Vegas Bowl!

So the perfect storm of trouble took place this past week. The Cal football team accepted an invitation to play in the... LAS VEGAS BOWL! I know, I know... it's a tier 4 bowl at best, but given that the other options were the Insight Bowl in Tempe or the Sun Bowl in El Paso, I have to say... selfishly, I was really happy. I mean, how great is it that you get to see your team play football in a bowl game and for that game to take place in Vegas! VEGAS!

Needless to say, I was pretty rev'ved to go. The thing is that I had to convince some friends to go too. Fortunately for me, my friends, Jang, Scott, and Ian are pretty much always ready for Vegas and Scott and Ian really wanted to stay at The Hotel in Mandalay Bay. So we booked a room and bought our bowl tickets and off we went.

We were originally slated to drive over on Thursday morning, but in a classic Matt move, I called up Ian and Scott to try and rally them to leave earlier. See, apparently, Jang was ALREADY IN VEGAS with his other friends and was waiting for us to get there. Long story short, we left Wed night, drove there and crashed in Jang's room at the Tropicana - pure class.


The next day, Ian and I got up and checked out the sports book at the MGM to get a sense on the action. Cal was favored by 7.5 pts - a key detail later. We played some Pai Gow, hit a breakfast buffet, met up with the boys and moved our stuff to the room at The Hotel. We were in a suite over there and it was pretty posh. There were even 2 bathrooms in the rooms... insane stuff. After checking in, we got ready and headed to the sports book to get down some friendly wagers on the game. See, the open on the game was Cal by 5.5, but the line had run up to 7.5. Jang had the perfect theory - since it was BYU vs. Cal, and BYU wasn't exactly the wagering crowd, almost all the action on the game had to come from Cal fans, which sent the line up 2 full points... But like the dumb loyal fan that I am, I still bet the game - one bet straight up and another parley on the over and the straight win. Jang got down on the line at the half, the straight game, and the over. After all that was settled, we headed out for the game.


On the way to the game, we stopped at the market for supplies, we got to the parking lot and we set up the tail gate. I had some brats cooking and I had marinated some peppers and onions the night before... Good times. After about 3 hours of tailgating, we headed into the stadium. The seats turned out to be pretty sweet. We were 4 rows back from off the Cal endzone. Unfortunately (for them), there were some BYU fans mixed into our section of Cal fans. By the end of the game, I'm sure they wished they had sat on the other side... as there was just a tad bit of heckling going on. The game was pretty good. Whenever Cal scored, I ran up and down the bench giving random people high fives. I'm pretty sure I was obnoxious - but I did manage to catch us on ESPN on the broadcast that I had taped. By the end of the third quarter, it was clear that we would make the over... what was unclear was if Cal would cover. Sure enough, after the refs blew a call on a safety, called a phantom holding penalty, and the Cal place kicker mysteriously came up 25 yards short on a 45 yard kick... Cal didn't cover and I lost all my bets... GRR.


Oh well, it didn't matter. Later that night after dinner, Jang and I headed out to downtown Vegas to gamble over at Binions. I got pretty lucky on a Pai Gow table and won back what I lost on the game. GO BEARS!

All in all the trip was awesome. We got to do everything there is to do in Vegas. We even made the obligatory stop in Primm on the way back - bless that place. Did some outlet shopping, played some Pai Gow, hit a Slot... MAN, when does Cal play UNLV in basketball?!


Photos are here