Odds Are v24.2
Gymbacks, Sleep, Midwestern Mindsets, Swifty Bowl, Cicadas, Fat Tuesday, and Counting by Billions
As dry January faded into liver failure February, we learned that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have kept the Doomsday Clock set at 90 seconds to midnight for 2024 - the same as it was set in 2023 and still the closest humanity has ever been to global catastrophe. On a lighter note, we saw the Detroit Lions catastrophe of a second half against the San Francisco 49ers to remain the oldest team in the NFL to never play in the Super Bowl.
This is the third installment in my Odds Are series, and it continues to explore stats covering a wide range of topics and other odds and ends that I have noticed lately.
1. Odds are you and your buddies could beat the Hogs, well at least at basketball. The Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team is losing by an average of 19 points per game in conference play. We are averaging giving up over 78 points per game and allowing opponents to shoot over 50% from the field and an astonishing 40% from the 3-point line.
Now to be fair, I don’t know who your friends are, but it seems like you’d have plenty of margin for error in picking the right guys with as poor as the Hogs are playing defensively.
If you were to challenge the Razorbacks gymnastics team on the other hand, you’d be in trouble. The Hogs top 10 team has been off to a great start this season with a 2-1-1 record. Their only loss coming at LSU on Friday night when the Tigers set their all-time program record score of 198.475.
I would highly encourage you to go check out a meet in person. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for kids. I took my family down for the Auburn match and was thoroughly impressed with the talented athletes, the lively arena atmosphere, and just watching kids scream and have fun. Commentators on the SEC network claim gymnastics to be the SEC sport with the highest attendance of children, mainly because of the affordable pricing and the fast-paced nature of the events.
2. Odds are you’re sleeping more, for now anyway. 1 in 3 U.S. adults say they sleep more than usual during the winter months, according to an American Academy of Sleep Medicine survey. Participants slept on average an extra hour per night. And that make sense with the sun rising later and setting earlier, we simply have more of the cool and dark conditions that promote good sleep. According to Dieter Kunz, a clinical psychiatrist and one of the authors of the study, "Possibly one of the most precious achievements in human evolution is an almost invisibility of seasonality on the behavioral level.”
But that’s all about to change soon. For only the 20th time in 137 attempts, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow on Groundhog Day, which predicts an early spring. So sleep while you can, in an ode to the Game of Throne’s catch phrase “Spring is Coming!”
3. Odds are you think you’re a midwesterner. While the Midwest is defined by the US Census Bureau as being made up of North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, lots of folks in other states think they live in the Midwest.
Maybe it’s just a midwestern mindset of loving Jesus, family, county fairs, and meat and potatoes that follows you no matter which state you call home?
4. Odds are you’ll place a bet on a midwestern football team this weekend. The Kansas City Chiefs play the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sunday. As of this writing the 49ers are 1.5 point favorites to win the game. Last year a record 50.4 million people bet on the Super Bowl in the United States. This year Legal Sports Report projects that a record $1.3 billion will be wagered on the game.
While it’s common for people to bet on winners, against the spread, or total points, the Super Bowl tends to bring out lots of crazy prop bets. Here are a few that stood out:
Will there be over 116.5 million tv viewers? (current odds -120)
Will the first commercial be BMW or Coors Light? (current odds BMW -110/Coors -130)
Will any player propose to their girlfriend on the field? (current odds “no” -290/ “yes” +210)
How long will the National Anthem last? (current odds under 90.5 seconds -128)
Will the coin toss end on heads or tails? (current odds have both at -105). Insider tip, tails has hit 7 out of the past 10 Super Bowls.
This year’s Super Bowl also has a brand new betting category: Taylor Swift. The record setting, 4-time Grammy winner for Album of the Year musician is dating Travis Kelce, the tight end for the Chiefs (not sure if you’ve heard about this). The 34 year old star has 280 million followers on social media, many of whom will be tuning in to the NFL championship for the first time. And thus, the Swifty Bowl was born. Here are a few exotic Taylor Swift bets to watch/play on Sunday:
How many times will Swift be shown during the tv broadcast? Over 4.5 (current odds -175)
Swift and Kelce will announce they're expecting a baby on Super Bowl Sunday (current odds +2200)
Swift’s travel from Japan to Las Vegas to be shown on CBS? (current odds “yes” +400/”no” -700)
Swift will join Reba McEntire in singing the National Anthem? (current odds -120)
5. Odds are you’ll celebrate a holiday over the next week or so. It seems like we find a way to honor something every day now, but having the Super Bowl, Fat Tuesday, Valentine’s Day and National Drink Wine Day all in a row seems like we are destined for over indulgence. Maybe the start of lent (Ash Wednesday) on February 14th as a time of fasting and prayer (often including abstinence from consuming red meat) for the 6 weeks that precede Easter will help curb some of that though.
Here’s a list of something to celebrate each day: National Fettuccini Alfredo Day (2/7), National Iowa Day (2/8), National Pizza Day (2/9), National Umbrella Day (2/10), National Pork Rind Day and the Super Bowl (2/11), National Plum Pudding Day (2/12), Fat Tuesday and National Pancake Day (2/13), Valentines Day and Ash Wednesday (2/14), National Gumdrop Day (2/15), National No One Eats Alone Day (2/16), National Random Acts of Kindness Day and my wife’s birthday: Happy Birthday, Amy! (2/17), National Drink Wine Day (2/18)
6. Odds are you’ll hear and see some cicadas this spring. Cicadas are large grasshopper-like bugs that sometimes emerge in the summer in large numbers and produce a distinct buzzing sound with rhythmic ticks that make it sound almost like music. As kids, we called them katydids (even though I later learned that insect is simply a green bush cricket).
The species burrows into the ground and only emerges every 13 or 17 years depending on the exact type of cicada. Well this year, those two patterns (13 and 17) fall on the same date for the two largest broods in North America. So likely in mid-May (when the precise ground temperatures are met to awaken the species from its dormant state), scientists predict billions of cicadas to all emerge at the same time.
For all those Christian eschatologist (end times scholars) out there, I did confirm that locusts are a different species than cicadas. So don’t worry, just enjoy the free outdoor concert from nature.
7. Odds are Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has a better understanding of the old adage “Life’s a roller coaster. It has its ups and downs.” than the rest of us. On Friday, February 2nd, Meta’s stock value rose by 20.3% or $196 billion making it the greatest one-day increase in value in the history of the stock market.
This was almost 20 years after Zuckerberg first published the website TheFacebook.com from his Harvard dorm room on February 4, 2004.
Oddly it was exactly 2 years since Meta set another stock market record by having the largest single day drop in value of all time. On February 3, 2022, its value plummeted down 26% losing $200 billion in value.
Zuckerberg retains 13% of the equity in the company he founded and has thus seen days where his net worth has gone up $25 billion and down $29 billion.
I read a book last year by Chip Heath and Karla Star called Making Numbers Count. Among other things, it explains that we have a hard time comprehending big numbers so it’s best to give illustrations. So below are a few examples showing how big Zuckerberg’s roller coaster ride really has been:
Million Seconds = 11 days
Billion Seconds = 32 years
If I gave you $5k/day you’d have a million dollars in about 6 months
But it would take 547 years to make a billion dollars
Meta’s value went up $196 Billion
If I gave you $100k/day it would take 5370 years to catch up to that gain, which means you could have started collecting money in 3000 BC in the time of the pyramids and still not be caught up
There are a litany of things that could have been highlighted this time, but these few items stood out. Leave a comment below if you have any other “Odds Are” topics you’d like to see covered in future editions of this topic thread.