"I’m taking the f**king Seahawks."
The Super Bowl is also the Super Bowl of gambling.
Good morning everyone. We’re talking about how everyone has to be a creator now in the Feed Me Substack Chat.
I couldn’t stop laughing while building today’s newsletter in the Substack CMS — Jack Mankiewicz is back, writing about sports and gambling. Lucky for me, I’ll be spending Sunday at his house eating spinach artichoke dip and listening to his real-time commentary.
Today’s newsletter includes: Dick Hammer, New York media party nostalgia, a former WSJ journalist’s beehiiv project, Vox wants to develop “show concepts, pilots, and formats” and prayers for 2026 Newport, RI brides.
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*To be clear, anyone reading this is my target demo.
“I’m taking the f**king Seahawks.”
Jack Mankiewicz is a writer from Los Angeles who lives in Brooklyn. He also used to be my roommate. He contributes to Feed Me occasionally, writing about sports and gambling.
Some people measure their lives in seasons, some measure them in relationships, I measure mine in Super Bowls. I’ve forgotten phone numbers, birthdays, earthquakes, entire years, but I’ve never forgotten where I was or what I was feeling during The Big Game.
Throw a Roman Numeral at me, and I will plunge through time like I’m Marcel Proust punching a QB sneak straight into the end zone. There’s Super Bowl XXXII - my beloved Packers were defeated by the underdog Denver Broncos, and a six-year-old Jack learned that the price of love is loss. There’s Super Bowl XXXVIII when, in between buffalo wings, Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson skyrocketed me into puberty. I can’t even list all the Super Bowls where Tom Brady and the Patriots forced me to reckon with God’s indifference and the Problem of Evil.
“Do I care about the Seattle Seahawks? Not really. My favorite thing about them is that their quarterback, Sam Darnold, is the grandson of the Marlboro Man, a guy with the impossible name of Dick Hammer.”
Real heads may know what I’m talking about, but I bet most of you are not sickos like me, with photographic memories of Muhsin Muhammad’s ultimately futile touchdown reception, or Prince’s phallic guitar solo standing in the literal Purple Rain. But here’s the beautiful thing about the Super Bowl - no matter how you feel about it, we’re all gonna be watching this Sunday when the Patriots play the Seahawks.
In that way, the game is a miracle, the last vestige of a dead monoculture, the only thing left in this country that we all share. It’s our defining holiday, combining all the most American traditions: violence, consumerism, and overconsumption (I once lobbied my parents to legally change my name to Dr. Pepper after drinking eight of them during Super Bowl XXXV). But there is one more great American pastime that the game offers us. My personal favorite, which readers of one of my recent columns may be able to guess…
That’s right: The Super Bowl is also the Super Bowl of gambling. It is the star on top of the Christmas tree, the cherry on top of the sundae, the epilogue to the Great American Novel that is the football gambling season. My grandfather, who was best friends with his bookie, explained to me when I was nine years old that gambling on the Super Bowl fell under the Mandatory Betting Act, and proceeded to fleece me for everything I had (75 cents) when I took the Titans and he took the Rams. Only after the game did I realize that law had not actually been codified, but I have been diligently obeying it ever since.
This year, my fellow Americans are doing the same, betting almost 2 billion dollars, a record amount, on the Big Game. If you are looking to add to that number, I’ve created a little guide for you with some of my favorite picks.
Seahawks -4.5 over the Patriots
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