The Steelers may not have won, but they helped Nevada’s legal sports books turn in a winning Super Bowl performance.

Bookmakers reported taking in $70.9 million in legal bets on Sunday’s game, the second straight year of record Super Bowl wagering in the state’s 124 legal sports books.

Unlike last year, when books actually lost money on the game, bookmakers took advantage of the Steelers covering the 13-1/2-point spread and some good proposition bets to make about $7.1 million in profit.

“The books did extremely well on propositions and on halftime wagering,” said Michael “Roxy” Roxborough, who sets odds for most of the state’s sports books.

Though betting was up from last year’s record $69.6 million, it fell short of some predictions. Bad weather curtailed some betting in the Lake Tahoe area, while Las Vegas books didn’t get as much betting over the final weekend as anticipated.

Roxborough said bookmakers could have lost money on the game had the Cowboys covered the point spread and the total score gone over 52 points. And they could have won even more money had Pittsburgh covered the spread and the game gone over the total.

In all, he said, books probably made about 3 percent profit off the game itself, with the other 7 percent coming from the halftime wagering and proposition bets.

Most proposition bets went to the house as bettors tended to bet on Dallas-oriented wagers such as Deion Sanders scoring a touchdown.

A few propositions were losers. Enough bettors picked Jay Novacek at 8-1 to score the first TD to turn a profit and the Mirage lost $18,000 on bettors who guessed that Michael Jordan would score more points (31) Sunday than the Cowboys (27).