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What is Rocco's Jello Shot Challenge? Explaining College World Series tradition
What is Rocco's Jello Shot Challenge? Explaining College World Series tradition
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Which NCAA baseball teams could blow up the bracket
The Montgomery Advertiser's Adam Cole and The Southwest Times Record's Jackson Fuller break down who could wreck the tournament bracket.
Inside the walls of Charles Schwab Field Omaha over the next 10 days, eight college baseball teams will be competing for immortality in their sport during the College World Series, with one squad emerging by the end of it as a national champion.
Across North 13th Street in downtown Omaha, Nebraska, a very different kind of competition will be unfolding.
Over the past several years, the Jell-O Shot Challenge at Rocco's Pizza and Cantina has become a fixture of the CWS, with supporters of the eight teams vying for the title of the thirstiest fan base at the event. If glory for their teams can't be found on the diamond, fans can try to find it in small plastic cups.
REQUIRED READING: 2025 College World Series team rankings: The eight teams in Omaha from best to worst
Over the course of the CWS, a tally is kept on a whiteboard, with the restaurant keeping track of which school's fan base has consumed the most shots. The intrigue in the proceedings goes well beyond Omaha: The ever-changing count is regularly updated on social media, with millions of interested fans across the country able to see who's leading in the race for alcohol-soaked greatness.
With the first game of the CWS starting today, here's a closer look at the Jell-O Shot Challenge and how it came to be:
What is Rocco's Jell-O Shot Challenge?
Years before its sudden rise to fame, Rocco's had been a popular gathering spot for college baseball fans in town for the College World Series to relish their team's wins, drown their sorrows after losses and channel the intensity from the sport's biggest event to various drinking games and competitions with opposing fans.
In 2011, when Florida and South Carolina squared off in the CWS championship series, Gators and Gamecocks fans flocking to Rocco's had requested their own distinct shots. Fans knocked them back in droves, giving Pat McEvoy, the restaurant's manager, the idea of doing so for all teams at the event — and eventually gamifying it as an outlet for fans' competitive impulses.
Years later, the liquid shots gave way to Jell-O shots, which are easier to make in bulk. As demand for them picked up year after year, Rocco's outsourced the mass-production of the shots to a Tennessee-based company that specializes in making the concoctions.
The challenge itself officially began in 2019, making the 2025 College World Series the sixth iteration of it (the COVID-19 pandemic canceled much of the 2020 season, including the CWS).
The competition itself is simple. Rocco's stocks Jell-O shots for each of the eight CWS teams, corresponding with one of the school's colors. Each time a fan of that team purchases a shot, it is tallied as part of the school's larger total. The shot counts for each school are periodically updated on a white board at the bar at Rocco's, giving patrons an idea of where things stand and how much work their team needs to catch up. The tally only accounts for shots purchased, not shots consumed.
While it had already become a tradition in Omaha, the challenge truly took off in 2022, when McEvoy set up a social media account in which he would post pictures of the leaderboard. After picking up seven followers on its first day, the account had 17,000 by the end of the tournament. Today, it has nearly 51,000 followers. The sheer number of shots have increased rapidly, too. In the first year of the challenge, Arkansas won with 864 shots. Last year, only five years later, Tennessee won with 38,799.
It has been a source of intrigue in recent years, with the final leaderboard at Rocco's perhaps the only thing that attracts greater interest in Omaha during the CWS than the games themselves. As it has on the field at the CWS, the SEC has dominated the event, with one of its schools winning each year the challenge has been held.
Teams with large fan bases that travel well and that are known for their drinking prowess have generally done well, with LSU, Tennessee and Arkansas among the previous winners (those teams having deep tournament runs, which kept their fans around Omaha longer, didn't hurt, either). Smaller private schools such as Stanford or public schools with stuffier reputations, such as Virginia, have predictably struggled at times.
The push to win the challenge helps support a good cause, too. One dollar from each of the $5 shots gets donated to the local food bank of the particular school while another 50 cents goes to the Heartland Food Bank in Omaha.
College World Series Jell-O Shot Challenge record
The record for most Jell-O shots consumed at Rocco's during the CWS belongs to a familiar face — one with a mark that's highly unlikely to be topped.
On its way to winning the Jell-O Shot Challenge in 2023, LSU fans bought 68,888 shots, which is 30,000 more than the next-closest finisher ever in the event.
How the Tigers got there is its own story.
As the Jell-O Shot Challenge has become more popular, fans have turned to unconventional and perhaps questionable means to ensure their team can be near the top of the leaderboard. When LSU notched its record-setting mark, it received a sizable boost from Raising Cane's founder and CEO Todd Graves, a Baton Rouge resident who bought 6,000 shots — a bill that came out to $30,000.
Even without that, Tigers fans still made their presence felt, with more than 60,000 shots excluding Graves' mass purchase.
"You know what, man? I started from nothing," Graves said to ESPN. "I had to commercial fish in Alaska to start my first restaurant. ... You work hard and become successful and then you're able to buy all these LSU fans a shot, it feels pretty cool. It's a good way to celebrate with others."
Here are the highest shot totals since the challenge started in 2019:
LSU, 2023 : 68,888
: 68,888 Tennessee, 2024 : 38,799
: 38,799 Texas A&M, 2024 : 32,762
: 32,762 Ole Miss, 2022 : 18,777
: 18,777 Arkansas, 2022 : 8,672
: 8,672 Wake Forest, 2023 : 7,622
: 7,622 TCU, 2023: 7,070
College World Series Jell-O Shot Challenge winners
Here are the previous winners of Rocco's Jell-O Shot Challenge, along with their final shot tallies:
