Tequila, a wedding and Vegas panic: The $1K bets on Utah State to win the CFP national championship, explained
Yes, you read correct. Utah State. Not No. 7 Utah.
Welcome to FTW Explains, a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. Are you confused as to why the Utah State football program suddenly saw multiple $1,000 bets to win a title this season? Well, we finally have an answer and we’re here to help.
College football season hasn’t even started yet and we’ve already gotten the most ambitious bet we’ll probably see all season long.
Two friends, Pete Kizenko and Robert Doran, teamed up to place two $1,000 bets on the Utah Aggies to win this season’s national championship.
Not the No. 7 ranked Utah Utes of the Pac-12, but the Utah State Aggies of the Mountain West, who have 1000-1 odds of winning the title.
How did they arrive at this bet? Tequila.
What started as a suggestion to take the over on the Aggies’ win totals—thanks to some unintentional hype from former Michigan Wolverine athletes Doran drank with at a wedding the previous night—turned into a “ it! Let’s hammer the national championship” upon review of Utah State’s schedule.
The $1,000 down on the Aggies left many, including Caesar’s Sportsbook confused and searching for a logical reason behind such an unlikely bet. Especially after two more bets of the same size came in on Utah State. One was from Kizenko, who doubled down after noticing his action didn’t move Utah State’s line at all. A third wager of $1,000 came from an unidentified bettor in Illinois.
Per ESPN’s David Purdum:
As news spread on Twitter of the three $1,000 bets on Utah State in three days, there were questions like, “Did they get Utah and Utah State mixed up?” and comments like, “Probably the worst bet I have ever seen.”
Meanwhile, Caesars’ trading team were asking, “What’s the angle? What are we missing? Because it’s just so unusual.”
“It’s funny, because you had everybody thinking that these smart people are doing crazy research on Utah State and that it’s some like hidden Messiah golden pick,” said the 33-year-old Doran, who owns the breakfast and brunch spot Almost Home General. “And really, it just came from me ripping tequila shots with some players at a wedding.”
If five months from now we are talking about the Utah State Aggies as national champions, we’re going to circle back to this moment and remember that tequila shots were the driving force behind some history.
That and some Michigan alums who should absolutely get into handicapping. Or scouting.