MEMORIES:
Hawk remembers...I used to hate this stuff as a kid, but I tried it again in my later teen years and ... More »
Posted on 08/09/09
PHOTOS:
Born of science and sports, and made a legend, Gatorade has been a proven favorite of athletes and thirsty-people alike for over four decades. While most sports beverages have been created to fill a hole in a product line, Gatorade was created to help the performance of the 1965 University of Florida football team. The story goes something like this: the Gator coaches were trying to find a way to help players who were suffering from heat, exhaustion and related illnesses out on the field. After assembling four university doctors, they soon discovered that the players were not only thirsty, but also short on something called electrolytes.
What makes the story notable is that after the Florida Gators started drinking their namesake, their play dramatically improved. During the second half of the season, after the introduction of the original lemon-lime Gatorade, the University of Florida Gators outscored their opponents by a whopping 158 points! The story has become legendary to the point that fans continue to embellish it to this day. As the Gators’ seasons continued improving, Gatorade began to earn a reputation in college sports as well. University sports programs started to order batches for their teams and within a couple of years, the Kansas City Chiefs started using the drink to quench their thirsty players. Today, Gatorade enjoys natural product placement alongside basketball courts, tracks, and ball fields of all sorts.
The 1980s saw a big boom for Gatorade with the emergence of a ritual known as the “Gatorade Dunk.” The dunk itself is a special moment in every major sporting event and to the delight of the makers of Gatorade – it was absolute free publicity. All Gatorade had to do was sit back and let the phenomenon grow on its own. Gallons upon gallons of Gatorade are dumped on coaches around the country and sportscasters eat it up as the cameramen look for the next great picture of a coach getting soaked in the sticky drink. Gatorade’s 80s explosion continued into the 1990s with the help of their breakthrough advertising campaign featuring basketball legend Michael Jordan - “Be Like Mike.” You probably wouldn’t be able to shoot like him just from a few swigs of Gatorade, but you could dream, at least.
For the University of Florida, Gatorade has been a tremendous asset, bringing in millions upon millions for medical research (even though it is now produced by Quaker/PepsiCo.) The formula for Gatorade remains relatively unchanged, even if there are a multitude of flavors available today. Gatorade is one of the few truly authentic American successes, from inception to modern day use, even if we’re more likely to see people drinking Gatorade as a snack drink instead of a re-hydrating sports beverage. And who knows, if you drink enough of the stuff, maybe you will go on to become a sports legend. It worked for the Gators and it worked for Mike, maybe it will work for you. Miraculous drink, that Gatorade is.
