NEW YORK GIANTS coach Bill Parcells wanted to make an example out of nose tackle Jim Burt. The Giants had lost three out of their last four games in October 1984, and another season of disappointment — they had gone 3-12-1 the year prior — seemed to be playing out.
On the Thursday before a key divisional game against Washington, Parcells kept Burt after practice and forced him to jab a wall while holding 20-pound dumbbells for 45 minutes straight. Parcells wanted the other players to see how he was punishing Burt, so they would work hard enough to avoid that type of treatment.
The next day, Burt issued a warning. He told Parcells if they beat Washington, he was going to get the coach back.
The Giants won 37-13 on Oct. 28, 1984. And Burt fulfilled his promise.
At the end of the game, Burt grabbed one of the Gatorade coolers on the sideline. He walked over to Parcells, hoisted the cooler, turned it upside down and doused Parcells with the sports drink. Burt put the cooler completely over Parcells’ head, so it looked like he was wearing it.
And a tradition was born.
It reached another level two years later. After the Giants won Super Bowl XXI to close out the 1986 season, star linebacker Harry Carson donned a security jacket and snuck up behind Parcells for another Gatorade shower.
Splashing the winning Super Bowl coach with Gatorade has become more than a fun tradition. Guessing the color has become a prop bet that generates more than $1 million, although the wager is accepted only in New Jersey, West Virginia and Illinois, as well as offshore books. The NFL isn’t thrilled with the gimmick bet, per a league source, because of the potential for corruption with someone finding out the color ahead of time. But that won’t stop a player or players from the Kansas City Chiefs or the Philadelphia Eagles from splashing the drink on their coach in a postgame celebration Sunday.
By the way, purple is the current favorite at ESPN BET.
“It turned into this thing that today, regardless of level of play — youth, high school, college, pro, international, you name it — a big moment, a seminal moment is oftentimes christened with that Gatorade shower,” Jeff Kearney, Gatorade’s head of global sports marketing, said.
While the Giants were the first to splash their coach after a Super Bowl, the original dunking is somewhat in dispute. Chicago Bears Hall of Fame defensive lineman Dan Hampton said he poured a bucket on Mike Ditka after a regular-season win in ’84, before Burt doused Parcells.
“They copied what we did,” Hampton said.
THE BEARS WERE up big against the Minnesota Vikings and went on to win 34-3 in a game that would clinch the franchise’s first NFC Central title. On the sideline, Hampton noticed his teammate, defensive tackle Jim Osborn, with tears in his eyes.
“I thought he had gotten hurt,” Hampton said. “And I said, ‘Ozzy, are you all right? What’s the matter?’ And he goes, ‘Man, you don’t understand. I’ve been here 13 years, we’d never won the division. This is the first time ever.’ He was happy.”
Hampton decided the Bears had to do something to celebrate. He saw Brian McCaskey, the team’s assistant trainer (now a vice president with the franchise) dumping out a five-gallon cooler of Gatorade on the sideline as he attempted to clean up and get ready to go back to Chicago.
“And as he’s doing that, I said, ‘Whoa, whoa,'” Hampton said. “And I run over, and I stop him. I said, ‘Let me have that.'”
Hampton had the idea of dumping the remainder on head coach Mike Ditka. He got Steve McMichael and linebacker Mike Singletary in on it, too. When the game ended, the trio poured the Gatorade bucket over Ditka’s head.
“We were elated, we went in the locker room and lit up a cigar, and we went back to Chicago,” Hampton said. “Never thought nothing else about it.”
But that game was on Nov. 25, 28 days after Burt doused Parcells.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame doesn’t recognize one as the first, but it had a replica Gatorade cooler on display with a photo of Carson, according to Hall archivist Jon Kendle, crediting Carson for popularizing the practice. The Hall now has two Gatorade coolers: the one Brett Keisel used to dump Gatorade on Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin after Super Bowl XLIII and the one Russell Wilson and Zach Miller used to douse Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll at Super Bowl XLVIII. The coolers were donated by the teams.
“Every year, we work with the league and we work with the clubs in the Super Bowl,” Kendle said, “to make sure we are adding items to the collection in order to make sure we are telling the story of that particular Super Bowl.”
AS STEELERS QUARTERBACK Ben Roethlisberger was taking a knee in the waning seconds of Super Bowl XLIII with a 27-23 lead over the Arizona Cardinals, Keisel, a defensive end, asked an equipment manager which of the coolers contained Gatorade.
With time running out, Keisel made his way to Tomlin, but he said got bumped en route, and didn’t get the cooler high enough. The lime-color liquid soaked Tomlin’s left shoulder, instead of his head.
Keisel gave his effort a “five out of 10.”
As far as who gets to do the splashing, Keisel said it was “spur of the moment,” but it helps to have some muscles.
“The big guys [are the most likely to do it] … because you want a full cooler, you want a lot of liquid in there, as much liquid as you can get, and you want a lot of ice,” Keisel said. “I don’t know how many gallons are in those things, but they’re heavy, and … it’s preferably two guys where you can each just lift it up, get it up real good and high, and it comes straight down on the head.
“You pretty much put the head inside the cooler.”
Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Vita Vea was one of those big guys doing the honors at Super Bowl LV. He and defensive end Will Gholston poured Gatorade on Bruce Arians.
It didn’t end there, though.
“He got me back during the parade,” Vea said. “He poured his beer on me, and then I found a bucket while he was giving a speech, filled it up with water, and I had to get him back.”
