With 11-seed Loyola-Chicago just missing becoming the biggest NCAA Tournament longshot to win a title, it got us as TheLines thinking: 'Well, who are the biggest longshots in sports betting history?'
Not all longshots are created equal. Some of these selections were no-brainers, etched in gambling lore forever. Others were a little more under-the-radar, but still bore note-worthy significance.
10. 2011 St. Louis Cardinals at 999-1
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With 15 games left in the 2011 season, the St. Louis Cardinals were 4 ½ games behind the Atlanta Braves for the National League wild card spot. Las Vegas sportsbooks had them listed at 999-1 to win the World Series. Then Atlanta collapsed, the Cards went 11-4 in their final 15, and won the World Series over the Texas Rangers. While it takes a lot to make baseball exciting and interesting, a 999-1 run does the job.
9. 1999 St. Louis Rams 300-1 to win Super Bowl
Let's keep the list in St. Louis. While some would think that the 2001 Patriots would've been the worst pre-season Super Bowl odds to win a title, they were actually 60-to-1 and only the seventh worst preseason odds to hoist the Lombardi. The 1999 version of the team they beat for the Super Bowl that year, the St. Louis Rams, claim the honor for biggest pre-season Super Bowl longshot to win it all.
For historical context, the Rams of the late ‘90's were bad. Awful. Turrrible, as Charles Barkley would say. Their star free-agent QB signing, Trent Green, suffered a season-ending injury before week 1, so grocery bagger Kurt Warner took the reins. What happened next? The Greatest Show on Turf and an unlikely Super Bowl.
8. 2000 Olympic Wrestling Rulon Gardner at 2,000-1
Remember Rulon Gardner? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Rulon was a Greco-Roman wrestler who went up against all-time great Alexander Karelin in the 2000 Summer Olympics. Karelin hadn't lost in over a dozen years, and Gardner never finished better than fifth in international competition.
So obviously Gardner captured Gold at 2,000-1 odds.
Gardner gave MMA a shot four years later in PRIDE, but retired after one fight. Karelin went on to help Russian influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.*
* Ok, he went on to a career in Russian politics, so basically the same thing.
7. 2007 Stanford vs USC
Dubbed 'The Greatest Upset Ever,' Stanford was a friggin' 41-point underdog to a[nother overhyped] USC juggernaut.
Under Jim Harbough's stewardship, Stanford won in the final minute 24-23 when Redshirt sophomore Tavita Pritchard, making his first career start, connected with Mark Bradford on a 10-yard touchdown pass. This was Stanford's first lead of the game.
Stanford and Harbough have independently had a good run of success since then. USC had one more season of glory in 2008 before falling behind the SEC for college football supremacy. Morris mohawk gaming group.
6. 2007 Appalachian St. vs Michigan
Ok, even though Stanford vs. USC is called 'The Greatest Upset Ever,' earlier in the 2007 season (Week 1), Appalachian St. REALLY shocked the world as a -33 point underdog.
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Michigan was ranked fifth entering the season, Appalachian St. was a Division 1-AA team. No Division 1-AA team had ever beaten a Division 1-A team like Michigan. Until Appalachian St.
Michigan went on a spiral downward, eventually hiring The Greatest Upset Ever coach Jim Harbough to bail them out as head coach in 2015. Appalachian St. became a Division 1-A team in 2014. So it was kind of like the Circle of Life.
5. 2009 Kentucky Derby Winner Mine that Bird 50-1
Mine that Bird had everything going against him: a crappy name, good but not great bloodlines, no testicles, and 50-1 odds.
However, Mine that Bird overcame it all to have a fairly remarkable racing career. The gelding that was bought for only $9,500 amassed over $2.2M in earnings.
How surprising was Mine that Bird's back of the pack to 7-lengths victory? Even the announcer didn't know what was going on.
4. Buster Douglas at 42-1 KOs Mike Tyson
Now we're getting into rarified air.
By odds alone, Buster Douglas beating Mike Tyson in Tokyo, Japan in 1990 is far from the greatest longshot victory. However, it doesn't seem that way now.
Douglas was an undecorated unknown. Mike Tyson was Mike Fucking Tyson. He was 37-0 with 33 knockouts. He did this to other heavyweights.
Buster Douglas had nearly 7 years of age and 4 more losses on Tyson. Regardless, despite getting knocked down in the 8th round, Buster rallied and ended the era of Tyson with a 10th round knockout. Tyson was never the same as a boxer. Douglas was never again relevant after losing his next fight to Evander Holyfield.
3. Leicester City 5,000-1 to Win 2015 Premier League
At the start of the 2015 Premier League season, perennial relegation-candidate Leicester City opened at anywhere from 2,000-to-1 to 5,000-to-1 dogs to finish atop the table. In a weird season that saw typical favorites Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea finish 5th, 8th, and 10th respectively, Leicester went on an improbable run to claim their first Premier League title. Teams like Leicester City simply didn't win Premier League titles. And yet, they did.
Lucky punters who rode with the Foxes at thousands-to-1 odds were celebrating like Zlatan Ibrahimovic after his first MLS goal.
2. New York Jets +18 Super Bowl III
Again, it's not ALWAYS about the spread. While being an 18-point underdog is enormous, what the Joe Namath guarantee and New York Jets win did for the NFL and Super Bowl in general makes this longshot matter more.
Would the NFL still have grown to be the biggest American sport? Absolutely. Would their ratings still be improved with legalized sports betting? Absolutely again! But did Namath's guarantee and signature dropping of the mic #1 field walk-off moment help speed up the process? Maybe.
If nothing else, it certainly trumps his Suzy Kolber moment. How to win jackpots on slot machines.
1. U.S. Hockey 1,000-to-1 1980 Winter Olympics
Do you believe in gambling miracles???
If you don't know the story of the U.S. Hockey team's improbable victory in the 1980 Olympics then you're either not American or you were born after Yo Gabba Gabba! went off the air.
But did you know they were 1,000-1 to win Gold?
From the improbability of scruffy college kids beating the best hockey players in the world to the Cold War importance of that victory to the absurd odds, there is no greater longshot.
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.
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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.
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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.
https://site-3935353-7865-9374.mystrikingly.com/blog/dealing-craps-for-dummies. 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 Betfair casino review. 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 Tembo 2 4 1. ) 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.
There was simply too much profit here for anyone involved to do the right thing. And we're not just talking about bookmakers, either.
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.
Platinum reels mobile. Source: The Gateway Pundit
