Sports betting: Super Bowl referee Bill Vinovich an unders kind of guy

The search for an edge heading into the biggest day of sports betting takes us to the officials. The head zebra, actually.

Bill Vinovich, most known as the lead official two years ago when there was an egregious non-call of a pass interference in the NFC championship game between the Saints and Rams, will referee his second Super Bowl.

It will be his 12th game involving a team coached by Andy Reid, and his third 49ers game since Kyle Shanahan became coach three years ago. That blown call, by the way, wasn’t his to make.

Anyway, what do we know about Vinovich?

Reid’s Eagles were 0-3 straight-up and against the spread in games in which Vinovich was the lead official, but that was a long time ago. His Chiefs are 5-3 straight up and against the spread. The most recent Vinovich game was a 31-24 loss to Green Bay in October, when Chiefs superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes did not play because of a knee injury.

Reid also has been there for two games that were personally important to Vinovich. His first game as an NFL official was as a side judge when the Seahawks beat the Eagles in the first weekend of games after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

Health problems forced Vinovich to step away from the field for five years. His return in 2012 was a brutal overtime loss by the Eagles to Detroit, when they blew a 10-point lead with less than four minutes left. Two days later, Reid pulled the plug on the puzzling experiment of Juan Castillo as defensive coordinator.

Not suggesting anything. Just informing.

San Francisco is 2-0 against the spread in games refereed by Vinovich since Kyle Shanahan took over as coach in 2017, including a 20-7 win in October.

The American Gaming Association estimated this past week that approximately $6.8 billion will be bet on the Super Bowl in legal, illegal, and casual action such as block pools. Wonder if they are counting those nutty ones in which blocks cost a thousand bucks. Anyway, the AGA’s survey estimates 26 million of us will have some stake in Sunday’s game.

If there’s a Vinovich trend this season, it’s that underdogs have won outright four straight and six of the last seven. That’s somewhat inconsequential here since San Francisco is just a 1-point 'dog.

Ten of the 16 games Vinovich called were under, including six of his last eight. The average total in all his games was 41.1 points, some two touchdowns lower than Sunday’s number of 54. As we said, his only Chiefs game came in at 55 — and that was without Mahomes.

Supe 49 is the other Super Bowl that Vinovich refereed. New England beat Seattle, 28-24, to cover the pick-’em spread and finish over the total of 47. There probably would have been more points if Pete Carroll would have just handed the ball to Marshawn Lynch at the end of the game.

Home teams in caps.

*Baltimore rested many of its starters in Week 17 (and still won convincingly). ... Source: Inquirer research via Pro-Football-Reference.com.