The College World Series begins today, but the Jello Shot Challenge at Rocco’s is already underway, supporting food banks across the country while showing which schools’ fanbases either 1) like jello shots or 2) have enough pride to undergo something miserable in the name of earning their team good karma:
Jello shots, of course, are terrible, and not just because they were part of New Year’s Eve 2013–14 when I had to clean up Clay’s family’s bathroom wall at two in the morning (great thing to not remember). They’re also something that in certain instances you just have to do, like pretending to eat the booger-covered plastic hamburger handed to you by a toddler. The Rocco’s Jello Shot Challenge is mostly a measure of how little of a loser you are, which brings us to our next point:
If you go to the College World Series and don’t love it, you’re a loser. It’s the best thing. We say that about a lot of things around here, but the College World Series is every bit as worthy of love as an older golden retriever carrying around its favorite stuffed bear. It’s simply wonderful, and unlike a lot of cities holding things like this, Omaha isn’t turning to you every second saying, “Having fun????” It knows you’re having fun. Unless you’re a loser.
If you are a loser, that’s ok. You can be rehabilitated. Just keep going to the College World Series until you learn to like it. This will make the rest of your life tolerable. You will die a happier person.
One thing that’s happened since we started blogging about the NIT is that we’ve started thinking a lot about colleges and their cultures. We can get douchey about this—apologies for that, we try not to but we just can’t help ourselves—but we’re completely sold on the idea that college sports are a patchwork quilt of America, and that you can learn a lot about this country based on the identities of various schools. And, of course, how many jello shots they take if their baseball team gets to Omaha. Let’s handicap the race.
The Favorite: LSU
Here’s the thing about LSU this week: They probably won’t win the College World Series. Paul Skenes is a boss but he has too much to lose, and a military deserter is not going to throw 120 pitches on one day of rest if winning a national championship comes down to that. He’s making smart financial choices, he didn’t violate any contract or anything when he left Air Force, the service academies have their two-year rule for a reason and it’s a great reason and a great rule. But. A guy who spends two years preparing to serve his country and then says, “Oh, I can just play professional baseball” like Tim Robinson realizing he can just run is not someone who’s going to make the All-Balls Team in Omaha.
Here’s the other thing about LSU this week: Their fans won’t leave the College World Series.
LSU fans go to Omaha every year, whether their team makes it or not. LSU fans party in Omaha every year, whether their team makes it or not. Like them or not, LSU fans are not losers, and as non-losers, LSU fans love the College World Series. They will win the jello shot challenge.
Next in Line: Wake Forest
Wake Forest is an interesting tribe because half of it is the biggest douchebags on the planet—rich cocaine kids from the northeast who wanted to feel like they were at Duke or Virginia or UNC without getting a Duke-quality SAT score or writing a Virginia-quality entrance essay or spending as little money as you can spend at UNC if you establish in-state residence—while the other half is a bunch of really nice kids. This other half is pretty self-aware, and they’re more likely to follow a college baseball team to Omaha, and because Wake’s been on the rise in terms of overall notoriety, they get more prominent the further back you go, meaning 35-year-old Wake people are better folks, on the aggregate, than 19-year-old Wake people. With 35-year-olds more common in Omaha, this bodes great for Wake, which is what we’re seeing in the early standings. Wake Forest is set up for a long stay in Omaha, and it’s got good enough folks that they’re going to do the good-guest thing and take a ton of jello shots. This is special for Wake. They’ll treat it as such.
Ugh, Fine: Tennessee
Yeah, Tennessee’s going to take a lot of jello shots.
The big reason Tennessee’s behind Wake and Oral Roberts so far is that Tennessee plays on Saturday instead of Friday and making it to Omaha isn’t the wildest thing in the world for the Vols. They made it two years ago, they made it a few times in the 90s and 2000s, they do not, on average, have the benefits package and ability to work remotely that Wake Forest has. They’ll show up, they’ll take a ton of jello shots, drinking alcohol in weird forms is a very Knoxville thing to do. If you spend a football weekend in Tennessee, you’ll probably encounter moonshine, and it’s not going to be the kind you buy at the store.
This is an awesome thing about Tennessee, and at Tennessee’s best, Tennessee brings a great crew. Unfortunately, the baseball team is the epitome of how Tennessee people get when they’re at their worse: It’s a self-important, unaccomplished team led by one of the most despised human beings in an industry known for despicable human beings. This year’s team is not as bad as last year’s in terms of character, but it’s only been a year since they got that humbling. You’re going to see both sides of Tennessee in Omaha.
