Scott Wachter-Imagn Images
College football’s bowl season has lost a lot of its luster, but there’s still plenty of magic to be found thanks to the schools and organizers that have decided to fully commit to the bit. That includes the folks behind the Citrus Bowl, which decided to treat the live longhorn Texas has as a mascot to a massive cake shaped like a Cheez-It ahead of the team’s showdown with Michigan.
The college football landscape is currently defined by a “National Championship or Bust” mentality that helped make the bowl games that aren’t part of that tournament a bigger afterthought with every year that passes.
More and more players have (somewhat understandably) decided to opt out of those essentially meaningless games, and many of those contests appear to be on life support as interest steadily wanes.
With that said, there are some exceptions to that rule. The Pop-Tarts Bowl has mastered the art of corporate synergy by making the ritual sacrifice of anthropomorphic breakfast pastries one of the highlights of the college football season, and I’m not sure how you can’t look forward to seeing a coach get slathered in Duke’s Mayo after winning the bowl game the condiment brand sponsors.
The marketing gurus at Cheez-It have also done a pretty solid job of injecting the brand’s presence into the bowl games it’s been affiliated with since 2018, and 2025 will mark the third year the snack’s name has been plastered in front of the Citrus Bowl.
This year’s contest will feature a showdown between Texas and Michigan, and the live mascot for the former is getting a special gift with some help from a pet bakery in Orlando.
Texas commissioned a 50-pound cake shaped like a Cheez-It for Bevo, its live longhorn mascot, ahead of the Citrus Bowl
Texas adopted the “Longhorns” nickname toward the beginning of the 20th century, and in 1916, some alumni pooled together $124 to purchase a real, actual longhorn that was shipped to the campus in Austin.
The editor for a campus magazine dubbed the steer “Bevo,” and as things currently stand, 15 different longhorns have served as a live mascot for Texas while gracing the field at home games and occasionally traveling to other contests.
The current one, Bevo XV, made his grand debut in 2016. He was not permitted to attend the SEC Championship or the Peach Bowl in Atlanta last year, but he will be making the approximately 1,100-mile trek from Austin to Orlando for the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl on Wednesday.
According to ESPN, Bevo will be getting a treat upon his arrival courtesy of the Citrus Bowl organizers who reached out to Bark Avenue Bakery, a store in Orlando that specializes in gourmet treats for furry friends, with a unique request that greeted co-owner Shannon Imbruglia when she arrived for work: “birthday cake for a cow.”
Imbruglia did some digging before discovering the cow in question was Bevo, and she whipped up a recipe involving applesauce, cinnamon, and wheat flour to create a 12″x 12″ cake in the shape of a Cheez-It that ended up weighing close to 50 pounds.
Keep bowl games weird.