When Ruffino’s owner Ruffin Rodrigue and Raising Cane’s owner Todd Graves went to Las Vegas last spring for the International Council of Shopping Centers annual convention, they did the kind of thing you might expect of the two longtime friends, both successful entrepreneurs and rabid football fans: They placed a couple of sports bets, $1,000 each, on the outcome of the 2019 football season.
One was that the New Orleans Saints would win Super Bowl LIV. The other—you guessed it—was that LSU would win the college football championship, which was something of a longshot bet at the time, with odds of 24-to-1.
Rodrigue says he really didn’t think much about the wagers until he and Graves were sitting in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome Monday night, watching LSU trounce Clemson in the championship game.
|
|
|
Rodrigue says neither plans to keep the money. Instead, they’ve decided to donate their winnings to a charity of coach Ed Orgeron’s choice, though there’s no word yet on what that will be.
|
|
|
The only regret, Rodrigue says, is that he and Graves didn’t place a third bet that day—that Joe Burrow would win the Heisman Trophy. The pair actually talked about it at the time and intended to. When Rodrigue got down to the casino floor to place the wager, however, a glitch prevented him from doing so.
Had they bet $1,000 on Burrow, as planned, they’d have won considerably more than just $25,000: The odds on the Tigers’ star quarterback to win the Heisman were 200 to 1.
This story originally appeared in the Jan. 15 edition of Daily Report. Read it here.