From an interesting beginning, this sports tradition will likely live on until the end of time
Bob McManamanArizona Republic
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You can call it a bath, a shower or a dunk. It doesn’t really matter.
So long as it involves a big bucket of Gatorade getting poured over the head of a victorious coach at the end of a game, it will live on in sports lore until the end of time.
It happens everywhere, all the time – at the end of football, basketball and baseball games, soccer and tennis matches and more – and it will be on full display on the big stage at Super Bowl 59 when the Kanas City Chiefs meet the Philadelphia Eagles at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
You’ve gotta love it.
The “Gatorade shower,” the term I prefer to call it, is a great American celebratory tradition, and to me, it beats the heck out of falling confetti, blaring Queen’s “We are the Champions” over the sound system, heaving a basketball high into the air at midcourt, or any postgame trophy presentation.
That’s because it was created out of a single spontaneous and unexpected act.
Gatorade shower at the Super Bowl: The origin
Jim Burt, a nose tackle for the New York Giants, historically is credited with starting the tradition during the 1984 NFL season. And it was born out of revenge, not really celebration, against his head coach, Bill Parcells.
It’s true.
As the story goes, Parcells was skating on thin ice after a 4-4 start just two years into his eight-year run at the helm of the Giants from 1983-90. New York was entering a pivotal home game on Oct. 28 against two-time defending NFC East champion Washington, and Parcells was pushing his team incredibly hard in practice.
Especially Burt, then a fourth-year pro who went undrafted out of Miami.
Parcells berated him every day, held him after practice for extra drills, which included making offensive linemen smash into him at the snap of the ball, and even made Burt hold 20-pound dumbbells in each hand and repeatedly punch a padded wall in the weight room for 45 minutes to get him prepared for facing Washington’s famous “Hogs” offensive linemen.
That was the nickname coined by Washington’s-then O-line coach Joe Bugel, who would later become head coach of the Cardinals from 1990-93. Parcells kept telling Burt he wasn’t up to the challenge, but Burt refused to back down.
“He’s got his thumbs on your temple all the time and he’s always trying to figure out a way to motivate you,” Burt explained in a past interview that was posted on video a few days ago by the Giants’ team website.
“You have to rise to the occasion with him because if you don’t rise to the occasion, he would bully you.”
At one point before the big game, Burt stopped by Parcells' office for a quick chat.
“My thing was, ‘OK,’ I said, ‘Just so you know … I’ll take it but you have to take it back,’” Burt said in the video, adding, “He said, ‘Oh, of course.’”
Running back Joe Morris ran for three touchdowns, quarterback Phil Simms threw two touchdowns and the Giants beat Washington 37-13 on their way to a 9-7 season. As the final seconds clicked off the clock, Burt grabbed a bucket of orange Gatorade, sneaked behind his coach, and with the help of linebacker and team captain Harry Carson, dumped it over Parcells’ head.
“When I dumped the Gatorade on his head, he couldn’t do anything but smile and laugh about it because you have to give it back to him,” Burt said. “This was a way to give it back to him and he understood. And if I didn’t do that, I’d be bullied the rest of the time I was with the Giants with him.”
Jim Burt wouldn't be bullied, and a tradition began
No one else had the guts to do something like that, Burt often said. But Carson would soon make it a regular tradition after every Giants win as seasons progressed. He became the primary culprit and the reason the tradition gained traction across the country.
“Harry took over,” Burt said. “I just wanted to do it to make sure (Parcells) knew he wasn’t going to bully me. Harry did it for entertainment and it became a ritual.”
“Harry made it a festive thing,” Parcells says in the recent video posted by the Giants.
There was a reason Carson kept doing it and it wasn’t to draw attention to himself.
“Once I got him, that sort of set things in motion because Bill was very superstitious,” Carson explained in the video. “If you do something one week and if it works, you have to keep doing it. So, as we were winning, I had to keep drenching him with Gatorade.
“It wasn’t that I wanted to do it. I just had to keep doing it. We had fun doing it with him.”
Carson’s Gatorade shower routine reached its pinnacle during the Giants’ run to the Super Bowl during the 1986 season. New York had posted 17 total wins that season and Parcells was showered with Gatorade every single time, including a 39-20 rout of the Broncos in Super Bowl 21.
It had become such an anticipated event that during the playoffs, John Madden, the late CBS broadcaster, would use the telestrator to highlight the Gatorade bucket at the end of Giants wins. For that final famous shower in the Super Bowl, Carson borrowed a yellow security jacket to sneak up on his coach, and it might have been the best dunk of all.
As you would suspect, the tradition became a free advertising bonanza for Gatorade. They didn’t try to capitalize too much further on the ritual since they really had nothing to do with it in the first place. But the company did send along a thank you to both Carson and Parcells in the form of $1,000 gift certificates to Brooks Brothers.
According to Darren Rovell’s 2005 book, “First in Thirst: How Gatorade Turned the Science of Sweat into a Cultural Phenomenon,” Bill Schmidt, Gatorade’s head of sports marketing at the time, was the person who sent out the gift certificates with a short note.
It read, in part, “We … realize that due to the yearlong ‘Gatorade dunking’ you have been receiving, your wardrobe has probably taken a beating. The enclosed should help remedy the problem; after all, we do feel somewhat responsible for your cleaning bill.”
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
Reach McManaman at bob.mcmanaman@arizonarepublic. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @azbobbymac and listen to him live every Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. on Roc and Manuch with Jimmy B on ESPN 620 (KTAR-AM).
