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College football is the noblest American sport. Consisting of regimented physical warfare between the strongest, most courageous young men of our hundreds of different subcultures, it is a weekly collision between not only football teams or even just universities, but between ways of life. Public vs. Private. Rich vs. Working-Class. Religious vs. Secular. Religious vs. Religious. Liberal vs. Conservative. Academic vs. Social. East vs. West, North vs. South, City vs. Suburb vs. Country. College football is our best cultural battlefield.
College football is also the silliest American sport. College football is where we gather, as a society, to dump mayonnaise on Shane Beamer.
The Duke’s Mayo Classic will be played tonight in Charlotte. Tennessee takes on NC State. A moderate quantity of playoff leverage is at stake.
This is the fifth Duke’s Mayo Classic, joining App State/East Carolina, Georgia/Clemson, NC Central/NC A&T, and North Carolina/South Carolina in the storied list of games to bear the title. Notre Dame and Wake Forest almost played in the inaugural Duke’s Mayo Classic, but the novel coronavirus intervened two or three times to stop that game from happening. I don’t know why I’m listing the games for you. I think it feels important to illustrate how this is sometime a big game and sometimes a cool HBCU game and sometimes App State vs. East Carolina. East Carolina went 7–5 that year. Appalachian State went on to lose the Sun Belt Championship before allowing Bailey Zappe to throw for six touchdowns against them in the Boca Raton Bowl.
When, exactly, did Duke’s Mayo slop onto the college football scene? How far back does this go?
I was unfamiliar with Duke’s Mayo until it announced itself to the sporting world. I don’t know if this is because I didn’t grow up in the Southeast or because I don’t buy much mayonnaise, but whatever the reason, if Duke’s Mayo’s goal in sponsoring these college football games was to increase my awareness of their condiment, mission accomplished. I am very aware of Duke’s Mayo. It is the first mayo I think of when I think of mayo.
But while Duke’s Mayo is still rather new to college football, the brand itself is over 100 years old. Eugenia Duke, a suffragist and a sandwich-maker, first sold her mayonnaise in 1917, actually selling sandwiches (with the mayonnaise on them) at Army canteens. By 1923, the mayonnaise was popular enough among soldiers that they requested she sell it separately from the sandwiches. By 1929, the mayonnaise was so popular that she sold the brand to the C.F. Sauer Company, who kept production in Greenville, South Carolina. Production remains in the Greenville area today. I’m getting most of this from Wikipedia. It feels like I asked ChatGPT to come up with a story about an American entrepreneur, but it all appears to be true.
When did Duke’s join the college football game? It started with that attempted Notre Dame/Wake Forest game in 2020. Back in 2015, the bowl first known as the Continental Tire Bowl expanded its offerings to include an early-season neutral-site game. By 2015, Belk was sponsoring the bowl, so as you would hope, Belk also sponsored the regular season contest. In 2015, South Carolina and North Carolina met in the Belk College Kickoff. The organizers of the Continental Tire Bowl/Meineke Car Care Bowl/Belk Bowl/Duke’s Mayo Bowl/Belk College Kickoff/Duke’s Mayo Classic love pitting North Carolina and South Carolina against one another. What else is Charlotte for but to serve as an informal capital of the joint Carolina territory?
Long story short, Duke’s Mayo began sponsoring the regular season game and the bowl game during that 2020 season. At the end of 2020, as Wisconsin beat Wake Forest in the inaugural Duke’s Mayo Bowl, a picture of a Duke’s Mayo-branded watercooler on the Wisconsin sideline prompted online speculation that Paul Chryst would be doused in mayonnaise. He wasn’t, but a promotion opportunity’s a promotion opportunity, and at the conclusion of the 2021 Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Shane Beamer got his mayonnaise bath. Who did his Gamecocks beat that day? Obviously, it was North Carolina.
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Some resources for today:
- Our comprehensive Week 2 preview.
- Movelor’s Week 2 spreads and win probabilities.
- Our model’s latest bracketology.
- Our model’s latest College Football Playoff (and conference title) probabilities, plus full Movelor ratings, all updated to include last night’s games.
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