A Super Bowl Gamble
Last week’s Super Bowl was one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. I didn’t have a dog in the fight, and to be honest, I’m jealous of Kansas of Kansas City. I’ve prayed for one Super Bowl Championship for 60 years, and they have three. No fair!
I do have a few reflections on the game that I need to comment about. The Travis Kelce sideline shove of Coach Reid – my first reaction was had a Black player done that, they would have been run off on the field by half-time. Second, some are saying the half time show was one of the best. I thought it sucked. Of course I’m old.
In the wake of last week’s Super Bowl, there has been a lot of scuttlebutts on the internet about the legitimacy of the NFL and if games are being rigged. This is not a new allegation.
Many years ago, I wrote a column on how I had friends who seriously believed professional sports were rigged. I never fully bought into that conspiracy theory because I just couldn’t comprehend how a team sport can be rigged without everyone knowing.
But today, everyone and their brother can gamble on a game on their smartphone and millions of dollars are being generated instantaneously, I’m starting to have my doubts.
Recently, I watched a 2002 YouTube video of an interview with NFL Hall of Famer Bubba Smith, who played in the legendary Super Bowl III game (January 12, 1969) that was the first League championship game branded the “Superbowl”. The mighty 12-1 Baltimore Colts of the old established National Football League played “Broadway Joe” Namath and the heavy underdogs from the upstart American Football League’s New York Jets. At that time, no AFL teams had ever won a championship, and many thought it would never happen. The brash young “Broadway Joe” guaranteed “a victory over the mighty Baltimore Colts, which set the media ablaze. The Jets upset the Colts 16-7.
Some say that Super Bowl set in motion the entire Super Bowl money mania that became bigger and better every year since.
In that nationally broadcast interview, Bubba Smith plainly states the game was rigged and he knew it immediately after the game ended. He incriminated the quarterback, Earl Morrall, threw the game. He says it was done to expand the money brought in from the rivalry and paved a way to making the Super Bowl a national phenomenon it became. The video is available on YouTube. Bubba Smith died in 2011 (RIP).
Last week’s Las Vegas Super Bowl had several – some interesting statistics.
An estimated 330,000 people visited Las Vegas that weekend, only 61,629 were in attendance at the game, which is less than the first Super Bowl. However, it was one of the most expensive with an average ticket price of $8,400 per ticket. Not surprisingly sports betting on the game saw a record year, with on-line companies like FanDuel shattering last year’s total handle by almost $100 million as well as an increase from 10 million bets placed to 14,000,000 total bets placed this year; it is estimated that 67,000,000 Americans wagered a combined $23 billion.
And once more people get use to on-line gambling, those numbers will quadruple in the years ahead. That is too much money and will eventually corrupt the game irreparably someday.