*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.
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6 comments:
I hope you have your Cowlin Cowherd armor on.
Has ESPN always sucked this hard? Or have they realized they can do whatever they want and there will be no negative consequences?
Perhaps you could email the ombudsman whatsherface. She seems to be pretty good.
"First Team To Score a Touchdown" is different than "First Team to Score". I can't imagine that line is too much different (it's certainly not paying 2-1 for the Pats), but there is a distinction between the two bets.
Good point. Fixed.
What also surprised me was the No Ticket? No Problem piece because ESPN already had Darren Rovell write about it.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs01/s/2002/0203/1322249.html
twice actually:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs02/s/2003/0126/1499345.html
and then summed it up in a later article:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=rovell/060131
Gotta love the world wide leader
I've always shunned mainstream medias articles on sports gambling, as they're typically clueless. About 4 years ago, Maxim ran an article about the NCAA tournament and gambling on it. The long and short of it was that a #12 seed always beats a #5, and that the odds of a #12 winning their first round game was 6:1, so if you bet on each #12 seed you'd win at least $300 (on $100 bets). That same year, I remember one of the #12 seeds actually being a 1.5 point favorite in the game.
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