Worst Bets In History
Super Bowl XLI: Colts vs. I believe this, somewhat less publicized “bad beat,” to be the most underrated of them all. It really combines so many different aspects of the “bad-beat-ness” that many forget: A Peyton Manning-led team already is a good bet. Super Bowl V: Cowboys (+2.5) vs. Blunder Bowl (Miami, 1971) The then Baltimore Colts faced.
Over the weekend, coach Bill O’Brien, who calls the personnel shots for the Houston Texans, made a pair of major trades. How both deals work out will have major implications on O’Brien’s long-term job security.
He took a huge gamble by giving up three premium draft picks and two players to pry left tackle Laremy Tunsil and wide receiver Kenny Stills from the Miami Dolphins. That’s a pretty steep price and the loss of those draft picks could hurt Houston in the future. It’s too early to declare a winner in this trade. If Tunsil and Stills play well and Houston makes a deep playoff run, this will look like a great trade. Anything less and if those future draft picks don’t work out, the Texans will be the losers in this deal.
But you also have to be careful when placing your bets, and when deciding on the terms and conditions. You might just end up painfully embarrassed, but at least it will be a great story to tell, someday, when most of the shame wears off. 21 Outrageously Embarrassing Bets. Get the latest Best and Worst Super Bowl Bets news, photos, rankings, lists and more on Bleacher Report. In 2005, the Co-founder of YouTube, Steve Chen said the following: There’s just not that many.
O’Brien’s other move was trading defensive lineman Jadaveon Clowney, perhaps Houston’s best player, to the Seattle Seahawks for a 2020 third-round pick and backup linebackers Barkevious Mingo and Jacob Martin. That’s a very small return for a player of Clowney’s caliber, so this one is already looking like a bad move by Houston. But it’s too early for a final verdict on either deal.
What is for sure is that there have been plenty of terrible trades in NFL history. Let’s take a look at the 11 worst trades ever.
You really can’t question many personnel moves New England has made in the Bill Belichick era. But you definitely can question one move the Patriots made long before the coach arrived. That was in 1985, when the Patriots were poised to take Rice, the greatest wide receiver ever. Instead, the Patriots traded out of the No. 16 position. They sent that pick and No. 75 to San Francisco in exchange for Nos. 28, 56 and 84. New England wound up using those three picks on Trevor Matich, Ben Thomas and Audray McMillan. Had the Patriots taken Rice, their current dynasty could have started long before it did.
As any bettor knows, bad beats are the constant Sword of Damocles that hangs over the heads of professionals and amateurs alike.
They’re inevitable, they’re always newsworthy, and they usually sting like hell.
But the 2020 Presidential election is easily the worst one ever.
It is the MOABB, and the inevitability of it was ultimately the one thing that kept us from actually putting money on the outright election winner odds.
Frankly, we saw no way that any such bet could be paid out in good faith.
And, of course, we were right.
When Vegas online sportsbooks started giving Joe Biden backers their winnings a week ago, many bettors cried foul. And for good reason:
The election isn’t over.
Joe Biden does not become “President-elect Joe Biden” until January 6, when the states’ electoral votes are formally recognized and tallied in the US Senate.
Of course, in past elections, this was a moot point (2000 and its now-far-less-infamous hanging chads notwithstanding). The winner was easy to identify, and there was no compelling data to doubt the results.
Not so in 2020, which we all saw coming and which seems so utterly chaotic by absolutely intentional design.
For the statistically literate, the true bipartisan, or just those with a sense of propriety about the fairness of the process, the 2020 Presidential election is an unprecedented example of almost blindingly obvious, blatant fraud.
Of course, bettors are – by and large – statistically oriented folks, and numbers don’t lie. People lie, the aggregators of those numbers lie, but the numbers themselves do not.
Now, whether or not you believe there was enough fraud to change the outcome of the 2020 general and give the win to Basement Joe is irrelevant. There is – at the very least – enough smoke to merit looking for the fire.
Again, just take a look at the stats.
