When the UCLA football team went to the Las Vegas Bowl, I pretty much had to follow them. I had never been to Vegas before, and it sounded like such a great way to spend a weekend. I could have a little fun in the sun, do some gambling, explore the nightlife, maybe even catch (or bet on) some football. What better way could there be to work out my vices before I resolve to abandon them on New Year’s? Vegas, baby, Vegas.
Little did I know.
It turns out that the Las Vegas Bowl is an exciting little bundle of contradictions. But since I believe bowl games are about so much more than just football, and because I think it’s important that someone other than just myself and assorted casino owners profit from my experiences, I thought I’d offer a short glossary of all the things I learned about during, and also before and after, the Bruins’ 17-16 loss to the BYU Cougars:
Tradition: The Rose Bowl may be the granddaddy of them all, but apparently this Las Vegas Bowl had some history of its own. Not only was it a rematch of UCLA’s 27-17 win over BYU from September, but it was the third time both teams have played in the Las Vegas Bowl. That’s pretty impressive for the Cougars, since a December game in Sam Boyd Stadium is the reward for winning the Mountain West Conference, something they’ve now done three years running. For the Bruins, who earned the bid for the third time in the last six seasons as the fourth best team in the Pac-10? Not so much.
Full House: A poker hand, yes, but also a good description for Sam Boyd, where the crowd of 40,712 was the second highest in stadium history. But while in poker a full house is composed of three of one card and two of another, this full house consisted of closer to five of one thing and one of another. As in, approximately five BYU fans for every Bruin fan.
Irony: The fact that, mathematically, the above definition means that there were over 33,000 students, alumni and fans of a Mormon university in Sin City on Saturday night. Three days before Christmas.
Too Much Vegas: A phenomenon one experiences shortly after Any Time At All in Vegas. Its symptoms include feelings of being burnt-out, tired and disgusted with one’s self, as well as nausea and general incompetence. Personally, I arrived in Vegas on Thursday afternoon and was experiencing Too Much Vegas by early Friday morning. On Saturday night, it appeared that the Bruins might have been experiencing Too Much Vegas for most of the first and second quarters. Fortunately, BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall appeared to contract Too Much Vegas when he opted to try a running play toward the end of the first half from near his team’s end zone. A Brian Price-forced fumble and a McLeod Bethel-Thompson touchdown pass later, and the Bruins were temporarily cured of their TMV.
High-Low: A card game. Also, probably a pretty good approximation of the emotional state of Kai Forbath, the Bruins’ redshirt freshman kicker who nailed three of four field goals to keep his team in the game, two from beyond 50 yards out. But the one he missed was blocked as time expired and would have given the Bruins an improbable come-from-behind win. But if Vegas has taught me anything, it’s that everything in life is a gamble. And look at it this way: If I were successful on 75 percent of the gambles I made this weekend, I know some people who would be getting some much nicer Christmas presents.
E-mail Lampros at nlampros@media.ucla.edu for more information on such terms as “Fat Tuesday” and “Deserts which, contrary to what you might think, are exactly below freezing temperature.”