Top 5 bad beats in Super Bowl betting history
LV Review Journal (Subscription)5. ‘Black Sunday’
It’s been said that there’s more sympathy for the devil than the bookmaker. So it might warm the hearts of bettors to recount the tale of the 1979 Super Bowl that was dubbed “Black Sunday” by Las Vegas bookmakers after they were buried by bettors who middled the game, or won on both sides.
The Steelers opened as 2½-point favorites over the Cowboys, and the line climbed as high as 5. It landed on 4, as Pittsburgh’s 35-31 victory made winners of virtually everybody who had action on it.
“That game was the biggest losing Sunday for the Super Bowl that ever was,” South Point oddsmaker Jimmy Vaccaro told the Review-Journal in 2017.
Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, the inspiration for Robert DeNiro’s character in the movie “Casino,” ran a promotion at the Stardust offering bettors the chance to lay 3½ points with the Steelers and take 4½ points with the Cowboys.
Longtime Las Vegas bookmaker Vinny Magliulo, a young dice dealer at the time, was one of the bettors who cashed in on the promotion.
“I laid the 3½ and took the 4½ for everything I could at the time, which was a grand total of about 300 bucks,” he said, laughing. “I was on the public side of Black Sunday but converted shortly thereafter.”
After Jackie Smith infamously dropped a sure touchdown catch in the end zone for Dallas in the third quarter, Pittsburgh scored two TDs in 19 seconds to go ahead 35-17 in the fourth. But Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach threw two TD passes in the final 2:27 for the backdoor middle. After his 7-yard strike to Billy Joe DuPree cut the deficit to 35-24, Dallas recovered an onside kick. Staubach then hit Butch Johnson for a 4-yard TD with 22 seconds left.
