In the hearts of fans who love the quirky and sometimes absurd side of college football, this venture has become the main event of the 2021 Duke’s Mayo Bowl in Charlotte. Allie Mowbray, who works at the marketing agency that serves Duke’s as a client, took turns with others in rigorously tossing the huge portion of mayonnaise. They whipped it with a pole because normal kitchen utensils weren’t big enough for the job, then stirred it more just before the dump. After his team’s victory, South Carolina coach Shane Beamer sat in a folding chair with a hat as his only protection, and mayonnaise rained down from above.
Inspired by other bowling games that reward winning coaches with celebratory baths not of Gatorade but food from sponsors – including fries, Cheez-Its and a kale smoothie – Duke’s Mayo has joined in the chaos. The company first sponsored the bowling game in 2020, then unveiled what became a high-profile Mayo dump last year. With this season’s edition of the bowl On Friday, Maryland’s Michael Locksley and North Carolina State’s Dave Doeren will face off on the court and for the opportunity to be doused in the creamy oil-and-egg condiment.
“We realize Duke’s mayonnaise sponsoring a bowl is weird,” said Joe Tuza, president of Duke’s. We understand that. This is not a traditional bowl sponsorship.
And Miller Yoho, director of communications and marketing for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which organizes the game of bowls, understands that it is not the College Football Playoff. Teams don’t start the season aspiring to a mid-level bowl.
So the Mayo Bowl embraces silliness, trying to “become part of the fabric of college football,” Yoho said. If Duke’s took itself too seriously with this sponsorship, Tuza said, “the reality is that we would line up with the rest of the bowls.” But with his commitment Twitter account and a landfill that turns into a viral videothe Mayo Bowl managed to stand out.
Duke’s wanted to have a mayonnaise dump in 2020, but Bank of America stadium officials resisted the possibility of mayonnaise splashing onto the playing surface. Mowbray, who works at Bespoke Sports & Entertainment, said the idea packets of mayonnaise thrown at the winning coach had also been rejected. The risk of a package being stepped on and squirting was too much to overcome.
Instead, the Mayo Bowl generated buzz by teasing a landfill with coolers designed to look like mayonnaise jars parked on each sideline. But after Wisconsin won the game and the players lifted the cooler over their coach’s head, the white Gatorade escaped.
Yoho told a team of employees, “It was awesome. We will never be able to pretend to people again because they will never forgive us.
This began the months-long process of finding a solution. Mowbray and a colleague transported batches of mayonnaise to a field to experiment with water-mayonnaise ratios. The first attempt was so watery it no longer tasted like mayonnaise. After trying several versions, they came across whipped mayonnaise without water. (Beamer’s dump was reported as slightly watered down mayonnaise, but Mowbray – who carried out the tests and then stirred the concoction on match day and was one of two dumpers – said no water was added. Intense shaking made the mayonnaise runny.)
The Mayo Bowl requires someone associated with the university to participate. But in the dump’s two-year history, he’s been able to convince coaches to agree, and Duke’s is donating $10,000 to the coach’s chosen charity.
The mayo dump takes place in a stadium tunnel near a drain. The controlled environment eliminates the spontaneity of other party showers, but the mayonnaise makes up for it in its carelessness. One tweeted Video of the messy scene from last year racked up 2.7 million views.
Everything went well with only one incident: the cooler hit Beamer in the head.
The Mayo Bowl leaned into the error, like when Wisconsin beat the trophy in 2020 and then replaced it. broken crystal football with a bottle of mayonnaise. The Mayo Bowl ran with him, representing the fortune trophy on Tee-shirts. A year later, Duke’s sent Beamer a care package with a helmet and Tylenol. Tuza calls moments like these “a forward fumble.”
In response to the Beamer accident, the Mayo Bowl announcement in November that he would launch a “national search” for new dumpers. A group doubled as the selection committee landed Kevin DeValk and Allison Vick, who will be tasked with emptying the mayonnaise and keeping the cooler away from the coach’s head.
DeValk, a 35-year-old engineer for a heavy-duty truck manufacturer, recorded photos on his phone showing last season’s mayo spill. He bought a water cooler the day the Mayo Bowl announced fans were candidates to choose from.
“I didn’t know how lucky I was going to be,” DeValk said. “I saw people with blue checkmarks over there throwing their hats in the ring.”
DeValk, who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and grew up as a Wisconsin fan, made an extensive submission via social media. He drank mayonnaise and cooked a chocolate cake with mayonnaise. He printed a yard sign – “Vote Klurt for Mayo Dumper” – using a nickname that stuck with the online community of college football fans who rallied behind his campaign. And he did an inspired “Rocky” training assembly to prove he could lift the cooler.
Vick, an NC State graduate, is a baker in Raleigh and owns Small blue bakehouse, where she sells her macaroons and provides space for other bakers to sell their products. She loves Duke’s Mayo, especially on both sides of the grilled cheese bun. When Duke is offered free mayo themed tattoos In Richmond, she nearly traveled to get one.
Vick doesn’t have a Twitter account but heard about the mayo dumper search process through a friend. Vick was making Duke-themed macaroons for a mayonnaise-loving restaurant owner. She incorporated mayonnaise into the ganache, which didn’t change the taste but added a shine. Vick filmed the process and let it double as his submission.
Duke’s sought out fans who loved its brand and college football, and DeValk and Vick won the job. Now they will be responsible for performing a perfect dump. Vick is comfortable with the dumping motion as she often lifts and dumps giant bags of ingredients in the kitchen, and at 5ft 3in she often has to toss trash bags into a large dumpster.
They will have a training session the day before the match – first the dumping movement, then with mayonnaise. An extra person will stand behind the cooler for support if needed, because even though the Mayo Bowl joked about the hit to Beamer’s head, no one involved wants a repeat.
The mayonnaise that landed on Beamer “came out in little pushes,” Mowbray said, so she considered adding cooking spray to the jug this year, but that could be a game call. In the perfect dump, she said, “The mayonnaise comes out right away – like a flood.”
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