Everybody bets the Super Bowl. My wife Phyllis buys a few boxes every year — correction, I buy them for her — $100 per box. Sometimes I get lucky and she splits it with her friend Darcy. She just complained that she doesn’t have a box yet this year. What is it Jim Harbaugh says a lot? Oh yeah, happy wife, happy life.
So I decided it would be a good idea for me to research how to increase my odds of winning a bet on the Super Bowl so I can at the very least pay for these damn boxes.
I reached out to Danny Sheridan, the renowned oddsmaker and sports analyst who has had a long and profitable career picking football games for clients. Sheridan has time-tested rules for winning point spread and over/under wagers on college and NFL regular-season games, bowl games, NFL playoff games and the Super Bowl, and a few of them in particular make a great deal of sense to me.
They like to say in the world of stock picking the trend is your friend, and it applies in the sports betting world, too. For example, Sheridan recommended ignoring the point spread and just betting the team you think will win. If you did that starting with Super Bowl I — aside from the fact you’re old — you would have won 86 percent (38-6-3) of your bets.
Now he tells me!
His over/under rule is a contrarian strategy — go Under — when two offensive juggernauts meet in the Super Bowl. They’ll play conservatively, believing they can score when they please. But you must bet the Over if, say, an ’85 Bears defense were to meet the 2000 Ravens, because the respective offenses wouldn’t fear making a mistake knowing its defense has its back. And that could lead to added turnovers, which in turn could lead to more points.
He couldn’t have told me that before Peyton Manning vs. Drew Brees indeed rewarded the Under 56¹/₂ crowd?
I can’t apply that rule to Peyton vs. Russell Wilson and the Seahawks now, can I? SMH, as they say.
The total for Super Bowl XLVIII is 47. Mercifully — you bet I was worried about a Super Sunday frostbite for commissioner Goodell — the polar vortex picked up and left town. A boost for Manning for sure. But the Seahawks shut out Eli Manning the last time they played at MetLife. No one shuts out Peyton. But still.
Might as well flip a coin on the total. No thanks.
The fun bets are what they call propositions, or prop bets. Sheridan considers them sucker bets and a waste of one’s time and money. I happen to be a sucker, and I’m comfortable enough in my own skin to admit it. I will continue to have plenty of company — there’s a sucker born every minute.
One of the prop bets offered by Jay Kornegay at the LVH (Vegas) that caught my eye is Carmelo Anthony points vs. Peyton Manning’s completions (even). This sucker likes Melo’s chances of scoring 30 on the Heat at home a lot better than Peyton completing 30 against Richard Sherman and The Legion of Boom.
Naturally, a sucker like me would be drawn to parlays and teasers, which look like no-brainer gimmes, but even I recognize there’s a reason they’re called teasers. I call Sheridan for reassurance and he tells me: “Your chances of winning money are about as good as Alex Rodriguez winning Sportsman of the Year. Any year.”
The bookies offer a line at the half, and Sheridan informs me the team that has beaten the game’s opening point spread has also beaten the halftime spread in 17 of the last 20 Super Bowls. I like those odds … even though a halftime bet on the Ravens plus 4 ¹/₂ last year would have been a loser.
I start sweating. I hear a devil on my shoulder ask, “Who would Pete Rose take at halftime in this game?” I hear an angel on my other shoulder say, “All of a sudden you’ve become Art Schlichter?” I do the right thing and allocate the funds for the inevitable Michael Strahan-Warren Sapp pay-per-view bout.
So the Broncos are two-point favorites. Underdogs have covered the point spread in five of the last six and nine of the last 12 games. Hmmmmm.
Sheridan isn’t the only one with rules. I have rules.
I like to ask friends and acquaintances for their opinion, then go the other way.
Unfortunately, inconclusive for this matchup.
I like to reverse Blezow, but he’s capable of reeling off two in a row from time to time, so it all comes down to my go-to rule:
Just go with your gut.
I can’t see Peyton Manning losing.
Denver Broncos, minus 2.
If I’m going down, I’m going down my way.