Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories about innovation and change in college football throughout the 2023 season.
Businesses have owned a piece of college football’s bowl system from the time John Hancock first slapped its name atop the Sun Bowl in 1989. In the ensuing decades, furniture outlets, restaurant chains, websites, garden tools and other ventures have sponsored postseason classics.
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Perhaps none has so effectively married product with commerce — such that the celebration becomes the encore to the game’s crescendo — quite like the Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte, N.C. Other bowls have replaced the clichéd Gatorade shower with a sponsored product, such as Cheez-Its engulfing winning coaches in Orlando, Fla. But in Charlotte, the bowl and its sponsor have changed the dynamic around its postseason event and reimagined the bowl landscape along with it.
“We see the sport’s changing underneath our feet and like everything in the Playoff expansion, things are changing,” said Miller Yoho, communications and marketing director the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which operates the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. “That’s where you have to differentiate yourself in fun ways and ways that college football fans relate to. Eighty percent of fans understand they’re not going to the College Football Playoff, but they love this sport because it has flaws. So why not lean into the fun of it?”
Self-aware enough to know their bowl’s position in the college football world, Duke’s Mayo Bowl employees look for ways to turn what could be considered stale and dull into spirited and entertaining. From its promotional videos to the postgame mayo bath to providing revenue opportunities for athletes, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl offers endless possibilities for how bowls could remain relevant in a post-Playoff expansion era.
NEWS: We're thrilled to launch the first-of-its-kind marketplace for players in our game to maximize their NIL opportunities.https://t.co/QzCtnwM5KZ#CollegeFootball #NIL #HailWV #GoHeels pic.twitter.com/2pyQOtWax5
— Duke's Mayo Bowl (@DukesMayoBowl) December 8, 2023
Bowl games are not allowed to use athletes for promotional purposes, but local businesses can employ them. So this month, the Charlotte-based postseason game opened an NIL marketplace for incoming players, becoming the first bowl to take that step. The opportunities could range from a restaurant hiring a North Carolina player for commercials to a recent West Virginia business graduate meeting with different financial institutions.
“The athlete experience is tied to NIL now, and it’s a big part of what they do,” Yoho said. “So why aren’t we opening the doors to this city that has Fortune 500 companies thriving? We have credible partners, so why don’t we set them up for success?”
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But nothing says the Duke’s Mayo Bowl quite like the postgame mayo bath. It started a phenomenon that other bowls could emulate to ensure growth in a radically changing landscape.
Birth of the Mayo bath
The pandemic caused a national shutdown in March 2020, but an opportunity awaited Duke’s Mayonnaise president Joe Tuza. Through its media buyer group, GRP Media out of Chicago, title rights became available for what was formerly the Belk Bowl. Duke’s Mayo is known throughout the South, and Charlotte is its No. 1 market. But the company needed something more than just solidifying its brand in its primary region.
“The more we looked at it and the more analysis we did,” Tuza said, “we realized that this is a really good spend for us, not only for getting our name out where we’ve been around for 100 years and renewing the brand, but also for folks outside of the South to really know the brand a little bit.”
In tandem with the Charlotte Sports Foundation, the bowl promotion took off despite COVID-19 preventing most fans from attending the game. In the buildup to the Wisconsin–Wake Forest matchup, the companies and broadcasters teased that a mayo bath was forthcoming for the winning coach. Tuza and other Duke’s Mayo executives were inside the stadium, but with COVID-19 protocols they weren’t allowed to douse the coach with mayonnaise.
“We were watching it, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’re going to be so disappointed,’” Tuza said. “We’re going to let down all of America because they keep showing this cooler. So we dumped the white Gatorade out on the winning coach, Paul Chryst from Wisconsin, and we took a little bit of a beating on social media for not doing the mayo bath.”
TFW WHEN THE COOLER DOESN’T HAVE MAYO. pic.twitter.com/VTl1hB9t5R
— Duke's Mayo Bowl (@DukesMayoBowl) December 30, 2020
“It quickly became very polarizing that we can’t believe this is not mayo,” Yoho said. “And we had kind of a fortunate fumble of a broken trophy that distracted people.”
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In the locker room celebration, then-Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz danced with the trophy while his teammates formed a circle. With the trophy in Mertz’s left hand, it slipped out. The crystal football hit the floor and shattered.
As she left the stadium, Duke’s Mayo brand manager Rebecca Lupesco texted Tuza to tell him about the broken trophy. Tuza’s first response was hoping no one got hurt.
“Then I said, ‘Please tell me somebody caught that on tape,’” Tuza said. “That’s exactly what happened. What we learned from that was, whatever happens, we just got to lean into it.”
“We had like those two viral moments back to back,” Yoho said. “A few days later, we had a conversation. That was awesome. It was a hilarious situation where we knew we could trick fans once. We should never again trick fans about the mayo bath.”
With mayo, as with life, consistency is key
In 2021, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl acquired a dream matchup: North Carolina vs. South Carolina. It’s perfect for attendance, viewership and brand awareness for the title sponsor. After nearly a year of planning, the mayo bath was full-go, and both universities were made aware of the creamy celebration.