At the end of Super Bowl LVI, Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay got Gatorade dumped on him by defensive lineman A’Shawn Robinson. McVay said he was trying to avoid it “so it didn’t mess my hair up.”
McVay still has the playcall sheet he was carrying during that moment and said it has orange stains on it. But the color of the Gatorade that Robinson got him with was actually blue.
Ravens coach Brian Billick received a Gatorade shower after the team clinched its first playoff berth in December 2000, and he went to great lengths to not have a repeat in Super Bowl XXXV.
So when Baltimore took a 31-7 in the middle of the fourth quarter, Billick gave specific instructions to Andrew Cavanaugh, who was the ball boy and son of offensive coordinator Matt Cavanaugh. Billick told Andrew to empty all of the Gatorade buckets.
“What’s in it for me?” Andrew asked with a smile.
Billick then put his arm around his head security guy. “If I get water thrown on me, you’re fired,” Billick told him.
Billick kept his head on a swivel and paced up and down the sideline. “If they get me, they’re going to have to get a moving target,” he told his coaches. But defensive linemen Lional Dalton and Larry Webster caught Billick standing still and poured the lemon-lime Gatorade on Billick’s back.
“Brian did not enjoy the Gatorade shower,” former Ravens public relations executive Kevin Byrne said. “He told me that he could tolerate the cold, but the stickiness just lasted for days.”
When Chiefs coach Andy Reid won his first championship at Super Bowl LIV, the Gatorade bath acted as kind of an off switch, a signifier that the game was over. Reid was still coaching until he felt the cold orange sports drink engulf him.
“I’m out there still trying — like, ‘Hey, get over here, do this,'” Reid told NFL Films. “And then Gatorade kind of went, ‘OK, calm down, big boy. You’ve won the game.
“I was just a sucker on that one, because I didn’t expect it. I told the guys, ‘I’m going to kill you in the weight room in the offseason, because you’re supposed to lift me up, not throw Gatorade on me.’ But they’re all a bunch of wimpies. They couldn’t get me off the ground.”
WAGERING ON WHICH color of Gatorade was going to be used to splash Reid last year — it was purple — was one of the top 30 Super Bowl prop bets on ESPN BET. That’s remarkable considering the limitations on where the bet can be placed.
The wager is popular with offshore books, per sports betting industry sources, due to its limited domestic availability.
According to Gatorade, the teams choose their drink preferences for the game, and there are multiple coolers on the sidelines, some of which include water. Equipment staffs make sure the coolers with Gatorade are the ones used for the celebratory showers.
Per ESPN BET, the prop comes off the board at kickoff.
“… you’re supposed to lift me up, not throw Gatorade on me. But they’re all a bunch of wimpies. They couldn’t get me off the ground.”
Andy Reid
“When setting odds for this market, our team looks at a variety of factors, including what color was poured on last year’s winning coach, any recent instances of the participating teams doing a Gatorade bath, such as recent Super Bowl appearances or after a conference championship win, and even the color of the team’s jerseys,” the ESPN BET trading team said.
Toward the end of their NFC title win over the Washington Commanders on Jan. 26, Eagles receivers DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown dumped lemon-lime Gatorade on coach Nick Siriani. Could that be a clue?
Teams have been hesitant to discuss the process of picking the color.
The average bet size on the Gatorade prop at BetMGM sportsbooks is $5 to $10, a company spokesperson told ESPN. The spokesperson said last week that there had been no notable bets to share on the Gatorade prop, “but we have seen some line movement. Purple has moved from +350 to +225 [favorite].”
Another sportsbook told ESPN it chooses not to offer the Gatorade prop, citing a desire “to preserve the integrity of these markets for the fairness of our customers.”
THE GATORADE SHOWER became such a big part of popular culture that former President Ronald Reagan got in on the act in 1987, when the Giants visited the White House as the defending Super Bowl champs.
The president exited the White House carrying a Gatorade bucket, and he threw some popcorn at the players. Carson noticed the Gatorade bucket was still full afterward, and despite joking that he felt apprehensive about the well-armed Secret Service nearby, Carson took the jug and dumped the rest on Reagan.
“Mrs. [Nancy] Reagan was laughing, and the President was laughing, and we all had fun with it,” Carson said.
Parcells had fun with it as well. In fact, what started as a measure of revenge against a demanding coach turned into the symbol of a close friendship.
About 10 years ago, Burt learned Parcells was having shoulder replacement surgery in New York City. Burt insisted the coach stay at his New Jersey home that night, rather than at a hotel. Burt drove him to the hospital, picked him up after the surgery and then drove Parcells back to his home in Saratoga, New York, about 180 miles away.
“His friendship is much appreciated, like it is with a lot of my players,” Parcells said. “It becomes more than just the sport.”
Burt was 25 in 1984. Forty years later, Burt says he and Parcells talk on the phone once a week. Those past hard feelings — marked forever by the first Gatorade shower — have long since melted away.
“Before I hang up with him — he’s in his 80s now — I actually tell him I love him,” Burt said, “which I never thought I would do.”
And that’s how Kearney, Gatorade’s marketing exec, views the famous ritual — as somewhat of a catharsis.
“Coaches can scream and yell, and they can, I don’t want to say demoralize you — there’s no malicious intent — but just challenge and push and push and push,” he said. “And those players, that moment when they realize it was all worth it, and they are champions, it’s almost like that pendulum shifts and the athletes have this moment.”
Additional reporting by Sarah Barshop, Rich Cimini, Michael DiRocco, Jamison Hensley, David Newton and David Purdum
