Why Billy Joel Will Sing the National Anthem in Over 1:44.00

Best SuperBowl Bet: Why Billy Joel Will Sing the National Anthem in Over 1:44.00
February 1st, 2007 by Ryan Spoon

This Sunday, you can bet on everything from the SuperBowls coin toss to the number of Rex Grossman Interceptions (1.5) to the number of yards Cedric Benson will collect on his very first rush (3.5 yards).

And while betting on the SuperBowl can make games like this one more enticing (Rex Grossman?! Peyton Manning?) - I have a bet pick that will get you excited about even the SuperBowl’s pregame show:

How long will it take Billy Joel to sing the national anthem? Over / Under 1:44 minutes

The bet begins with Billy Joel’s first note and ends with his last. Our first inclination was that he would definitely go under - the money agrees as the payout on Bodog.com is -125 for the under and -110 for the over. So people’s money is going on the under. At first blush, this makes sense. Try singing the national anthem and you’ll notice that 1:44 is a realtively long time.

But - we here at SportsWrap did our research and didn’t find a single SuperBowl national anthem that was under 1:44 minutes. Beyonce, Faith Hill, Whitney Houston and others all belted out for over 2 minutes - and equally important, they all had some musical accompaniment (normal for NFL games and not for MLB). The research extended - Chris Daughtry sped through the national anthem in the NFC Championship game and still hit 1:44. Josh Groban went over 2 minutes. The great Marvin Gaye rendition was over 2:30.

Though we couldn’t find footage of Billy singing in the Superbowl a decade ago - we found a copy of him singing in the 2000 World Series. He spend through the song in a way that it would be difficult to find any time savings (it was awful too!) and he did it accapella (not expected for Sunday). He finished in 1:38.

So there you go. Our money is on Billy Joel taking a whopping 1:45 or more to sing the national anthem. We won’t care about the quality - but we will be watching with a stopwatch. And we’ll be hoping that he brings out his piano for some bizarre arrangement.

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