Gotta be tough to have your record broken with…Jell-O shots.
The College World Series is underway in Omaha, Nebraska, which means all eyes are on… the Rocco’s Jell-O shot challenge.
If you’re not familiar, the annual challenge is hosted by a restaurant called Rocco’s Pizza and Cantina for fans in town for the College World Series. Fans support their school by buying Jell-O shots, and a tally is kept to see which school’s fans can buy the most Jell-O shots throughout the course of the tournament. The shots are $5 each, and a portion of the money from each shot goes to both the Omaha community and back to the communities of the participating schools.
What started as a fun competition among fans of competing schools has quickly turned into big business, with major donors writing big checks for Jell-O shots in attempt to get the win for their school.
During this year’s tournament, Rocco’s made headlines – and not in a good way – when Pat McAfee recounted a negative experience he had trying to buy shots to support his West Virginia University Mountaineers in the challenge. But McAfee is far from the only big name who’s dropped big bucks on Jell-O shots.
Back in 2023, the LSU Tigers were the College World Series when Todd Graves, the founder of fried chicken fast food chain Raising Cane’s, broke out his checkbook to buy 6,000 Jell-O shots – and set a world record in the process.
With each Jell-O shot costing $5, that means Graves spent around $30,000 to put LSU at the top of the leaderboard. And he not only broke the record in Rocco’s Jell-O shot challenge, but he also broke a world record that had previously been held by country music legend Merle Haggard.
Back in 1983, the Hag set the record when he ordered 5,095 “C.C. Waterbacks,” a shot of Canadian Club whiskey with a water chaser, for patrons at Billy Bob’s Texas.
Merle bought the shots in honor of his 28th hit song, “C.C. Waterback,” from his 1982 duets album with George Jones, A Taste Of Yesterday’s Wine.
The bar used around 40 gallons of whiskey for the round of drinks, and the bar tab for Merle’s massive order came out to $12,737.50 – or $2.50 each. (If he had bought the same round of drinks today it would have cost him over $40k).
But when the bar owner, Billy Bob Barnett, presented Merle with the check, he offered to buy the Hag a drink on the house – and Merle took him up on it.
The purchase earned Merle the Guiness World Record for largest round of drinks ever bought by one person, a record that stood until 2016, when a U.K. brewery bought 412 beers at a pub to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday.
And I know what you’re thinking: Wait, only 412 beers? Merle Haggard bought over 5,000 shots.
Well apparently because the beer order amounted to over 42 gallons, while Merle’s was just under 40, the brewery technically broke Merle’s record.
Yeah, it’s some BS.
But Merle’s place in the history books still stood as the largest round of shots ever bought by one person – until Graves broke it a couple years ago.
I dunno, just seems like a shame that Merle’s record was broken by…Jell-O shots.