In four crucial swing states, the vote count was halted in a suspiciously coordinated fashion with The Donald up bigly across the board.
We peons were told that the count would resume in the morning. Poll watchers were sent home, the news media stopped covering the sites, and the entire country went to bed believing that the incumbent had built an insurmountable lead.
But upon waking, the country was welcomed with a series of shockers – four for four! – that saw Biden leapfrog Trump with unheard of gains in the wee hours.
You know, those same hours when poll watchers – and every voter in America – were told there would be no more counting, thank you, and goodnight.
That alone is a situational and statistical double whammy worthy of investigation, and no MSM outlet is willing to even float the question. Their guy won. Who cares if there was a historically awful pass interference call that materially altered the outcome?
Get over it, snowflake.
But many people do care. Millions and millions and millions of them.
Of course, there are also other compelling stats that are worth assessing. Take this shocking reveal:
That’s right: Joe Biden won the fewest counties in US history – roughly half of the counties Barack Obama won in 2008.
Further, Biden lost Ohio, Florida, and Iowa, which no winner ever has. He also lost 18 of 19 so-called Bellwether Counties, which previously was a sure-fire 0-fer.
On top of that, in a similar bad beat (for books and not bettors this time), Biden’s party simultaneously lost all 27 of the 27 US House elections rated by mainstream polling firms and pundits as “toss-ups.”
Yet this candidate – who barely campaigned at all – somehow managed to win the most votes in US history by a whopping seven million tallies and outperformed the most “popular” candidate of the last 50 years, media darling Barry Soetero, by 12 million votes.
That is the kind of underdog victory that would make even Tom Brady blush.
In other words, it warrants skepticism regardless of where you stand on the political divide.
Naturally, there are other developments that most people aren’t aware of due to their various media bubbles and a complicit cabal of talking heads unwilling to report on anything of substance.
You might catch the impromptu Samsonite ad in Georgia (if YouTube doesn’t censor it first) or randomly stumble upon that little chestnut that is the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors defying a legislative subpoena to turn over their discredited Dominion voting machines.
You know, the same machines that, in Michigan, were independently audited and proven capable of altering election outcomes in the software itself.
By explicit design.
That’s why they use Dominion machines in Venezuela, where 90% of the populace routinely votes for mass starvation and crippling poverty.
These should all be red flags to anyone who cares about quaint notions like “democracy” and the now-apparent lie that “every vote matters.”
After all, if a large minority (or an actual majority) of US citizens no longer believes in the security of free elections, there might be bigger issue than who’s in charge of the failing state.
That’s a problem for everyone, whether or not your guy wears the crown this time around.
But back to measurable statistics, since outright subversion of due process doesn’t seem to get many hackles adequately up:
Yes, you read that correctly: 212 million registered voters, 66.3% turnout, and a vote delta in the Democratic candidate’s favor that is mathematically impossible.
Well, impossible by real math. Common Core math, and it probably makes at least some sense.
Frankly, if this were a traditional sporting event, books wouldn’t be paying out on these lines. They’d refund all the action, as they do when particularly egregious officiating decisions contravene the rules of the game and let the losing team get the W.
But then again, the 2020 Presidential election was the most bet-on event in history, and the majority of bettors (70-plus percent) were all in on Trump.
The books can credibly wipe out tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars in liability by going along with the narrative that Biden won, and they’re perfectly happy to do so.
Refunding all action on contested races would be the more customer-friendly thing to do, but as with politics, sports betting is a business, and profit is profit.
Worst Bets In History Since
There was simply too much profit here for anyone involved to do the right thing. And we’re not just talking about bookmakers, either.
Worst Bets In History Games
At the very least, we’d have liked to see every reputable Vegas election betting site wait until January 20 to start paying out the winners.
The lesson here?
Bad beat or not, betting odds are far more honest than political polls, and betting itself is apparently far more more secure than voting.
But you might still get screwed in the end.
Worst Bets In History
Source: The Gateway Pundit