Will the Super Bowl’s mayors up the ante?

For all the commercial activity surrounding the Super Bowl every year, one aspect of the contest has remained oddly innocent: the bets made by public officials of the cities whose teams are competing. These tend to smack of old-fashioned civic boosterism, as when the mayor of New York wagers a dozen bagels and the mayor of Baltimore puts a crab-cake dinner on the line. With the Bears and the Colts preparing to face off, the mayor of Chicago might bet a deep-dish pizza while the mayor of Indianapolis puts up a ticket to the Indy 500.