Columnist Jeff Haney: Vermeil a heavy favorite to make it a crying game

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2000 | 10:11 a.m.

Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears weekly. Reach him at 259-4041 or haney@vegas.com

Carrying on a popular tradition, Las Vegas sports books are posting a full menu of proposition bets for Sunday's Super Bowl, which pits St. Louis against 7-point underdog Tennessee.

Some offshore sports books, unencumbered by those pesky Gaming Control Board regulations, are offering even more creative props.

There is, however, one intriguing prop you won't find on the board anywhere in the world.

"We wanted to offer a yes-or-no proposition on 'Will Dick Vermeil cry at the end of the game?' " said Simon Noble, executive director and co-founder of Antigua-based sports book Intertops.com.

Noble and his Intertops colleagues decided against the prop, fearing it would become a William "Refrigerator" Perry-like disaster for the house.

In perhaps the most infamous prop bet in Super Bowl history, bookmakers posted odds against Chicago's "Fridge" scoring a touchdown in the 1986 game against New England. Bettors hammered away at the prop, which opened as high as 20-1, and bookmakers cringed when Perry scored on a 1-yard run late in the game.

"Yeah, we were concerned that everyone would bet 'Yes' that Vermeil would cry, and no one would take the other side," Noble laughed, referring to the St. Louis coach's propensity to display his emotional side. "We thought, well, we better back off that one."

Rating game

Credit Noble & Co., though, for coming up with one of this year's best propositions: An over/under on the game's TV ratings, as calculated by the Nielsen Media Research firm.

The ratings prop opened at 40, minus 110 either way, which is low for a Super Bowl. Last year's game checked in at 40.2 with a 61 share, one of the lowest-rated Super Bowls ever. (A ratings point represents 1,008,000 households, or 1 percent of the nation's 100.8 million TV homes, while the share is the percentage of in-use televisions tuned to a given show.)

By comparison, last week's top-rated show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," drew a 19.6.

"We're always looking to do something the others don't," Noble said of Intertops, which bills itself as the largest Internet sports book. "Whether it's an over/under on the opening weekend (box office take) of 'The Phantom Menace' movie, or odds on where Ken Griffey will be playing next season, we always try to come up with something new and interesting."

In setting the line on the Super Bowl ratings, Noble said the fact that the matchup involves two teams from small TV markets weighed heavily in the decision to post a decidedly low figure.

"The amazing thing is we're getting great two-way action on it," Noble said. "We weren't sure how it would go at first, but it's been two-way, all the way."

IP props

At the Imperial Palace hotel-casino on the Strip, sports book director Jay Kornegay and his staff are offering a host of clever proposition bets, as they do each year.

A new prop at the IP this year asks "Will there be a coach's (instant replay) challenge in the first 28 minutes of the first half?" The "No" is a minus 170 favorite.

"That has generated a lot of discussion, which is great," said Kornegay. "You can walk out into the book right now and find two people arguing whether it's going to happen."

Other IP props that figure to draw well include Marshall Faulk's rushing yards as a minus 130 favorite over David Duval's fourth-round score in the Phoenix Open; and Shaquille O'Neal's missed free throws Sunday minus 160 over Isaac Bruce's receptions.

The IP is also offering a no-vig bet -- even money each way -- on which team will receive the opening kickoff. "We'll get a lot of action on that one," Kornegay said. The kickoff bet serves as a replacement for the old coin-flip wager, which is no longer permitted in Nevada.

"My sports book manager, Ed Salmons, deserves credit for doing a lot of the work in coming up with the props," Kornegay said. "I wouldn't be able to do it without my staff; it's a real group effort."

Kornegay and his staff got together Monday night to work on this year's props and ended up meeting until well past midnight, finally breaking up around 1:30 Tuesday morning.

"Yes, there are arguments," Kornegay said. "But that's OK, because the more opinions you have, the stronger your lines are."

Hard to handle

The amount wagered legally in Nevada on last year's Super Bowl was $75.9 million, down from a record $77.3 million bet on the 1998 game, according to the Gaming Control Board.

Kornegay is not counting on this year's handle breaking the 1998 mark.

"I don't foresee that at all," Kornegay said. "One factor is that there's only one week (between the conference championships and the Super Bowl) this year."

Before 1998, Super Bowl betting in the state had held steady for three years in a row, totalling $70.9 million in 1996 and 1997, and $69.6 million in 1995.

Not surprisingly, Intertops' Noble says offshore gambling is a major cause of the betting stagnation in Nevada.

"We've seen fantastic growth, while more and more it seems to be slipping away from Las Vegas," Noble said.

Intertops, whose claim to be the largest online book is based on number of bets rather than largest handle, accepted more than 92,000 individual wagers on last year's Super Bowl, Noble said. This year, it is expecting more than 130,000.

While the line on the Super Bowl is Rams minus 7 across the city in Las Vegas, Intertops has it at 6 1/2.

"We are absolutely loaded on the Titans," he said. "We're hoping there's going to be some achy, breaky hearts in Tennessee."

Kornegay called the IP's 7-point line "a solid football number."

"It's been trickling in on both sides, maybe 60-40 in favor of the Titans," Kornegay said. "Because the public tends to bet the favorite, come the weekend it might be the opposite, or it could balance out."