The Super Bowl is by far the biggest sporting event on the American calendar and offers an unrivaled number of wagering opportunities that go way beyond the regular point spreads and over/unders that characterize the rest of the football season.
By coincidence, the very same morning that we decided to tackle your question, we received an update from the Las Vegas Hilton about the approximately 300 proposition bets that they're offering on this year's Super Bowl, and the online books (though now mainly out of bounds for U.S. bettors) are offering even more.
As far as the game itself is concerned, the myriad wagers available cover everything from whether the coin toss will be heads or tails and who will win it to every conceivable scoring and tackling permutation: Which team will score first? Last? Will both teams make 33-yard-or-longer field goals? What will be the largest lead of the game by either team? What will be the total number of interceptions? Total number of sacks? Will Thomas Jones score a touchdown? Will Bob Sanders or Cato June intercept a pass? Will the team that scores first win the game? The list is seemingly endless.
But it doesn't stop there.
Last year, a lot of people scored on the 35-1 payoff for correctly guessing that "Start Me Up" would be the first tune played by the Rolling Stones -- upsetting the 10-1 favorite, "Brown Sugar."
And this year there's no shortage of wagers on the halftime entertainment. You can find lines for whether Prince will fall over on stage during his performance (+1,000), or if there will be a power outage (+2,000), or if his hair will fall out (+10,000), or if he'll announce plans to run for president (+3,000), or if a streaker will jump on stage (+1,000). Oh, and after the Janet Jackson incident, of course there's the inevitable possibility of a "wardrobe malfunction" (+200), although interestingly, the odds on Prince's pants splitting during his performance are +1,000. Presumably that implies that the split must be an intentional one and not a "malfunction."