Strong and Silent: Florida
Florida fans aren’t actually silent, but they’re far and away the most suburban-vibed of the three SEC schools in Omaha this year. Far more people attend Florida because of economic and academic reasons than can be said of LSU or Tennessee. They will arrive, most of them will play the jello shot game, but Florida just doesn’t love Omaha the way LSU does. They’ve been there a lot lately, they won it all in 2017 (that was one of the years I went!), they’re kinda over the jello shots. Florida fans are the most likely to show up to Rocco’s and ask if they can just make a food bank donation without buying a shot.
Nice, But: TCU
It’s hard to get too stuck-up in Fort Worth, and not because Fort Worth is at all a bad place. Rather, it’s that Fort Worth is so bent on being the anti-Dallas that if you get too high and mighty there the Pop Country KGB pulls you into an interrogation booth at Zoës and shows you pictures of SMU people until you leave the BMW in flames on the side of 35W. Still, TCU likes to do its own thing. TCU isn’t going to be your best friend the way LSU will be. It’s like ‘the Seattle freeze,’ but Texan.
The Wildcard: Oral Roberts
Two things about Oral Roberts and the jello shots:
First, unaffiliated fans are going to attribute their shots to Oral Roberts.
Second, there are definitely Oral Roberts fans who don’t understand that there can be alcohol in jello.
Third, there are going to be way more than two things here.
Fourth, Oral Roberts will most likely be eliminated in two games, so their jello shot numbers are set to stop climbing faster than anyone else’s. They might compete (it’s baseball, after all, the thing is a crapshoot), but the likeliest outcome is a quick rise and then a mostly flat line.
Fifth, I think Omaha does self-select for fans who aren’t losers, but ORU is one of the smaller schools of its type. Liberty has a higher portion of itself that would hypothetically want to get rip-roaring drunk in Omaha because Liberty draws more people for financial reasons and cultural reasons and geographic reasons than Oral Roberts does. Also, being newer and nuttier, Liberty drives more people out of fundamentalism. Schools like Samford and Oral Roberts have more true believers. For jello shots, this takes us back to our first point: I don’t think Oral Roberts’s current numbers are coming from alumni.
Cultured and Concerned: Virginia
UVA is a more polished version of UNC and a more approachable version of Duke, but it’s also the kind of school where there just isn’t quite enough pride to motivate jello shot-taking. UVA has the most fans looking on TripAdvisor for fine dining in Omaha and excluding steakhouses from the list, then reacting in concern. (“Maybe there’s something in Council Bluffs?” “Oh this Italian isn’t authentic at all!” “Do you have a veggie burger? No, I mean the kind made of chickpeas, not that impossible stuff.”) UVA also has the most fans saying they’re “over” jello shots. (“Jello shots? Oh, I did those in college. No, no thanks. Can’t stand the taste anymore, haha! You know how it goes. No, really. Please, no. Get away from me, you Cajun scum!”) Maybe UVA turns it around, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Losers, But the Ones Who Know It: Stanford
Oral Roberts is close to Omaha. Stanford is not. I’d imagine that Stanford baseball fans are mostly great folks, the kind of Stanford people who went to the school because duh they got into Stanford why would they not go to Stanford but also know and hate how intentionally and performatively apathetic their school is towards sports people care about. Stanford has the highest portion of people in its tribe who hate the very idea of Omaha, and I don’t mean the College World Series I mean the idea of the Midwest. That portion will not be attending, though, which means that on the whole, Stanford is going to be well-represented in Omaha character-wise and poorly represented in terms of numbers.
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Jello Shot final rankings projection: 1. LSU, 2. Wake Forest, 3. Tennessee, 4. Florida, 5. TCU, 6. Oral Roberts, 7. Virginia, 8. Stanford
College World Series projection: TCU beats ORU, Florida beats UVA, Stanford beats Wake, LSU beats Tennessee, Wake eliminates Tennessee, ORU eliminates UVA, Florida beats TCU, Stanford beats LSU, ORU eliminates TCU, Wake eliminates LSU, Florida eliminates ORU, Wake beats Stanford twice/eliminates them, Florida over Wake two games to one.
