Here's how much it would cost to dump each bowl sponsor's product on a coach

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When I think of the moment of this bowl season that best encapsulated the true spirit of college football, what brought the most joy to a casual fan watching on TV, I don't think of the Playoff games. Those were displays of high-quality football, but neither game was really in doubt after the first fifteen minutes. To me, they felt more like NFL games.

The most college football moment? That was when a .500 coach who won a forgettable bowl game got a jug of mayo dumped on him.

Was it gross? Unquestionably. Was it stupid? Without a doubt. Was it fun? Absolutely. And that's college football.

Other bowls realized that yes, dumping their sponsored product on the winning coach is good, actually:

So this begs the question. What else could we dump on coaches? And how much would it cost?

This is a very serious question that calls for some Serious Professional Journalism. But none of the Serious Professional Journalists took my phone calls, so I guess I'll have to take a stab at this.

For the purposes of this exercise, I am assuming the dumping jug is a 10 gallon Gatorade jug. Then, using a combination of Wolfram Alpha, the Extra Points Community Discord (open to all paid subscribers!), and what little math I can remember from high school, I tried to calculate the basic unit cost of the bowl sponsor item, and how many would fit in a 10 gallon jug.

I also wanted to limit my calculations here to products with a more easily defined unit. I mean, yes, if the bowl sponsor was a mortgage lender, you can fit a lot of subprime mortgages in a giant Gatorade jug. But trying to assign an individual value for those, and then calculating how many of them could fit, is beyond the calculation capabilities of this humble newsletter writer, a man who got a C- in Calculus at a state school.

So with those caveats, here's my best stab at the problem. How much would it cost to dump each product on a coach?

Valero Alamo Bowl: $33.66 in gasoline

You don't really think of gas as cheap, so I assumed this wouldn't be the cheapest bowl product to dump, but apparently I was wrong. The US average price for a gallon of gas, as of Sunday, is $3.36 a gallon, so ten gallons gives us a jug that could completely douse a football coach, OR fill up more than half a tank for my car.

If we're really on a budget, we could simply buy a barrel of unrefined gasoline, which currently trades for $75.21 for a 42 gallon drum. Then we could fill up the Gatorade jug for about eighteen bucks. A bargain!

The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl: $51.87 in potatoes

According to Wal-Mart's website, you can grab a bag of Idaho spuds for $3.99, a bag which typically has about 13 potatoes in it. Roughly 170 can fit in a jug, according to Wolfram, which gives us a fully weaponized barrel of spuds for just a titch over fifty bucks, making it economical and highly dangerous.

It would probably be safer to dump mashed potatoes, but that isn't the name of the bowl game, is it?

Duke's Mayo Bowl: $147.20 in Mayo

The real mayo dump was from a much smaller container, and they also had to cut the mayo with water, to help it dump a little easier, which whew boy was not a sentence I expected to type in my business of college sports newsletter, but there we go. If you wanted to dump 10 gallons of pure, uncut, Duke's, at $3.68 a container, that's about what it would cost you.

Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl: $197.32 in Frosted Flakes

From the pictures, I don't think a full 10 gallon bucket was used. But a box of cereal runs you about $3.70, and you can fit roughly 53.33 boxes in the jug. Maybe more, if you crunch it up a little bit to squeeze a few more flakes in there.

Autozone Liberty Bowl: $259.60 in motor oil

Autozone sells a variety of liquids that you could potentially dump on somebody. We decided to pick a relatively common one. At $6.49 a unit, you can fit about 40 of these into that Gatorade jug.

Cheez-It Bowl: $291.34 in Cheez-Its

My kids don't really like eating these, so I forgot that they're actually kind of expensive? A box runs you $4.78 each, and almost 61 can fit into a 10 gallon jug.

So don't let anybody tell you there isn't enough money in college sports, when we can afford to do this.

Tropical Smoothie Cafe Frisco Bowl: $292.78 in Sunshine Smoothies

Again, lots to choose from here. A 24 oz Sunshine Smoothie goes for $5.49, and if my plusing and minusing is correct, that means we can fit a little over 53 smoothies in the jug. There may be more economical solutions here, but at the very least, I think we can confirm this would be more pleasant and less flammable than the motor oil or unrefined gasoline.

Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl: $588.80 in Chick-Fil-A sauce

An 8 oz container of sauce runs you $3.68, I'm told, which comes out to about $589 to fill up an entire jug. That might be enough for an entire football team's post game meal? Not sure. Somebody should try it.

Outback Steakhouse: $1,256.26 in Bloomin' Onions

Okay, so it turns out trying to calculate the volume of a Bloomin' Onion is pretty hard.

We know that the Bloomin' Onion is made from "super-colossal onions", which is apparently a real and not made up type of onion.If we estimate that a super-colossal" onion is twice the size of a regular ol' white onion, Wolfram tells us we can squeeze about 140 into a jug. A Bloomin' Onion runs you $8.99, according to this menu.

Please send all corrections to this math to my attorney, Ryan Nanni:

Playstation Fiesta Bowl: $4,000 in Playstation 5s

I think you can fit about eight PS5s in a jug if they stick out a teensy bit at the top and aren’t terribly concerned with them getting dinged up a bit, and a Ps5 goes for $499.99 retail, but let's be realistic. Who the hell is able to find eight Ps5s at retail right now? Actually buying eight Ps5s is going to cost at least double that, to say nothing of the hospital bills from knocking a grown man out cold.

Capital One Orange Bowl: $7,750 in quarters

I’m not really sure how you’d price the ‘cost’ of a credit card for something like this, but Capital One also does banks! Sure, dollar bills would be more practical, but dumping a ton of coins on a coach is much funnier. You can fit 31,000 quarters in a 10 gallon jug, which comes out to $7,750. Surely, if swimming in coins was good enough for Scrooge McDuck, it should be good enough for Mark Stoops.

New Era Pinstripe Bowl: $11,696.10 in flat-brimmed hats

New Era sells a lot of stuff, including a lot of things that go on your head, but the flat-brimmed baseball cap is probably the most famous, right? That goes for 29.99, and according to our calculations, you can fit 390 of them into a jug. That'd be over 10 grand in hats, roughly enough to outfit one Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith.

Northrop Grumman Military Bowl: $788,482 in JAGM Missiles

This is the obvious choice for the most expensive one, right? I originally tried to figure out how many bullets you could fit in a jug, until an Extra Points reader, who happens to work in military contracting, suggested the JAGM missile. Allegedly, two of these could fit into a jug if we're okay with them sticking out a bit and if they were loaded very carefully. The US Government pays Northrop Grumman $394,241 for each missile, which is how we end up at $788,482 in total. Maybe, for this game, we dump the missiles on the losing coach?

Just a thought.

Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl: $1 million in, uh, one Jimmy Kimmel

According to our crack internet research, it costs between $100,000 and a million bucks to book Kimmel to come speak at your event. Since this particular event requires Kimmel to stand upright in a Gatorade jug for three hours, then fall down on top of a fifty five-year-old man, I'm going to assume he's going to charge us the max. That's fair.

Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl: Idk, probably six million dollars in stuff that wouldn't even properly fall out of the jug once we tipped it over

America!

Did I miss anything? Probably! Please send me your revised calculations

Together, we can find a way to dump more stuff onto highly paid coaches on national television. The only limit is our imagination and our ability to figure out how to fit financial services into a jug.

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