Nope, the biggest story from this Super Bowl was Christina Aguilera's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. And I'm sure you're expecting me to comment on how she flubbed the lyrics and that she should be burned at the stake for that or something. But to be honest, I didn't even notice the mistake because I was timing how long she'd been singing the anthem and I was waiting eagerly for her final lyric: "Brave."
This is because several off-shore bookmakers had put odds on Aguilera's pre-game performance. It was one of the more intriguing prop bets out there this year. If you don't know, proposition betting on the Super Bowl is on its way to becoming more popular than gambling on the actual game.
If proposition betting is new to you, I'll explain. Prop bets allow the public to bet on individual - and often trivial - aspects of the game. For instance, you can bet on the coin flip - and this is something I do every year. Believe it or not, the odds were actually on heads, so if you bet tails on Sunday and won, you'd get a better pay out. I bet tails every year. Guess what won this year? Heads. Friggen oddsmakers know everything...
Anyways, prop bets allow you to put money on things like who will score the first touchdown, which player will win the game's MVP award and even goofier things like 'which will be higher: the amount of catches by wide receiver 'X' or the amount of inches of snow that will call in city 'Y'?' There was even one about what colour the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach would be. Yes, this is all true.
American casinos can only put odds on things that happen on the field, but off-shore casinos put odds down for anything remotely game-related. This means that yes, people could in fact wager on the length of time Aguilera would spend singing the anthem and how long she'd belt out the final word of the last line... "and the home... of the... BRAAAAA-AAA-AAVVVEE"
Intriguing, right?
Bookmakers had Aguilera's over-under for the song at one minute and 54 seconds. They also put the length of time she'd sing "brave" at six seconds.
If you watched the game, you noticed that she sang "brave" for like 10 seconds and that one really should have come as no surprise. Of course she would take that long with the last word. That's where these female singers get to show off their pipes. That one should have been a no-brainer. Over.
But the song time is where the controversy arises. According to some, she was right on the 1:54 mark. One site, Bodog, had her timed out at 1:53.20. Making things more difficult, there were a set of jets that flew by the stadium at the end of the song and the camera panned away to shoot them, so you can't actually know when she stopped singing. According to Chad Millman from Bill Simmons' B.S. Report podcast today, Sportsbook.com is paying out both the over and under because they couldn't get the actual time down.
Despite all this, I'm find it absolutely amazing that these oddsmakers can put the line down at 1:54 a week before and they can pretty much hit it on the nose.
Real story: I want to somehow get tied into a prop bet where I have some ability to influence what's going to happen. That why, I'll get in there early and put everything I have on that bet. Imagine if I'm Christina Aguilera's down-and-out brother and I come across this prop. I'm telling older sister that she's singing brave until she passes out.
1 comment:
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