felt like a true Rangerette.
 
Sheila McCarter, 44th Line
It was the 1984-85 Cotton Bowl. The parade was freezing… perhaps the coldest I've ever been. We marched with metal tambourines. I had to keep looking at my hand to make sure I was holding the tambourine because I couldn't feel my hands!
 
Dawn Smith Sanchez, 45th Line
Performing in the Cotton Bowl as a Rangerette with my Big Sis Kelly Thorstad was amazing!!! I was in awe with the crowd size and teamwork of rehearsing in Kilgore and then seamlessly on the Cotton Bowl field. Cotton Bowl memories are some of my favorites!