March Madness finds spiritual home in Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS — Like it or not — and the NCAA almost
certainly doesn’t — for many, the true spiritual home of college basketball
this month is not in Buffalo or Greenville, S.C., or the Final Four site of the
Phoenix suburb Glendale, but in Las Vegas.
And that is why The Strip heaved with humanity Thursday as
the NCAA tournament tipped off across the country. Patrons convened to
celebrate the pinnacle of amateur sports while partaking in booze and bets.
“This is the biggest sports party of the year,” said veteran
broadcaster Brent Musburger, before settling into a comfortable chair at South
Point Casino, with the authority of a man who knows all about March and its
lunatic streak.
“It is chaos,” he said. “That’s why they call it madness.
You can bet early and bet often and have all the fun Vegas brings while you are
doing it. It is a mecca for college basketball.”
Musburger popularized the phrase “March Madness,” previously
used by an Illinois high school tournament, while broadcasting the event for
CBS in the early 1980s. After a long career with that network and ESPN, he is
now based here as the lead host for VSiN, a new network that targets the
continually booming sports gambling fan base.
“The one unsaid part about gambling on sports is how social
it is,” Musburger said. “I see the same people all the time. They are not
betting thousands; it is where friends get together, they talk about the bad
beats. It is like a family.”
The family keeps growing. According to the American Gaming
Association, an estimated $295 million will be wagered on the tournament in Las
Vegas casinos. Super Bowl Sunday in February brought in $138.5 million in bets,
although that was just one day.
Las Vegas has been quick to pick up on the chance to make a
mint in March. The gambler is always the underdog here, but hey, this is the
first weekend of the tournament, the time when long shots with wide eyes and
big dreams confound the money line. Sometimes.
“Las Vegas is now the home for March Madness for the whole
country,” said Derek Stevens, owner of The D hotel and casino in the city’s
rejuvenated downtown area. “It is an amazing phenomenon, and it gets bigger
every year. For us, it is the biggest, bigger than New Year’s Eve or the Super
Bowl.”
Virtually every casino is hosting extravagant watch parties.
Room prices, at least those that are still available, are a reflector of
demand. A Saturday night standard room at the Westgate resort, formerly the Las
Vegas Hilton, will set you back $370. The same accommodation two days later?
$86.
Las Vegas’ entrepreneurial streak also comes into play with
imaginative marketing. There are margarita madness specials at the sit-out bars
along The Strip, rumors of a mellow madness at a cannabis dispensary nearby
and, if you feel like it, matrimonial madness offered at some of the wedding
chapels.
It was that way for Joey Hess and Amy Denson. With both
being college basketball fanatics, it made sense for their wedding in 2016 to
have a March Madness flair to it.
“We wanted to mix an event and a sport that is so close to
our heart with our most important day,” said Denson, who played professionally
overseas for eight years and is now assistant women’s basketball coach at
Portland State.
The pair wore high-top shoes with their traditional wedding
garb for the ceremony, and for a photo shoot at Red Rock Canyon, guests watched
games throughout the reception and the whole thing was a resounding success.
Denson stopped short of “dribbling a ball as I walked down
the aisle,” but Hess said they enjoyed the experience so much they will be
making an annual pilgrimage here. “For March Madness … and for our
anniversary,” he said.
Over at South Point, Musburger got a hero’s welcome as he
wandered through the casino to a studio where he broadcast for the next two
hours.
To this crowd, the 77-year-old is as much a celebrity as the
endless collection of DJs on Strip billboards are to electronic dance music
nerds. The broadcaster is a man who has always felt it is OK to love sports and
gambling and allow each to enhance the experience of the other.
“Beyond the gambling individual, a lot of people are
interested and fascinated in the movement of gambling money,” he said, before
starting a story about how March Madness just keeps getting madder.
“I looked at the board and was moving some underdogs around,
and I said, ‘Folks, it is madness, it is March Madness,’ ” Musburger added,
remembering his first use of the phrase more than two decades ago. “The term
stuck, and it will always be there. I think that is why the NCAA won’t move it,
even though the championship game is in April.
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