One of my favorite all-time Super Bowl bets is one that I lost. This is because the paper it’s printed on helped me win, metaphorically speaking.

Well, sort of.

The bet is about 5 years old, and yet I still have the slip to this day. I take a look at it once in a while because it features some words I find both amusing and partly inspiring.

Those words are: “Yes, there will be.” This is the only text on the betting slip.

Sports books offer all sorts of long-shot proposition bets on the Super Bowl, and this was one of them. You see, no Super Bowl has ever gone to overtime, and rarely has there been a successful two-point conversion or a safety. Thus, they offer long odds on each proposition.

I was betting on the safety at a whopping price of 8-to-1. Not that I had any logical reason to believe one would occur, but it would give me sort of an eclectic rooting interest and hey, for $10, the potential payout wasn’t bad.

But clearly the oddsmakers were betting big that nothing would happen. In fact, “No, there won’t be” was the whopping 1-to-10 favorite.

I never understood why they didn’t just print something more straightforward such as, “Safety +800” on the ticket. Evidently they weren’t into economizing, yet didn’t have room to explain the whole bet, so they went simply with “Yes, there will be.”   

Of course, there wasn’t. Another Super Bowl went down in the books safety-free, and I was left with a losing sports bet that the hopeful side of me decided to turn into a fortune cookie, even if there was no fortune to be found.

Don’t get me wrong, sports betting should never be confused as analogous to anything that actually means something, but I’ve chosen to find some meaning in the verse on this ticket.

In short, “There Will Be” likely always will be a long shot. There will be dreams, goals and long shots, and most people probably will be in agreement with the house that the odds are stacked against you. “There Won’t Be” is the overriding sentiment for a lot of people these days.

And yet, what a triumph it will be the day your ticket is cashed. Even if it is overdue to hit.   

It often feels like the oddsmaker of life is betting against you, but the only way you’ll ever truly be a loser is if you never stop betting on yourself.

But as long as you have hope – even if it’s symbolized by a losing betting slip -- there’s always a chance, no matter how slim, that something always will be.  

Now, back to figuring out my bets for this Sunday’s Super Bowl.