In the late 1980s, Jay Kornegay was new to Las Vegas, and just learning the ropes at the Imperial Palace sportsbook. Unlike the founding sportsbook bookmakers such as Vaccaro and Reizner, Kornegay hadn’t spent his youth gambling in pool halls or the pavilion at Fenway. Nevertheless he had become intrigued by the industry on a senior year spring break trip and joined the profession after graduating from Colorado State.

his generation quickly embraced the notion of looking at games as more than just wins, losses and point spreads.

Despite not growing up surrounded by gambling, Kornegay and others of his generation quickly embraced the notion of looking at games as more than just wins, losses and point spreads. Gather any group of sports fans together for very long in a gambling environment and inevitably challenges are leveled and wagers made – most extending far beyond the standard offerings of a sportsbook. Behind the desks at places like the Imperial Palace, conversations among the staff were never limited simply to who would win a game.

For example, when the "Showtime" Los Angeles Lakers faced the "Bad Boys" Detroit Pistons in the 1988 and 1989 NBA Finals the staff of the Imperial Palace – banned from betting at their own sportsbook – made private bets among themselves. How many games will be played in the series? How many points will Magic Johnson score? Who scores more – Magic or Isiah Thomas? Will Magic have more assists than Dennis Rodman has rebounds? Regulars overheard these informal bets and debates among staffers and soon asked to join in. To accommodate their interest the Imperial Palace soon posted these types of prop bets on all kinds of sporting events.

None however, proved as popular as prop bets on the biggest betting event of the year, the Super Bowl. After the success of the Perry bet in 1986, Super Bowl prop bets rapidly grew in popularity. By the early 1990s most books offered somewhere between 30 and 50 prop bets for each Super Bowl. Then circumstances well outside of Las Vegas’ control threatened to affect their business on the biggest sports betting day of the year.

Beginning in 1990, for six of the next eight years the Super Bowls were one-sided blowouts as NFC powers annually dominated over-matched AFC opponents by lop-sided scores of 55-10, 52-17, 49-26 and 35-21. Even worse, many of these games were predictable blow-outs, and predictable blow-outs generate little betting interest. In response, the casinos needed to provide bettors other incentives to gamble. Prop bets unrelated to the outcome but not resolved until the clock runs out were the obvious answer.

By the early 1990s most books offered somewhere between 30 and 50 prop bets for each Super Bowl. The casinos began manufacturing these bets as rapidly as Toyota produces cars, and most were soon offering a hundred or more options, including some that crossed the boundaries of individual sports. Michael Jordan was the most popular athlete in the world at the time, a magnet whose every move attracted attention. If there was little doubt or interest in wagering that the Cowboys would out-score the Bills, the sportsbooks figured there might be more suspense as to whether or not Dallas would out-score Jordan in his game that weekend. Bettors seized on such opportunities, throwing money at wagers that maintained interest in the game to the end. Prop bets established a beachhead as an integral part of the Las Vegas Super Bowl experience. Even after the Super Bowls became competitive again in 1998 when Denver beat Green Bay in arguably one of the greatest Super Bowls ever played (at least for Broncos fans), the popularity of the prop bet never waned. As Vaccaro remembers today, "It just fed itself. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger."

Sonny Reizner retired from the Rio in 1996, spending his last few years as an observer of the craze he helped to popularize. In 2002, he passed away at the age of 81, winning his own prop bet in life expectancy for a man of his generation. Vaccaro eventually left the Mirage and took over Lucky’s, a chain of Nevada sportsbooks. Last year British betting giant William Hill bought Lucky’s, where Jimmy now plays a sort of "Bookmaker Emeritus" role as director of P.R.

In recent years, the prop bet craze that Reizner and Vaccaro helped foster has seen another bump in popularity due to the rise of the offshore sportsbooks. Not restricted by Nevada’s rules regarding non-sports bets, offshore sportsbooks, although illegal in the U.S., offer a far broader selection of betting options than their domestic counterparts do.

For the Super Bowl no option is left untouched, whether a bettor is a sport fan or not.

For the Super Bowl no option is left untouched, whether a bettor is a sport fan or not. For the musically inclined, bets on the duration of the Star Spangled Banner and the first song sung by Beyoncé during this year’s halftime performance are available.

Those more interested in fashion than football can also bet on whether Beyoncé will be showing cleavage during that first song and whether the Harbaugh brothers will both wear hats. The current odds heavily favor both cleavage and hats.

Bets can even be placed on the bettors themselves – there are odds on the amount of money Nevada will pull in on Super Bowl bets – Inception meets Super Bowl prop betting.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board, apparently recognizing that their restrictions have put casinos at a disadvantage to these offshore sportsbooks, now offers casinos an opportunity to apply for an exemption to post non-sporting event lines. However, the bureaucratic requirements are daunting, and few bets seem to be worth the effort. Kornegay, however, looks at the American presidential election and sees a near endless possibility of innovative prop bets. He believes that betting on the presidential election could eventually dwarf any sporting event, the Super Bowl included. Between those blindly betting on their preferred candidate and those hedging against the wrong candidate winning, it is easy to envision the massive interest in betting on an election. Even bets on items peripheral to the outcome of the election would likely generate interest, whether it is the duration of an acceptance speech, the time the loser concedes, or the tie color chosen by the winning candidate, presidential election-betting options seem endless. The right election prop bet could light the imaginations of every voter in the same way the Perry bet once captured NFL fans.

While the sportsbooks of Nevada may envy the freedom enjoyed by the offshore books, there is, as yet, little real concern about their competitive impact. No bet placed in front of a computer alone at home can compete with the camaraderie of sitting in a sportsbook surrounded by hundreds of other sports fans. The finances of Super Bowl betting for Nevada bear this out.

That means that $35 to $45 million was wagered on Super Bowl prop bets alone.

Where prop bets once accounted for maybe five percent of a sportsbooks’ total Super Bowl action, prop bets can now represent as much as 40 to 50 percent. In 2012, a total of nearly $94 million was bet on the Super Bowl at Nevada sportsbooks. That means that $35 to $45 million was wagered on Super Bowl prop bets alone.