Perhaps the largest holiday in the United States every year, at least unofficially, is the Super Bowl, an annual reason to throw a party and invite friends and family over for football, food, and fun. One reason why the Super Bowl is so popular is the elephant in the room that the NFL would rather not discuss: gambling. If you want to make your Super Bowl XLVI party the best one yet, here is a gambling game for you.
The most common Super Bowl gambling among the common man is the standard 100-square office pool, where each score, or the score at the end of each quarter, corresponds to one of the 100 squares on the grid, and a specific payout. This is a great and classic Super Bowl gambling tradition, but needs time to develop and to sell the squares themselves. This is best suited for offices and the workplace (assuming gambling is permitted of course, wink wink nudge nudge).
For a fun gambling game at your Super Bowl party, it is really this simple:
- Have everyone chip in an equal of real money ($10, $20, $50, $1,000; whatever floats your boat) into the pot
- Give everyone an equal amount of Monopoly money at the start of the broadcast (it's good to start in pregame)
- Everyone uses their Monopoly money to bet on anything and everything related to the game or the broadcast.
- The person with the most Monopoly money at the end of the night wins the real money in the pot (or you can split it 80/20 for first and second place, whatever split you want to do)
Want to bet $50 that the next play for the New England Patriots will be a running play? As long as someone is willing to engage, that's fair game. Want to bet $200 that the next commercial will be a beer commercial? Go right ahead. Will Eli Manning complete five passes on the next drive? Here's $60 that says he won't. Who wants a piece of that?
It may take a few minutes to get going, but before you know it your Super Bowl party will look like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Hopefully you will end up more like Billy Ray Valentine than Randolph and Mortimer Duke.
For more wall-to-wall coverage of the 2012 Super Bowl, be sure to check in often with Super Bowl central at SB Nation.