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The ‘Gatorade Dunk’ makes debut

BILL SCHMIDT
President,
Pegasus Sports Marketing

The longtime Gatorade sports marketing chief has attended 27 Super Bowls. His first was Super Bowl X.

I was in graduate school at the University of Tennessee when a Pittsburgh area high school friend called me from Miami. He was there for the game. Said he had one extra ticket for the game. If I could get there, it was mine free. Made it and visited with my college friend [and track team teammate] Joe Greene in the tunnel outside after the game when he came out to greet the fans. Awesome.

By the way, I returned the favor to my friend 20 years later at Super Bowl XXX. I called him and reminded him of his invite to me 20 years earlier. Told him I had two tickets for him if he could make it to Phoenix. They were his. He made it along with another high school friend. We [Pittsburgh] beat Dallas at Super Bowl X, but lost to them in the desert.

Players douse Giants coach Bill Parcells in what has  become a victory tradition throughout sports.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
FAVORITE MOMENTS: Super Bowl XXI, Giants versus Broncos at the Rose Bowl. The culmination of a 1986 season and the start of the “Gatorade Dunk” by the New York Giants. Awesome win, Gatorade Dunk happened and the rest is history.

Super Bowl XXIII, Miami, 49ers versus the Bengals. “The Drive” by Joe Montana in the final three minutes to beat the Bengals. The subscript was more important and not publicly known. We at Gatorade had a small deal with the NFL but had deals with Cincinnati and Denver. Coca-Cola had a leaguewide deal and was leveraging their Diet Coke brand at the time. We were informed a few days before the game that there would be no Gatorade coolers or cups on the sidelines for the game. There would be Diet Coke cups and coolers. We had a meeting with the NFL marketing department and ended up sharing equally 50/50 with Diet Coke on the number of cups as well as number of coolers that were on the sidelines for the game.

It was interesting that, years later, one of the trainers said they had put Gatorade in the Diet Coke cups and water in the Gatorade cups during the game. At that time, more water was consumed than Gatorade, so Gatorade received more exposure with our cups although there was water in them.

Somehow as the game winded down, I noticed that all the Gatorade coolers had been removed from the field. There was a weak effort to execute a Diet Coke Dunk at the end of the game. That next year, I executed a multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal for Gatorade sideline exclusivity for cups, coolers and towels.

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