Flavor Flav dumps mayonnaise in Charlotte! Big surprise at Duke’s Mayo Bowl

Before any mayonnaise was dumped, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl mascot, Tubby, revealed himself.

The celebrity underneath the costume at Charlotte’s annual college football bowl game? Flavor Flav.

“It’s Flavor Flav!” an ecstatic Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck yelled, live on ESPN’s SportsCenter from the corner of Bank of America Stadium. “Holy crap!”

The Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist, wearing a T-shirt that read “It’s Mayo Time,” helped pour five gallons of Duke’s Mayo onto Fleck.

Such has become tradition following the annual Duke’s Mayo Bowl, which saw Minnesota take down Virginia Tech 24-10 Friday night before a crowd of 31,027.

Fans expected a mayo bath, and Duke’s Mayo made it happen

During the first renamed “Duke’s Mayo Bowl” in 2020, the ESPN broadcast appeared to show a Gatorade cooler on the sidelines of the Wisconsin-Wake Forest game. Social media was ablaze.

And there was only more chatter afterward — when it looked like Badgers head coach Paul Chryst was drenched in water.

Bank of America Stadium had been reluctant to allow mayonnaise to be dumped on its field, but Duke’s Mayo knew it had to capitalize on the opportunity. It spent the next year working with the Carolina Panthers, and they ultimately agreed on setting up the “mayo bath” on a stage around tarps in the north tunnel.

Ahead of the subsequent game in 2021 between UNC and South Carolina, Tar Heels head coach Mack Brown said he’d let someone ”hit me in the face with a frying pan” if it meant his team won, while the Gamecocks’ Shane Beamer agreed he’d “gladly take one for the team.”

It’s become the first question asked to every head coach — all have obliged — whose team is selected to play in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

“Dumping something over the coach’s head is not a new tradition,” Rebecca Lupesco, brand director of Duke’s Mayo, said in an interview. “We’re taking this very traditional act and making it our own. It’s gone completely viral every year. It’s ‘the thing’ that goes on social media, gets picked up and people are looking for.”

After Beamer got hit in the head, the process starts early

There’s a big cooler with roughly five gallons of Duke’s Mayo, and officials begin stirring it late in the third quarter.

The idea is to make the mayonnaise easier to pour. Along with ensuring they had experienced “mayo dumpers,” this started following Beamer’s inaugural mayonnaise bath in 2021 — when South Carolina’s head coach took a shot to his head during the process.

While the act had been rehearsed, Beamer ended up getting struck in the back of his head by the handles of the Gatorade bucket. Beamer joked he may have had a concussion.

So, Duke’s started hosting a “Combine” to vet the best candidates, who would train for the moment.

Beginning last year, it welcomes 10 participants to a practice sports field to run through different exercises and obstacles. All tie in with the theme: People squat dumbbells with mayo jars on both ends and toss a football after soaking their hands in mayonnaise.

“We can do a bowl sponsorship differently than other people, because it’s a ‘mayonnaise bowl,’” Lupesco said. “It’s a bowl of mayonnaise. We’re a mayonnaise company. We do things differently than our competitors, and we can have fun with this.

“This bowl game wasn’t just something that we were going to slap our name on. It was something that’s this small challenger brand, that we’re going to take and activate all year. Especially during bowl season.”