*The issue I have in front of me actually says "The 7 Smartest Super Bowl Bets (And 1 That Could Break Your Heart)", but that's far from the point.
Naturally, I was intrigued by the top headline. This sounded vaguely familiar, so I looked through it. Not surprisingly, on page 50 they have a collection of wacky Super Bowl props, including "Length of National Anthem", and "Will Tom Petty Perform 'Free Fallin' At Halftime".
Sure, it's strikingly similar to my post (which did appear on freaking Hashmarks), but I'm over that. My issue with it is this- it's terrible.
First of all, the Tom Petty thing is idiotic. There is no line on this, and where they have put the line for other props they say, "LINE: Technically there isn't one, but go find yourself a Radiohead fan and see what he'll give you". Cute. They then proceed to explain why Tom Petty is going to play "Free Fallin" as part of his 12-minute set. Revolutionary. I know this song, of course he's going to play it at some point. There are odds on the first and last songs everywhere- why not use those?
Also, if you're going to write an article on Super Bowl bets, you should at least have a basic understanding of odds. For their MVP section, they have Brady at 1-2, Moss at 4-1, Welker at 5-1. These make sense.
But for their "First Team To Score A Touchdown" writeup, they have the Pats at 2-1. And "First QB To Throw A Pick" has Eli at 5-2. Both of these are completely wrong. You can bet $1 to win $2 on the Pats scoring a TD first? Really? Of course you can't. The line is 1-2. Same for the Eli line- it's 2-5.
If you are going to write an article that is essentially the same as my post, fine, coincidences happen (maybe). But at least do at decent job on it.
