Flatter: When racing was more super than the Super Bowl

For most of the country, we are told, Super Bowl LVIII will be an undeclared holiday Sunday uniting a nation for four hours of football starring the 49ers and the Swifts, halftime entertainment starring Usher and about 50 minutes of commercials starring our disappointed reactions.

Just think. This used to be horse racing.

In another one of those I-am-old-enough-to-remember moments, yes, there was a time when the Kentucky Derby was bigger than what was first dubbed in 1967 the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.

Follow the money. In the mid ’60s there was no bigger day of betting, legal or otherwise, than the biggest horse race in the country. Football, schmootball. Give me the first Saturday in May.

Way back when, that first big game was not so big. It still was regarded as a post-season exhibition game between major and minor football leagues. Now the American Gaming Association says 1 in 4 Americans will have action on this event that is labeled modestly now as super.

The $23.1 billion bet Sunday will be mostly legal, coursing through the 38 states and one federal archipelago where gambling is endorsed, encouraged and taxed. That is almost exactly double the $11.6 billion that horse racing in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico attracted in combined handle for the entire year of 2023, according to Equibase.

O, how the mighty has fallen.

Pulling on that thread means casting light all over again on the fact racing no longer holds the distinction of being the only gaming game in town. Cry about divisive factions and everything that is wrong in our game. The reality is the appetite that racing stoked for betting proved too insatiable to monopolize.

The Super Bowl wistfully underscores how racing was unable to keep up with other forms of gambling that have proven to be more attractive to a mainstream public keen to gravitate to the shiny object. Why learn the meaning of exacta box when there are scratch-off cards?

Even an in-person trip to the big game that we who are not CBS Sports are bullied into calling the big game used to come with a de rigueur visit to the nearest racetrack.

Any sports writer worth his portable typewriter in January 1967 would have driven up to Santa Anita to watch Buckpasser win the San Fernando Stakes the day before the Packers beat the Chiefs.

That first Super Bowl that actually was a super bowl was at the Los Angeles Coliseum, itself a before-its-time monument to football’s eventual overtaking of horse racing in America’s betting consciousness. It was, after all, built in 1923 on the site of what was the frowned-upon Exposition Park horse track. We were a puritanically simple people back then.

Super Bowl weeks and racecourses used to be inextricably linked. Going to Miami? Make a side trip to Gulfstream Park or Hialeah. The Harbaugh Bowl in New Orleans that was interrupted by a Superdome power failure was preceded by my first visit to Fair Grounds.

I have to admit, though, I did not take advantage of trips to the Bay Area and Phoenix to go to Golden Gate Fields or Turf Paradise. Those two tracks are still on my list of have-nots. I guess I better hurry.

Horses are not running this weekend in Las Vegas. The track that was opened there 70 years ago lasted only 13 race days. It was partly because the toteboard never worked right. It was mostly because no one cared. Not with easier-to-understand games and machines on some new street that was nicknamed The Strip.

Horses barely run even on the big screens inside the sportsbooks in Las Vegas. The owner of one casino will not say so publicly, but he told me once he only reluctantly books horse bets, because he does not like the kind of crowd the sport attracts.

Nevada is where Churchill Downs Inc. would not allow casinos to be part of the mutuel pools at its racetracks. The 2 1/2-year impasse over the split of Kentucky Derby day takeout eventually proved to be small potatoes for both sides of the dispute. Finally, the matter was resolved when the bad P.R. became more of a millstone than the lost handle.

This story does not have to end sadly ever after. Now that legal betting on so many other sports has bigfooted racing, why can’t our game apply that old adage? You know. If you can’t beat ’em, parlay ’em.

There have been on-again, off-again tries to make racing an option in multisport wagering. It gets complicated by old laws that made legal bets on horses exempt from what used to be illegal bets on other sports. In New Jersey, for example, there are very different distinctions when it comes to tax rates.

Common sense says if we have the freedom now to bet on just about any game people play, we should be able to combine those wagers with a little something on the third race at Gulfstream or maybe even a futures bet on a certain run for the roses.

I raised this idea on my podcast this week with NBC’s Randy Moss. Since his professional portfolio is all about football and racing, he is in Las Vegas this week for the LVIIIth.

I asked him if he had the chance to parlay horse and football bets, what would he do? He identified maiden winner Hall of Fame, who is likely to go next week in the Grade 2 Risen Star, and is available at 30-1 at Caesars and Circa to win the Kentucky Derby.

“I guess I would just do the Hall of Fame 30-1 thing right now and combine it with one of those Super Bowl props that we talked about,” Moss said. “Especially the Brock Purdy prop.”

That would be the one that makes the 49ers quarterback a 5-6 favorite to throw at least one interception.

“I don’t know what kind of price I would get,” Moss said, “but it would be nice?”

If my wagering calculator is correct, a winning $100 bet would be worth $5,583.23.

Dare to parlay the dream.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.