The 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee starts next Thursday, and BetUS has kindly provided us with some odds. Sadly, you can't bet on individuals like with the Miss USA odds, but there are three props available. As usual, I will attempt to break them down, and fail miserably.
I would go through how many guys have won over the last 20 years, but I'm looking at the list of winners, and I have no idea if half these names are male or female.Luckily, I have discovered a "roster of the 288 champion spellers" that will be competing this year. By my count, they say "her sponsor" 154 times, which means that 53.5% of the competitors are girls. So you'd be nuts to lay -140 on the guys here. Unless you think men are naturally better spellers. That's probably a discussion for another day.
I wish I had seen this when it first came out. The total here should be 9.5, or at least 9. 8.5 is an outrageously low number. Over the past 20 years, the winning word has been nine or more letters 15 times, a whopping 75%. Also--and I don't know if this is a random trend, or these competitions have gotten more difficult over time--the final word has been over eight letters in each of the past seven years.The over is clearly the way to go here. At -150, you need to win over 60% of the time to be profitable. That looks to be the case here.
I've got no stats for this one. Although my one strategy, in a contrarian sense, would be to go with "No", since I'd think "Yes" would be a public dog. Regardless, this is a fantastic prop.Photo: 2007 champ Evan O'Dorney from The Sydney Morning Herald.
