TEXAS SPARTAN SUITS COTTON BOWL REPS
Michigan State University alumnus Mike Zack recently caught the attention of the Dallas Morning News. The owner of a Plano, TX-based clothing company, Zack persuaded Cotton Bowl committee members 25 years ago to ditch their colorful, but ill-fitting polyester blazers, in favor of fine tailored jackets from his apparel store.
Zack earned a bachelor's degree in business, as a marketing major, from the MSU Eli Broad College of Business in 1982.
Reporter Tommy Cummings filed this story on Jan. 9:
As a longstanding college football tradition, bowl representatives have been known to wear attention-getting colorful blazers during bowl season.
"The jackets’ hues would range from a gaudy canary yellow (Fiesta Bowl) to bright red (Holiday Bowl).
"Mike Zack, a Richardson resident who owns Circa2000 Fine Apparel in Plano, believes he had a part in improving the look of that tradition in Dallas.
Twenty-five years ago, Zack spotted Jim Williams, a member of the Cotton Bowl Hall of Fame, wearing a “blazer he shouldn’t have been wearing.”
“I asked him, ‘Where did you get that?’” Zack said. “He said he got it a Cotton Bowl meeting. I told him we could do better than that.”