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On Friday, Syracuse and Washington State will face off in the Holiday Bowl in a contest that will determine who will end up getting doused in eggnog at the end of the game. Fran Brown has already made it clear he won’t be getting that particular treatment, but he has a pretty valid reason for ducking the celebratory shower.
The bowl games that mark the end of the college football season have lost some of their luster in recent years thanks to a rise in opt-outs and the largely unaddressed issues stemming from the current state of the transfer portal, but there are still plenty of reasons to look forward to them—including the unconventional substances that end up getting dumped on the coaches of some winning teams.
The Duke’s Mayo Bowl is the unrivaled star of the show thanks to the fairly revolting ritual we’ve been treated to since Shane Beamer became the inaugural victim following South Carolina’s win over North Carolina in 2021.
However, we’ve also got the french fries, Frosted Flakes, and Cheez-Its that are respectively contained in coolers at the Potato Bowl, the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, and, well, you can probably guess.
In 2023, the Holiday Bowl decided to get in on the action by introducing the eggnog bath that Lincoln Riley was subjected to when USC beat Louisville, and it will be returning for a second season in conjunction with Friday’s showdown between Syracuse and Washington State.
The Orange punched their ticket to a bowl game for the third season in a row after posting a 9-3 record under first-year head coach Fran Brown and head into the Holiday Bowl as 4.5-point favorites over the Cougars.
However, on Thursday, Brown said he won’t be covered in eggnog if Syracuse walks away with the win after revealing he’s allergic to eggs at a press conference where he said injured RB Dan Villari has volunteered as tribute.
Fran Brown on the Holiday Bowl Eggnog Shower: “I’m allergic to eggs, so Dan Villari has taken an NIL deal to handle it.”
Not sure if this is satire or if he’s being serious
— Ashley Wenskoski (@AshleyWenskTV) December 26, 2024
Pete Kaligi will be serving as the head coach for Washington State in the wake of Jake Dickert’s departure to Wake Forest, and it doesn’t appear he has any allergies that will prevent him from getting the eggnog treatment if the Cougars end up winning.