The winning coach is not required to participate. A player, administrator or even a celebrity fan can take the bath. South Carolina’s Shane Beamer’s enthusiasm was tempered by his general dislike for mayo but agreed to participate. North Carolina’s Mack Brown said, “If we won a game, I’d let someone hit me in the face with a frying pan.”
The Gamecocks won, 38-21, and Beamer accepted his fate. He sat up straight as two handlers elevated the cooler. Then the cooler crashed into the back of Beamer’s head before the condiment covered the coach like a white mudslide.
MAYO BATH pic.twitter.com/GQh03Beue1
— Duke's Mayo Bowl (@DukesMayoBowl) December 30, 2021
“Of course, we apologized profusely to Coach Beamer,” Tuza said. “Then we made a little bit more of a social media play out of it.”
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The company sent Beamer a hard hat along with another apology. Making it more palatable for the coaches, the company donated $10,000 in their name to the charity of their choice. That was impactful for Maryland coach Mike Locksley, who passionately chose the Boys and Girls Club after the Terrapins won the 2022 game. Locksley sat with an oversized Terrapins hat as three handlers propelled the mayo from the cooler.
Doubling down on the notoriety, this year the bowl will conduct a mayo combine to select the cooler handlers dumping the goods on either West Virginia coach Neal Brown or Mack Brown, whose Tar Heels are back. Contestant drills include catching footballs with hands covered in mayonnaise and running a 40-yard dash while carrying the cooler.
The quirkiness matters. Last year, Duke’s Mayo estimated it received 35 million impressions on television or social media from the events and the bowl generated nearly 2.7 million viewers. When Wisconsin participated, the company received dozens of calls from grocery chains and individual stores wanting to stock their product.
“We get a lot of questions about what makes Duke’s kind of stand out a little bit in this sea of bowls,” Tuza said. “We just lean into it. We just don’t pay and slap our name on a bowl. We are active all year thinking about ideas that will make us stand out and what could be unique and different. For us, it’s about activation around the bowl, and the mayo dump ends up being a climax for us on that week.”
GO DEEPER
The mayonnaise bath heard ’round the world: Shane Beamer, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl and a moment years in the making
Forward thinking
There are 41 FBS bowls in total, two of which host College Football Playoff games. Next year, six bowls host CFP games. That leaves 70 teams participating in a non-championship environment but still competing in a football game.
Some bowls have joined the Charlotte event with attempts at fan engagement, both narrow and national. When Iowa State traveled to San Antonio for the 2018 Alamo Bowl, bowl organizers worked with their Budweiser distributor to stock the stadium with Busch Light, the beverage of choice for Cyclones fans. This year, the Pop-Tarts Bowl matchup between Kansas State and NC State in Orlando features an edible mascot.
I also asked Doeren if he’d take a bite out of the edible Pop Tart mascot if State wins.
Here’s how that went. Get me the Pulitzer Prize for capital J journalism. pic.twitter.com/NUiGQabobR
— Jadyn Adams (@jwatsonfisher) December 3, 2023
“I wish I could tell you I knew how this was going to go down,” said Steve Hogan, chief executive officer of Florida Citrus Sports, which operates both the Pop-Tarts and Cheez-It Citrus bowls. “It’s cool and exciting and I’m just hoping whatever’s in there is not live. But I’m as excited as every other fan to see how our team and the Pop-Tarts team make this thing happen.”
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“It’s an ever-evolving landscape,” Valero Alamo Bowl CEO Derrick Fox said. “We like to say we’re conference partners really for 11 months of the year, and then team-specific as partners for that 12th month once you get them. So we’re trying to figure out what’s important to them, their student-athletes, their fan base, and trying to make sure that it’s a win-win from all perspectives.”
Non-Playoff bowls still garner terrific television ratings, even against other sports. According to Sports Media Watch, four bowls surpassed two million viewers on the first day of games last year, all of which were higher than any NBA or college basketball game that week. In total, 14 bowl games generated at least three million viewers.
However, retaining the postseason experience for traveling fans and participants remains a critical element to the non-playoff bowls’ sustainability. The Duke’s Mayo Bowl opening an NIL marketplace, coupled with social media branding and the postgame mayo dump keeps it vibrant, enjoyable and — most importantly — relevant. How other bowls emulate its success could determine its future, both during next year’s playoff expansion and into the decades to come.
“It used to be that we would all come and excited to watch the game itself,” Iowa interim athletics director Beth Goetz said. “And that is still true, but it’s become entertainment. So what are the ancillary things that are around the bowl and even during the game, the environment during the game … that makes it intriguing for everybody?”
“Bowl games are meant to be fun, right?” Bowl Season executive director Nick Carparelli said. “And why shouldn’t the sponsors have fun as well? I think as a result, bowl games are starting to develop a reputation with sponsors as being able to deliver great value because they’re willing to take a chance. They’re willing to be creative and do some new things that are a little different and unique.
“I think it’s a great thing. People are talking about it. And it makes it fun.”
The Innovation and Change series is part of a partnership with Invesco.
The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)
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