OKLAHOMA CITY — A herd of stuffed cows and a human dubbed “Broccoli Guy” will walk into Devon Park this week, and no, it’s not the start to a bad joke.
Quite the opposite. The rosters these out-of-character items represent are hoping it’s the spark to a national championship. Here at the Women’s College World Series, softball is the rare sport left that doesn’t take itself too seriously, even if it does obsess over the result.
It’s all supposed to be fun, after all. Idle hands in the dugout find ways to support teammates in the batter’s box and on the bases. It’s a throughline from the chants of youth ball screamed from underneath upside-down hats. And this year’s iteration includes stuffed cows for Nebraska and broccoli crowns for underdog Mississippi State.
That type of collective drive can rally a squad, as happened organically with a man in a short-sleeve broccoli dress shirt, dancing in the outfield holding his pack of veggies.
Jim Stewart Allen, a Seattle native known for his antics in the Pacific Northwest, initially showed up to the Eugene Regional to support Oregon. At the first game, he caught the dugout’s attention, and Mississippi State players began dancing along with him.
He wasn’t even going to stay once the Ducks were eliminated, but he thought of the connection he made. Plus, he just loved softball. It was “maybe one of the best decisions of my life,” he told the Mississippi Clarion Ledger last week.
Allen became a mainstay at the park and for ESPN’s cameraman. He went down to Norman for the super regionals, and by Game 3, broccoli was a Bulldog’s favorite vegetable. Allen, their unofficial good luck charm, said they were the first team since he started in 2020 to adopt the practice.
Mississippi State head coach Samantha Ricketts contributed $500 on Tuesday to a GoFundMe started so that Allen, who pays for travel and accommodations himself, could make it to Oklahoma City.
“We saw his energy, and I think he helped loosen the team up at the regional,” Ricketts said on Wednesday. “Once they bought in, it was all in, that we wanted to continue to make sure he knew he was a big part of this journey for us as well. I think he really represents the way that we go about our business. It’s just being true to ourselves and having fun.”
Ricketts credited the looseness of her team for their upset win over Oklahoma, telling reporters on Wednesday that when coaches realized how light the team was on the bus to Game 3, they knew they were going to win. The $5K target for Allen, a special education teacher, was raised within a day, largely by smaller donations from 129 donors.
As for Nebraska’s cows, it was really Nebraska head coach Rhonda Revelle who herded them into Cornhuskers lore. And unbeknownst to her until Wednesday afternoon, one of the plushies that took over the dugout is named for her. Thankfully, given the growing number of them, they travel for free.
The story goes that Revelle believed the team needed a pick-me-up amid a rough stretch last season and piqued interest with hints of a “special guest” at practice.
The next day, Nebraska icon JoAnne Owens-Nauslar, better known as “Dr. Jo,” walked into Bowlin Stadium with a baby cow named Bowlin. The animal was born during one of their games, hence the name, and has a twin, Gordon.
Shortstop Ava Kuszak, an animal science and pre-vet major, was smitten. She began an internship with Owens-Nauslaar and worked with large animals for the first time, an experience she loved.
Her mom and Revelle each purchased her stuffed cows — properly naming them Bowlin and Gordon as an homage to the live ones — and they took their rightful place in the Nebraska dugout. As with any dugout addition that could spark social media hits, the stuffies received heavy airtime in their 2025 postseason run and again this month.
“After we won the Big Ten tournament, we went [to Chick-Fil-A] and got some food after, and [an employee] came out with a huge stuffed cow,” Kuszak said on Wednesday. “And he was like, ‘You guys have to have this in the dugout.’ So that one is Rho Rev for Coach Revelle.”
Inevitably, more randomness will enter Devon Park this week. If the cows and broccoli could hold a marker, they’d sign their names to decades of iconic dugout entries in WCWS history.