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Everything to know about the Super Bowl Gatorade bath. A history of the featured colors
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- Everything to know about the Super Bowl Gatorade bath. A history of the featured colors
Super Bowl 58 between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs is less than a week away. Even if you don't know much about football, there is still ample opportunity to bet on the big game.
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Exotic prop bets are some of the most fun people have with the Super Bowl every year, ranging from scorigamis to what the result of the coin toss will be to the first or last play of the game. Arguably the most popular of these bets though revolves around Gatorade.
It is an NFL tradition for the winning team at the Super Bowl to pour Gatorade over their head coach. While this doesn't happen every season, it happens much more often than not. The bet lies in the flavor of Gatorade. Will it be a classic red or blue? Or will it end up being a less popular color like purple or yellow?
Here is a brief history about the colors from years past as well as odds for this year's colors.
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Super Bowl Gatorade history
While the first-ever Gatorade bath is up for debate, credit is most often given to Jim Burt, a defensive tackle for the New York Giants who dumped Gatorade over the head of head coach Bill Parcells after a midseason 17-3 victory over Washington. However, there is evidence of a dump performed by Chicago Bears ' players Steve McMichael and Mike Singletary onto Mike Ditka's head a year prior.
Regardless of the tradition's start date, actually betting on the Gatorade color wasn't legalized until the 2019 Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and New England Patriots . The Gatorade color has been blue in three of the five Super Bowls since. However, with the Kansas City Chiefs playing in this year's Super Bowl, the question should be what colors were the Gatorades when the Chiefs won in 2020 and 2023.
Coincidentally, neither Gatorade was blue when the Chiefs won. In 2020, the Gatorade was orange and in 2023, it was purple, which was a longshot at +1000 odds prior to the game. This year, purple is the odds-on favorite, which makes sense given that the Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl yet again.
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What is the most popular Gatorade color?
Since 2001, the most popular Gatorade color to be poured on the winning head coach is orange. Orange has been the color five times, whereas blue and clear have been the color four times each. There have also been four instances where there was no Gatorade bath at all.
As stated earlier, blue is a popular bet nowadays given that three of the last five Super Bowl winners have poured blue Gatorade over their coaches. However, the Chiefs do not seem inclined to have blue Gatorade on their sidelines at all.
The only other colors to have appeared since 2001 are purple and yellow, each of which have shown up in the Super Bowl three times. Crazily enough, red has not been the color since the start of the 21st century. Red is arguably the most popular Gatorade flavor of them all, but never seems to find its way onto the sidelines of the Super Bowl.
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Super Bowl 2024 Gatorade color odds
Odds provided courtesy of DraftKings :
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Purple (+250)
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Red (+275)
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Yellow/Green (+300)
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Blue (+350)
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Orange (+500)
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Clear/Water (+1000)
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No Gatorade Bath (+1600)
What is the best bet?
Trying to predict the Gatorade color is a near-impossible task. There is no way of knowing what color will be on either sideline unless you have some insider information from someone at the game or an equipment manager for either team. Even then, that team would have to win the game for that information to be worth anything.
Still, given the popularity of orange Gatorade and the fact that the Chiefs have poured orange Gatorade over Andy Reid before, the +550 odds attached to that color seem pretty solid.
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The worst bet is probably red. While both teams' primary color is red, it has never appeared in a Super Bowl Gatorade bath before. There has to be a reason for that, right? Maybe the red Gatorade is too filling and makes players more lethargic than the other players. Who knows? The fact is that if red was popular amongst NFL players, we would have seen it by this point given its overall popularity.
This is not a bet to put huge amounts of money on. This is a bet to throw $5 on just to have something to cheer for after the game if your favorite team is not participating. Will your bet hit? Probably not, but it would be a fun time if it does.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What Gatorade color has been dumped the most in Super Bowl history?
