College Bowl games in trouble? Submit the memes.

After winning the Pop-Tarts Bowl on December 28 in Orlando, Florida, the Kansas State football team gathered on the field around a toaster the size of a garage, which was protected by a pair of store cops wearing “Snack Security” shirts wore.

There was an unusual chant: “Toast that mascot!” Cheers to that mascot!” — as Strawberry, a giant Pop-Tart with limbsclimbed to the top of the toaster, moving to the disco-era beat of Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff.”

“We will always love you, Strawberry,” announcer Jason Ryan Perry said over the stadium public address system. “I can’t wait to eat you.”

For nearly three hours, Strawberry had shown the crowd as one of the surprise stars of the game — and of the entire college bowl season, which was no small feat for an anthropomorphic breakfast pastry. By the time Strawberry tossed aside a sign that read “Dreams Real Do Come True” so it could happily slide through a slot and the crust could be toasted until golden brown, the Internet was about to collapse.

Sure enough, Strawberry soon emerged from the toaster an edible version of itself. The victorious players pounced and stuffed themselves with handfuls of Strawberry until all that was left – RIP, Strawberry – was the left eye.

“I think those guys were really hungry,” Heidi Ray, senior director of brand marketing at Pop-Tarts, said in a telephone interview.

In a crowded marketplace, the Pop-Tarts Bowl — rebranded this year after previously being the Cheez-It Bowl, the Camping World Bowl and several other names — managed to do something special: elevate an otherwise ordinary game into a viral sensation.

Michigan and Washington will face each other Monday night in the College Football Playoff national championship game, but in an era when there are more than 40 bowl games per season, only two of which — the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl — serve as national bowl games. championship semifinals – with some significance, the Pop-Tarts Bowl won the internet.

Or at least it shared the Internet championship with Duke’s Mayo Bowl.

From a competitive perspective, the play-off system made its debut in 2014 and will remain so add quarter finals next year, has turned the other bowls into artifacts of a bygone era, when they meant more to teams — and to their conferences — than they do today. As a result, many prominent players with NFL aspirations choose not to participate in the games when nothing is at stake.

None of this has slowed the steady drumbeat in favor of even more bowl games, which generate decent ratings and advertising revenue around the holidays.

With so many mostly meaningless bowls – the Guaranteed Rate Bowl and the Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl, the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl and the Avocados of Mexico Cure Bowl – the most intense competition is not necessarily between teams on the field, but between the brands that welfare. hoping for a fleeting (and profitable) moment of virality.

“I think doing it in a unique, fun way is an important way to keep bowls relevant,” said Miller Yoho, director of marketing and communications for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which organizes Duke’s Mayo Bowl. “Honestly, this is the most anyone has talked about it in the 10 years I’ve been doing it.”

When Duke’s Mayo, a spice company based in Richmond, Virginia, began sponsoring the game in 2020 — it was previously sponsored by Meineke Car Care Center, among others — the feeling was that the company “needed to do something different to make mayonnaise cool again,” says Joe Tuza, chairman of Sauer Brands, owner of Duke’s Mayo. By partnering with college football, the brand has sought to capitalize on its share of made-for-the-internet moments, both planned and unplanned.

Since 2021, the game’s winning coach is drenched in a cooler full of mayonnaise as Tubby, the aggressive eyebrow mascot, raises his arms in triumph and Mr. Tuza stands nearby with a cartoon-sized check. The incentive for the coach is that $10,000 goes to a charity of his choice.

“Every time I’m on stage with the trophies, the players start chanting: ‘Mayo dump! Mayo dump!’” Mr Tuza said. “It’s rewarding for them to see their coach getting swamped after all the hard work they’ve put in.”

And while several skeptics, including Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, a noted mayonnaise hater, have questioned whether it is actually mayonnaiseMr Tuza and Mr Yoho both vouched for its authenticity.

“It’s 100 percent mayonnaise,” Mr. Yoho said. ‘I smelled it. They have to stir it to get the viscosity right.”

Before this season’s game on Dec. 27, Duke’s Mayo upped the ante by staging a draft-style combine to select the two people who would dump the mayonnaise on the winning coach. (These were the lingering fallout from the 2021 game, when South Carolina coach Shane Beamer accidentally hit on the head near the cooler; Duke’s Mayo later sent him a helmet.) Mr. Yoho said he watched the combine via live feed.

“All I see is people covered in mayonnaise trying to catch a football,” he said. “I’m like, ‘What’s happening?’”

The extra effort has paid off. Duke’s Mayo had a record day for online sales this year, Mr. Tuza said, and the company expects to generate about $10 million in brand awareness, which will more than double its investment.

“Given the size of our company, it’s a big investment for us,” said Mr. Tuza, “so we really had to make it work. We had to execute and not just put our name on the sponsorship.”

In the midst of a cluttered bowl game landscape, complacency will leave you behind. Bowl season never rests, not completely. For example, one of the attractions at the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl was a hot tub branded “Feelin’ the Cheeziest,” i.e. now for sale on eBay, with proceeds going to the Florida Citrus Sports Foundation. (Condition: Used.)

And the day after Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Mr. Yoho was part of a text message chain with colleagues already looking ahead to the 2024 edition of the game. The core of those messages?

“Okay, we just watched the Pop-Tarts Bowl and the game’s on,” Mr. Yoho recalled.

The Pop-Tarts phenomenon was something to behold, in no small part because of the exploits of Strawberry, who was played by Barry Anderson, a former mascot of the Chicago Bulls. In his first and only public appearance, Strawberry danced with fans, spread bite-sized versions of himself and welcomed his own demise. (Thanks to the magic of television, Mr. Anderson didn’t exactly toast himself.)

“It far exceeded all our expectations,” Ms Ray said, adding: “We didn’t have to fake anything. That’s totally the brand. This is how we interact socially every day of the year. We just brought a little piece of that world to the world of college football.”

And while Strawberry is now the best-known Pop-Tart in the brand’s 60-year history, Kellanova produces about three billion treats annually, Ms. Ray said. In other words, Strawberry wasn’t a one-off. There is even more talent in the pipeline.

“Everyone witnessed Strawberry getting eaten by the Wildcats, and he is happy in mouth heaven because his dreams came true,” Ms. Ray said. “But don’t fear: this isn’t the last time you’ll see an edible Pop-Tart as a mascot.”