So far this college football bowl season, we have seen a winning coach get showered with french fries, a fitting celebration of Wyoming’s Famous Idaho Potato Bowl triumph:
The best kind of victory shower! #CheezItBowl pic.twitter.com/ql7BKE4Mod
— Cheez-It Bowl (@CheezItBowl) December 30, 2021
But on Thursday afternoon, we saw a similarly on-brand victory celebration that, for some, went well beyond the bounds of human decency. You see, the two head coaches in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl had promised that they would submit themselves to a shower of the game sponsor’s signature product should their team win. And after South Carolina beat North Carolina, 38-21, in Charlotte, Gamecocks Coach Shane Beamer (somewhat reluctantly) lived up to his word.
MAYO BATH pic.twitter.com/GQh03Beue1
— Duke’s Mayo Bath (@DukesMayoBowl) December 30, 2021
“It was everything I dreamed of,” Beamer said after he was coated by 4.5 gallons of slightly watered-down mayonnaise. “It was a little heavy, for sure. I’m a little weighted down here in the back.”
There is no more polarizing condiment than mayonnaise, with its adherents contending that no sandwich is complete without it while its opponents (the author of this story included) consider it a menace that should be banned. Beamer seems to be in the latter camp.
“I’m not a big mayonnaise guy,” he said this month when Duke’s Mayo Bowl executive director Dan Morrison announced that the bowl would donate $10,000 to the charity of the winning team’s choice should its head coach submit to the bath. “I’ll gladly take one for the team on that one if it means we won a football game, but woof.”
Tar Heels Coach Mack Brown, on the other hand, seemed much more accepting of the idea considering the charitable donation at stake, saying it would be “worth it.”
“We need to win,” he added. “I said somewhere I’d let someone hit me with a frying pan 365 days if we won. Mayonnaise is easy.”
Game officials seemingly had been preparing for the moment ever since last year’s Duke’s Mayo Bowl, when the nation’s college football fans — a notoriously fractious bunch — joined in unity to express their dismay after Wisconsin Coach Paul Chryst received the traditional Gatorade/water shower after his Badgers defeated Wake Forest, even though a victory slathering of mayo had been teased throughout the broadcast.
It wasn’t Mayo. We riot at dawn pic.twitter.com/oliBW3WqR4
— Pregame Empire (@PregameEmpire) December 30, 2020
One year later, the mayo bath became a reality after some extensive testing.
It’s perfect. https://t.co/UN6MHahpbi pic.twitter.com/4EDUb9qrpn
— Duke’s Mayo Bath (@DukesMayoBowl) December 22, 2021
There also were dry runs, which in this case was a wet run. A slimy, smelly, wet run.
We’re reviewing our technique for tomorrow. https://t.co/OpV26It7ls pic.twitter.com/roeMKV3Aaf
— Duke’s Mayo Bath (@DukesMayoBowl) December 30, 2021
We actually already had seen one college football mayo dump this season, when a Clemson fan submitted himself to the worst possible shower during the kickoff episode of ESPN’s “College Gameday” on Sept. 4.
When it's Week 1 of College Football 😅 pic.twitter.com/HUBLZi0VNC
— College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) September 4, 2021
The fan in question probably had some lustrous hair and supple skin after the incident. According to this Reader’s Digest article I found after cautiously googling “what do you do if someone dumps mayo on your head,” the emulsion of oil, egg and acid can be used for hair conditioning, a home facial, fingernail strengthening, sunburn relief and lice eradication.
Who am I to doubt Reader’s Digest, America’s foremost provider of condiment-intensive beauty tips? But let this also serve as another reminder that the Internet is a depraved place, because people willingly have slathered mayo on their bodies and survived to tell the tale. This disturbing trend continued Thursday.