GAMBLING ON THE BIG GAME

All bets are on: Hey, it could happen

So did you win or lose? Who covered, your guys or the bad guys? Did you tease the under with the favorite or parlay it with the dog? Did you have heads or tails on the coin toss? What about the number of passing TDs . . . were they more or less than the number of three-pointers LeBron hit on Super Bowl Sunday? Did you get a good price on the MVP, and if so, hopefully you laid some more on the safe bet that he'd thank God?

One thing is certain: if you're reading this right now you had some form of wager on the Super Bowl. And why wouldn't you? While the Big Game is known for its commercials and cholesterol, and of course the football, it's also a celebration of the main reason the NFL has become the most popular sport in America: the action.

We all overindulge on Super Bowl Sunday. If you need more convincing, consider American antacid sales which spike an estimated 20% on the Monday after the game. But while a lot of that can be attributed to the 15,000 tons of chips eaten and 52 million cases of beer drank, it's clear our gluttony extends to gambling. And surely it takes a lot of Tums to relieve the agita brought on by all the ridiculous bets that were made.

Over the past decade, the Super Bowl handle in Nevada has averaged about $85 million per year. That's a pretty big number and is certainly the biggest one-day total of the year. But if you believe it tells the whole story then you probably thought Rachel Uchitel was Tiger's only side action. Nope, it isn't even close. Federal studies estimate that about 1% of all money wagered on US sports was done so legally. And this trend follows suit with the Super Bowl in which the total estimate for this year's game - including online bets, those made with a bookie, even the squares you bought at the party - is closer to $10 billion. That's more than three times the amount bet throughout the NCAA tournament, and about fifty times more than CBS made on all those pricey commercials.

The reason these numbers are so big? First and foremost, football and gambling are inextricably linked, and Americans like both. Point spreads have always been published, and the importance of each game in a 16-game season meant that it would always attract interest. But the media has evolved, and now the 24-hour news cycle and the internet and even new statistics make you and I believe we're as informed as the sharps, and can therefore play like them. Additionally, the exponential rise in fantasy football means that we're effectively gambling on every game, nearly every play every week of the season. Why else would you become enraged over a Legedu Naanee touchdown in garbage time when the covers were already secured? Modern football has a much broader scope and provides us many more ways in which to gamble.

The bookmakers know this, and for that reason they have made gambling on Super Bowl Sunday like eating on Thanksgiving. It's why Mandalay Bay's proposition bet "sheet" is twenty-three pages long; even the casual gambler will get caught up in all the action. You've got the tourist specials like the yea or nay on overtime, which has yet to occur in forty-five years. Or you might find it fun to bet on the jersey number to score first. More of a soccer fan? Well how about a crossover bet with TDs vs. goals in AC Milan's match? A classic rock fan might have been convinced he knew The Who's halftime opener, and maybe your wife, for whom football is nothing more than the reason the garage door still isn't fixed, hoped Budweiser's first ad would feature an animal. And if you can't find a wager that interests you, well there's still the Super Bowl pool, the game's version of the scratch-off. But no matter who you are, the Super Bowl will offer you an outcome you might like to predict.

It's no surprise that just as the number of Super Bowl viewers has been steadily trending upward, so has the amount wagered. Of course the irony is that the NFL, whose draconian injury reporting rules were first implemented because of the heavy gambling on the sport, will continue to act like the Porsche salesman warning you that it's illegal to go above fifty-five. But regardless of whether or not Roger Goodell will acknowledge it, the more we like to gamble, the more we like football, and the more we like football, the more ways we will find to gamble on it.

Hopefully this year your ways were profitable ways. And if not, I recommend that when Super Bowl XLV rolls around you consider making that "Thank God" bet. Because with $10B riding on it there's a good chance even the Big Man will also have an interest in the Big Game, and it can't hurt to have him on your side.

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