1999 Texas Bowl (Napoleon's World)

The 1999 Texas Bowl was the 71st annual instance of the bowl in Dallas, TX. The 1999 game was also the national championship for the 1998-99 college football season, pitting the No. 1 Texas Longhorns against the No. 2 Nova Scotia Sea Lions. The Longhorns won 45-3 in one of the biggest national title game routs in history and took home their first national championship since 1981, and their first title under coach Dick Vermeil. The game set a Texas Bowl single-game passing record by Texas quarterback Chris Klein and also the largest margin of victory (42 points) in Texas Bowl history.

1998 Season
The Texas Bowl was selected as the host of the 1998-99 national championship in 1994 at the annual NCAA Football Conference in San Diego, CA. The city of Dallas, which had also hosted the 1993-94 title bout at the Texas Bowl, prepared by calling it the "Last Championship of the Millennium" and hyping the bowl game long before the 1998 season had even begun. In the summer of 1998, platinum-selling rock band Black Stripe announced that it had agreed to play the halftime show at the Texas Bowl, the biggest name to play during the extended halftime of a title game since the extension was put in place in 1989.

Texas Longhorns
Dick Vermeil returned for his sixth season in Sutton in 1998 and opened the season ranked No. 3 behind defending national champion Florida State and Massachusetts. The team was expected to be led by its defense, featuring returning Sarelli Award winner James Hayes and Roy Award winner Hank Laws. The offense returned numerous starters, including highly regarded left tackle Julius Northcutt, wide receiver James Fields, running back Magic Clemens, and senior quarterback Zac Paulson.

Texas made a huge statement when they went on the road to No. 10 Huron in the third week of the season after home tuneups against Dakota and West Texas, and beat the Highlanders and their new head coach Brett Estevez 35-17. In their conference opener the next week, the Longhorns defeated Alabama on the road 40-10.

The Longhorns blew out their next two opponents until Paulson blew out his knee in an October showdown with Mississippi State in front of a raucous home crowd. Highly touted sophomore Chris Klein stepped in and threw three touchdown passes in the third quarter to put the game away and led the 'Horns the rest of the season to a No. 1 ranking, an AP Freshman of the Year Award due to his jaw-dropping statistics (on average three touchdown passes a game and only one interception all season.) The Texas Longhorns defeated the Kentucky Wildcats in the SouthCo championship game in Covenant 35-33 on a last-second touchdown pass from Klein to Fields to win Texas's first SouthCo championship since 1983 and earn them an undefeated season and berth in the Texas Bowl.

Nova Scotia Sea Lions
The Sea Lions, coached by longtime head coach George Jones, were ranked No. 6 to start the season, thanks to returning offensive star running back Desmond Pike and the entire offensive line, as well as nine defensive starters. Nova Scotia dominated throughout the regular season, helped by emerging junior quarterback Tyrone Blake, as well as stud senior receiver Eddie Moss. The Nova Scotia rushing attack was nigh unstoppable, leading Division I schools with over 2,000 total yards, 1,732 of those provided by Pike, who ran away with the Bosch trophy. Nova Scotia defeated defending conference champion Pittsburgh for the second year in a row and then defeated then-undefeated archrival and No. 1 U-Mass in Boston whilst ranked No. 4. With U-Mass defeated and Oregon suffering a last-second upset to Stanford, Nova Scotia slid into the No. 2 spot behind Texas, which won in the SouthCo title game to set up the matchup in Dallas.