Vol. 5 No. 2, February 2008
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Super Bowled Over
Will fans wager on the biggest game of all? You bet your Aunt Fannie
Crank up the crazy bets. Devise the most outrageous propositions. The decadent, giddy glory of the Super Bowl is back on February 3.
The multibillion-dollar event has become nothing less than a national holiday, with a bevy of advertising, a prestigious halftime concert, parties, Super Bowl boxes, and side bets far beyond the legal boundaries of Las Vegas. Last year, the game was televised to 232 countries and an audience approaching 150 million people.
Who would have envisioned this day in 1967, when the first Super Bowl (then called a championship game) kicked off with the Packers and Chiefs? Tickets (which cost thousands now, if you can get them) were just $8.
Watching the game has become a cottage industry. Super Bowl parties abound, most with irresistible wagers. People don’t need to be football-savvy to win. Most pools, especially those sprinkled with funny prop bets, resemble a sports-edition true-false exam.
The game this year will probably drag out for four hours. That won’t matter in the age of prop-bet utopia. Jay Kornegay, director of the Las Vegas Hilton sports book, indicates that nearly 300 different bets existed at his property for the 2007 game between Chicago and Indianapolis.
That’s mind-boggling. You can adopt the Vegas perpetual-action theory to create any pool. For casino employees, it’s a perpetual horn high yo (for the uninitiated, that’s a classic craps gambit). This is nothing but action, with selections falling into distinct categories. Dig in.
Entry-level Insanity
The mild fanatics know simple prop-bets. Start before the game. Some team will win the coin toss, so make that worth a point. Will the first play from scrimmage be a run or pass? Which team makes the initial first down? Who gets penalized first? Which team scores first? Will it be a touchdown, field goal or safety? Points, points, points.
Fortunes fluctuate constantly. One point can be awarded for correctly picking whether the last scoring play of the half is a touchdown, field goal or safety. Throw in a point for whether it happened by run or pass. That changes with each update, and a late-scoring play can throw the pool standings upside down. Add basics like the outright Super Bowl winner and the spread, and you have a basic pool, attractive to the casual player.
Medium Insanity
Recent upgrades entice the more sophisticated hunch players. Yes, you can select which team will offer the first challenge. Over-unders fit well in this grouping. There can be five selections along this line—one for each quarter and another for the final game total. The number of field goals is interesting. So is the amount of turnovers. Passing and rushing yardage fit the same mold. Try picking which team will attain more rushing and passing yardage.
The process is not entirely arbitrary, however. Thinking counts a little, because if a team leads comfortably, it may run the ball more in the fourth quarter. These props take the pool to another level. If added to the original selections, they can push the number of selections into the neighborhood of 30.
High-Octane Insanity
Ah yes, now for the hard core. What fun would the game be without it? Last year, Vegas offered sliding odds from 500-1 to 20-1 to guess the exact amount of points scored by both teams. The odds changed in seven-point increments. That can be placed in a pool context by awarding different point values for, say, a 43-49 total, a 50-56 total, and so forth.
Punts are boring, right? Not on Super Bowl Sunday. Prop bets indicated whether the longest punt of the game would be more than 44.5 yards. The same applied for a field goal.
In Las Vegas, the first play of last year’s game meant huge financial implications. When Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown, it rewarded the Bears as 2-1 underdogs for ever having the lead. It later paid 9-2 for the prop, stating that the Bears would score first and lose the game. And Hester, being a return man, provided a huge return, 25-1, as the first player to score in the game.
Twilight Zone
It gets wackier. These bets actually existed last year: Penguins star Sidney Crosby’s point total in a game versus Manning’s touchdown passes. The shots on goal in an Islanders-Capitals game compared to Reggie Wayne’s receiving yardage. Think it can’t get any more insane? Try Ernie Els’ golf score versus the rushing yardage of Dominic Rhodes, a platoon player with the Colts.
There’s no limit to the craziness. Ready to enjoy the game?
Super Bowl Quiz
1. Which teams have won the most Super Bowls?
2. Which teams have lost the most Super Bowls?
3. Which six teams have never been to the Super Bowl?
4. How many players have won the game both as a player and as a coach? a. 1 b. 3 c. 5
5. How many wild-card teams have captured a Super Bowl championship? a. 4 b. 0 c. 1
6. How many overtime games has the Super Bowl produced? a. 3 b. 2 c. 0
7. What’s the biggest margin of victory by a Super Bowl winner? a. 27 b. 24 c. 45
8. And the closest margin of victory? a. 2 b. 1 c. 3
9. Which quarterback guaranteed a Super Bowl victory, despite his team being the 19-point underdogs?
10. What is the Eagles’ record in the big game?
ANSWERS
1. Dallas, San Francisco and Pittsburgh, each with five.
2. Minnesota, Buffalo and Denver, four each. Buffalo lost four straight Super Bowls.
3. Arizona, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Jacksonville, New Orleans.
4. Three. Mike Ditka, Tom Flores and Tony Dungy.
5. Four. Oakland in 1980, Denver in 1997, Baltimore in 2000 and Pittsburgh in 2005.
6. Zero. There have been two game-winning field goals on the final play and a runner stopped at the one on the final play. Had he scored, OT would most likely have occurred.
7. Forty-five points. Yowza! The 49ers spanked the Broncos 55-10 in 1990.
8. One skinny point. The Giants beat the Bills 20-19 in 1991 and survived a potential game-winning field goal on the final play.
9. Joe Namath, of the Jets, before Super Bowl III. The Jets won 16-7.
10. 0-2. Philly lost to Oakland in 1980 and New England in 2005.
