Orange Gatorade: The Tom Brady Of Gatorades

While Super Bowl LV played out in front of a reduced crowd of 22,000 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, I had a little competition going of my own. My friend Neil invited me to participate in the Big Game Covers Challenge. Participants in the challenge select from up to 20 different cover challenges ranging from the over/under on the length of the National Anthem in seconds to which song The Weeknd would perform first, to more serious football matters like the over/under on total combined points scored during the game. 

The most important cover for me was #16: What color will the liquid poured on the winning coach be? I knew the winning team would be the Bucs, and therefore the venerable Bruce Arians would be the one dumped on. I didn't get many of my picks right, but that one I did. But the color? What would the color be? I knew it was going to be a riveting day. 

The game itself was definitely not interesting. I was in no way amazed that a man born the year the first Star Wars film came out and playing in his tenth Super Bowl would carve up the Kansas City defense with a tight end who came out of retirement to play for him. When the Bucs jumped out to a 14-3 lead before halftime, I definitely wasn't excited that Kansas City's defense was losing its composure and its ability to cover Rob Gronkowski or stop running back Leonard Fournette. It was all just fluff until I got to see if Bruce Arians would be dunked in my pick of red/pink Gatorade. 

I wasn't at all excited to see if Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Todd Bowles could land a head coaching job literally before the game was over, simply based on his ability to shut down Kansas City's offense. It definitely wasn't riveting to watch Tampa Bay's defense chase and harass Patrick Mahomes all day. I wasn't glued to the screen to see if Mahomes might run for over 1,000 yards BEHIND the line of scrimmage before the 4th quarter even started. What I really had to see, what I really had to know, was what color that sweet, sticky Gatorade was gonna be when it fell on BA's head. 

I definitely wasn't interested in the fact that Tampa Bay was playing for its first title in 18 years. Or that they were trying to become the first team in NFL history to win the Super Bowl at home. Definitely didn't matter that they were trying to do it against last year's champs. Definitely wasn't interested to see if Brady could get his fifth Super Bowl MVP and his first title without Bill Belichick. It was 100% not interesting to me that Tom Brady was doing something no athlete in professional sports has ever done and 100 years from now probably still will have never done. What color was that Gatorade gonna be baby!? I had to know.  

In the end, Bruce Arians was drenched in blue and I picked wrong. I should have done my research: Orange has been the winning color in five of the last 11 Super Bowls. I guess you could say Orange Gatorade is like the Tom Brady of Gatorades. I lost that Gatorade prop pick and overall to Neil 12-9. I wouldn't change any of it though. It was a riveting day.