Vegas+March Madness=dream

For even the casual basketball fan, you know March Madness descended upon us last week.

The first two rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament have become an amazing spectacle. It’s non-stop basketball from morning ’til night on the first Thursday and Friday of the event. That’s 16 games each day.

As an avid college basketball fan — give me a Duke game over a Cleveland Cavaliers tilt anytime — I have had the opportunity to attend some of these sessions in person during my newspaper career. You get four games at one location and then two more a couple of days later to decide which pair of teams advance to the Sweet Sixteen.

While it’s fun to be there, there’s an even better experience out there for the most rabid of college hoops fan. I soaked that in last week with a trip to the desert and one of the world’s most iconic cities — Las Vegas.

As many of you know, I lived in Vegas for 18-plus years. It’s now fun to go back as a “tourist” but with plenty of the insider knowledge. Several former newspaper co-workers and I met up there for several days of around-the-clock NCAA basketball and fun.

Because of its proximity in the Pacific Time Zone, the first ball was in the air at 9:10 a.m. on Thursday. They played deep into that evening, we watched. Sure there might have been a few dollars wagered on a variety of outcomes. Then, we did it all over again on Friday.

Throw in the eight games each on Saturday and Sunday and some might accuse us of “roundball” overdose. Simply put, we loved it. We’ll probably do it again next year.

We watched the games at a couple of different places in the city, but for those familiar with the sportsbooks there, none can hold a candle to the one located in the Westgate Las Vegas. That’s the newest name for the former Las Vegas Hilton for those who knew the city in its earlier days.

Watching the games at the Westgate’s “Superbook” is an amazing experience with incredible atmosphere. It has a video wall of TVs that measures 240 feet wide by 20 feet tall. In all there’s nearly 4,500 square feet of HD TV screens. The place seats about 500 people, but when you bring in the locale of the large bars nearby and the standing-room crowd, the atmosphere was astonishing for hours at a time.

Besides the basketball, meeting up and trading memories plus new and old stories was a special treat. Some of them still work in Las Vegas, others, like me, have moved on to other places.

A funny part of the five-day mini-vacation was how each person seemed enthralled at the other person’s job. The guy who is covering the emergence of the NHL’s new Vegas Golden Knights wanted to hear more about my role as a newspaper publisher. I, in turn, spent a lot of time talking with the guy I used to work with who now is the executive editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. We both dug for more fun stories from the writer who covers the Seattle Seahawks for the paper there. I won’t even go into how envious many of us were of the dude who is constantly traveling and writing about the PGA Tour.

Like usual, the time went too fast. Now it’s back to reality.

Rob Langrell is the publisher of The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him at: [email protected]