Jell-O Shot Challenge Omaha College World Series

U of L finally gets to be part of the festivities again for the first time since 2019.

OMAHA, NE. — Standing inside Rocco’s Pizza & Cantina, where foil seals from thousands of Jell-O shots adorn the concrete floor like stickers, feels a bit strange. Almost surreal. 

I would pinch myself, but the smell of cotton candy vape and the way my Nike dunks stick to the beer-soaked ground are too precise to be figments of imagination. 

This place, home to the world-famous Jell-O Shot Challenge, only exists on social media for most. College baseball fans see a picture of the same $40 whiteboard updated three times a day for about 10 days a year. That and the actual games played during the Men’s College World Series dominate their timelines. 

Louisville baseball finally gets to be part of the festivities again this year. U of L used to be a perennial power, a strong presence in Omaha every few seasons or so under head coach Dan McDonnell. But it had been a minute. The post-COVID, NIL and transfer portal era of college sports was not kind to the Cards.

Now they’re back and privy to a city’s party, a sport’s once-in-a-year showcase, for the first time since 2019 (coincidentally the same year as the inaugural Jell-O Shot Challenge).

Comparing anything to the Run for the Roses may feel blasphemous to some Louisvillians, but the romance that surrounds the MCWS feels similar to that which surrounds the Kentucky Derby every year. It’s a big small town that burns bright for one major sporting event every year. Rain, sleet or merciless Midwestern sun be damned. Swap pastel hats, fascinators and mint juleps for Jell-O shots, ballcaps and backward-facing sunglasses.

(If it’s any consolation, the MCWS claims to be “the greatest show on dirt,” but whoever’s in charge of NCAA championship branding must’ve forgotten the dirt track at Churchill Downs, home of “the greatest two minutes in sports.”)

There’s just something about these signature events. They reenrapture American sports fans with their pastimes of old. Horse racing, baseball and boxing don’t carry the same cultural capital they did 100, 75 or even 50 years ago. But the Kentucky Derby, in its 151st year, and the MCWS, in its 75th, continue to capture our hearts and minds and wallets.

“This is some people’s bucket list item,” Pat McEvoy, longtime manager at Rocco’s, told The Courier Journal. “Sometimes as an Omaha native, you take that for granted, and you never want to do that.”

The 2024 MCWS had an economic impact of $115 million, according to a study by Visit Omaha and Tourism Economics. The event supported 22,429 jobs, created more than 75,000 hotel nights and generated more than $3.5 million in local taxes. The 2024 Kentucky Derby generated $434 million for the city of Louisville.

Uber’s peak hours are from the time the 6 o’clock games end to about 2 a.m., when all the bars are legally required to close. For 10 days, “it’s crowded everywhere,” my Uber driver Madhu said Friday night, as we rode from the bustling corner of 13th and Cass streets to the media hotel teetering the Nebraska-Iowa state line. Once the MCWS is over, “this place looks like a ghost town.”

The same can be said for Rocco’s. 

Opening weekend at Charles Schwab Field saw lines wrapped around Rocco’s down the block. Fans clad in purple, gold, and various shades of blue and red spilled out the sides and onto the front patio. Inside shields you from the summer sun, but the air is twice as heavy. 

Sure, congealed sugar and vodka might not have the same je ne sais quoi as Woodford Reserve or Maker’s Mark. But Louisvillians don’t care. Bring on the jiggly gelatin. What better way to celebrate their return to Omaha after five years away? 

Willie Clarkson Jr. bleeds red. Not crimson or garnet or burgundy. But Cardinal red, to be exact. 

He is from Louisville and graduated from Male High School and U of L’s College of Business in the 2000s. In 2009, he moved to Chicago and then relocated to Dallas, where he’s lived for the last seven years.

Clarkson, like many Louisvillians, is a basketball fan first. But when Louisville baseball came to Arlington, Texas, for the Shriners Children’s College Showdown in February, he decided to take advantage of having the hometown team visit his new backyard. U of L went 2-1 that weekend, defeating then-No. 7 Texas 4-3 in 10 innings and then-No. 12 Arizona 13-1 in eight innings.

“OK,” Clarkson thought to himself, “this team is going to be special.”

So he continued to watch from afar, traveling to Louisville for the Wake Forest series in May and the NCAA Super Regional earlier this month. Catching a quick flight from Dallas to Omaha at that point felt like a must-do. 

He pulled up to Rocco’s to support Louisville’s efforts off the diamond, too, fully decked out in Cards gear — L’s up from the ballcap on his head to the soles of his sneakers.

Here’s how you play the game:

Step 1, walk up to one of two bars.

Step 2, pick a flavor — margarita (green), fruit punch (red), berry (blue) or hard lemonade (you guessed it, yellow) — and a school.

Step 3, pay $5, $1.50 of which will go toward your team’s local food bank, and 50 cents will go toward an Omaha-based nonprofit.

Step 4, peel off the seal and enjoy.

Usually, prep work starts three days before the MCWS begins. But this year, Rocco’s partnered with a company called JottShots, which had 120,000 premade Jell-O shots “in a warehouse ready to go,” McEvoy said. Each day starts with about 18,000, as the warehouse works to keep the restaurant stocked up all series long.

BetMissouri actually drew up odds (“for entertainment purposes only”) in honor of this year’s Jell-O Shot Challenge before the MCWS began. LSU, of course, tops the rankings with a 73.3% chance of victory after winning the challenge by 60,000 shots in 2023. 

The Tigers fan base is tantamount to the 1998 New York Yankees of drinking. The 2007 Boston Red Sox of boozing. The, well, 21st-century UConn women’s basketball of libations.

All right, you get it.

Arkansas had the second-best odds at 10%, with Louisville third at 4.8%.

As of about 10 p.m. central time on Sunday, U of L sat in second-to-last place with 1,315 Jell-O shots purchased on its behalf. Only UCLA, which hadn’t cracked quadruple digits, trailed the Louisville. Murray State’s 6,420 ranked No. 2. LSU, of course, led the way with 13,552.

All’s fair in love and war and drinking games. But this competition means more than a buzz and some bragging rights. 

Participating generates hundreds of thousands of dollars (more than $350,000 over the last three years, McEvoy said) for food banks across the country. Participating means seeing the final white board tally knowing you helped shape those numbers. And participating means your team made it to the MCWS.

Louisville’s offense struggled in its 2025 MCWS debut against Oregon State on Friday night. The Cards trailed 3-1 until late-game heroics from Tague Davis (RBI single) and Kamau Neighbors (RBI single) tied things up in the top of the ninth. Perhaps the Cardiac Cards had struck again. 

Not quite.

Gavin Turley hit the game-winning RBI double to send U of L to the losers bracket.

“The adrenaline was just pumping, the blood was flowing, the sweat, the potential tears were coming in,” Clarkson said. “But you’re just living for that moment, that excitement. No one else can take that away, regardless of the result, win or lose.”

To buy tickets for the College World Series in Omaha, click here.

Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com, and follow her on X @petitus25.