Regardless of whether the Super Bowl is in Detroit, Jacksonville, Miami or anywhere else in the Continental United States, one city that consistently plays host to a Sunday extravaganza is Las Vegas. 

The NFL may have given a stiff arm to the tailgaters in Miami, but they’d never turn their back on the industry that has helped launch the NFL past the other major sports in terms of popularity.  In a Wall Street Journal article on Wednesday, the American Gaming Association puts the estimated amount bet on the Super Bowl this year – legally or illegally – at roughly $6 billion. 

That kind of scratch will pay for a shitload of cheese dip. 

With that much coin changing hands on one game, you have to figure that the options are plentiful as to what to bet on.  Some websites who have continued to take bets despite the recent government crack down have posted as many as 500 prop bets for the day.   There will be a lot of scenarios to wager on. 

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do our part to pitch in a few more. 

As we did with the World Cup and the Final Four before it, today we present the official Joe SportsFan Super Bowl Betting Card.  Play with caution.

A remake of The Super Bowl Shuffle will be released – 2:1
The original was a perfect microcosm of the entire decade of the 80’s  – as it was happening people knew it was completely ridiculous, yet it didn’t temper their enjoyment of it one bit.  I summed up my feelings for the transcendent music video best in a column a few years back:

“When I’m 80 years old, I think that I’ll consider it a badge of honor that I was alive when something called the ‘SuperBowl Shuffle’ went double platinum.”

Trying to recreate something as bizarre as the Super Bowl Shuffle would be futile, meaning it probably has already been done.  (Note: apparently Mike Singletary did a “remake” of the video with a Houston Chronicle NFL writer and some other people I’ve never heard of.  What does a Houston Chronicle writer have to do with the Chicago Bears in the playoff?  I guess he wasn’t real confident that the Texans would make a Super Bowl anytime soon.  Needless to say, I didn’t make an attempt to find said video)

The Super Bowl Shuffle will be remade and feature Tank Johnson holding a shoulder mounted anti-aircraft rocket launcher – 50:1
Or as Tank calls it "carry on luggage".

Over/Under on times we hear about Dungy and Lovie’s blackness – 34,500
We understand the situation.  The NFL is a league that basically had to be forced into considering non-white candidates for head coaching gigs, so we get that there is significance in the presence of Dungy and Smith on the sidelines Sunday.  We just don’t need to be clubbed over the head with it repeatedly. 

So far, much to my surprise, the media as a whole has been less reliant on this storyline than I figured they’d be going in. 

That said, when the lights go on for CBS’ 15 hour pre-game show, you can bet that the blackness of the two head coaches will take center stage for several feature stories and will be mentioned ad naseum. 
Just think, on Sunday afternoon shortly before the game begins, either Lovie Smith or Tony Dungy will become the first black head coach to ever win a Super Bowl coin toss.  That’s history, baby.

Jim Nantz will immortalize the victory with a cheesy pun 3:1
This same bet first appeared on my Final Four betting card last March, but how could I not put it on this one as well?  This is a guy who once yelled “Juan Shining Moment” after the Juan Dixon-led Maryland Terrapins won an NCAA championship, so you know he’s been eagerly anticipating the final seconds of this game.  This is his first Super Bowl, I’m confident he’ll bring his A game.  No amount of eye-roll-inducing cheese would shock me.

I’m thinking something like “Peyton is the Manning of the hour!”

I feel like a douche bag just typing that. 

Tony Dungy removes a mask to reveal he’s actually white – 1,200:1
I’m willing to go on the record as saying, despite the long odds, I think Nantz may have an appropriate snappy line in his back pocket should this actually happen. 

Prince performs “Pussy Control” at halftime – 150:1
Now that Prince is a Jehovah’s Witness, we can pretty much rule this one out. 

But his mere presence begs the question how did CBS settle on Prince, who's not exactly in his prime, as the halftime entertainment?  I’m picturing the network suits sitting in a conference room jamming out to ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ when one of them finally yelled, “hey, maybe we can get Prince for the halftime show!”, followed by multiple high fives and fist pumps.

To be honest, even though Prince hasn’t really been relevant on the music scene for years, I’m just thankful that the halftime show doesn’t include one of the NFL’s typical “go to” bands – Aerosmith, Bon Jovi and the Rolling Stones to be more specific.  Although there’s no guarantee that Steven Tyler doesn’t show up on stage unannounced to do a duet of “Little Red Corvette”. 

The real question is why is CBS so proud of their halftime show?  All throughout the second half of the NFL season, games on CBS were interrupted by small ads in the corner of the screen touting the musical guest at the Super Bowl.  Taking into account the audience during a regular season football game, wouldn’t it make more sense to promote the fact that they’re televising the actual Super Bowl rather than promoting a Prince concert that will take place at halftime?  That’s the equivalent of me going on a national radio show to promote JSF and spending the whole time raving about the FAQ section.

The Bears will treat Peyton Manning like Tony Eason in 1986 – 25:1
You know how in Super Tecmo Bowl any time your opponent correctly picked the play you were running, his defense would suddenly start to look like the charging Scottish army in Braveheart?   While there’s no way to be sure, I’m relatively certain that’s the way Buddy Ryan’s 46 defense looked to Patriots QB Tony Eason in Super Bowl XX.  After going a disastrous 0 for his first 6 pass attempts, Eason was mercifully yanked for backup Steve Grogan, even though it left him as the only QB in history to have every one of his Super Bowl pass attempts fall incomplete. 

Imagine if the something similar happened to the Colts.  The NFL world might implode if golden boy Peyton Manning is knocked out early and America gets to see the immortal Jim Sorgi jog onto the field to finish the game.  Sorgi has attempted 91 passes in his career including zero this season and he’d be going under center a few feet away from Brian Urlacher and a guy nicknamed “Tank” who thinks it fun to collect automatic weapons.  I’m not sure the term “deer in headlights” would do it justice.

Sad thing is if it did play out that way and the Colts managed to win, they’d probably still find a way to give Manning the MVP. 

Rex Grossman’s Blood Alcohol level exceeds his QB Rating on Sunday – 4:1
I’m just going to assume that Rex is going to be out on the streets of South Beach “blowing off some steam” on Saturday night.  Set a guy like Grossman - who admitted he was distracted in the last regular season game because it was New Years Eve - free in a city where there are multiple clubs with one word names and thousands of women openly looking to procreate with millionaires and he’s bound to do some damage.

Even if he has just a few cold ones and knocks off early, he’ll probably still have a BAC higher than the 0.00 QB rating he put up that night against Green Bay.  

Personally, I think he can do even better.  I see no reason why Rexy won’t go on a South Beach binge that can get the BAC up above his completion percentage for Sunday.  In the aforementioned Packers game he completed an impressive 16.7% of his passes, that’s .167, which is doable.  He’ll have to stay out way beyond curfew, hit up several trendy bars named after textures and colors and follow it up with a historically bad game on Sunday but he’s the kind of guy who sees others doubting him as motivation. 

Enjoy your gambling Sunday and don’t forget, if you find yourself looking for a bookie to take odds on Tony Dungy actually being white, there’s always 1-800-Bets-Off. 

JSF Weekly is written by Josh Bacott.  He's confident he could eventually eat $6 billion worth of cheese dip.  E-mail him at josh@joesportsfan.com