The Super Bowl has come and gone, bringing jubilationt to the city of Pittsburgh, disappointment to the Pacific Northwest, and uneaten guacamole in refrigerators around the country. I suspect, but can’t confirm, that there is some sadness at sports books todays, as the favorite beat the spread.
Prop bets are always an interesting part of the game. Here’s a Las Vegas Sun article about some of the more interesting prop bets of this year’s Big Game.
As people who read Cutting the Wire know, I’ve got some thoughts on betting and professional football (If you haven’t read it, this is an excellent excuse to do so…right now).
Hal Rothman’s column in the Sun has an excellent summary of the relationship between betting and the league. It also draws on some parallels between Las Vegas and the NFL:
The NFL would deny this, but the rise of the Super Bowl and that of Las Vegas are different sides of the same coin, evolutionary processes that are closely linked as gambling became gaming and the United States devoted itself to leisure and self-indulgence.
Gambling built both – not the NFL, you say, but it’s true – and both have become post-modern entertainment. When Mick Jagger shakes his grandfatherly backside at halftime after a full week of all kinds of entertainment in midwinter Detroit, what was once a football game has become more than a sporting event.
It is a popular culture icon, a star that burns brightly in the American sky. This year’s Super Bowl even touts an environmental program, to keep the event “cleaner and greener, and to lessen the impact on the local and global environment.”
Hal Rothman says whether NFL likes it or not, Super Bowl, betting are linked
Of course, the Superbowl is just one day on the Strip. Now the march towards March Madness begins in earnest. In an annual rite of late winter, thousands of Americans with little more than a tangential interest in higher education will suddenly become devoted followers of the nation’s colleges and universities…or at least their men’s basketball teams.