LAS VEGAS — When I told my brother Jeff that the newspaper wanted me to do what we call a scene-setter piece here in advance of Sunday’s LSU-Southern California game, he offered me some sage advice:
“Go to the Bellagio fountain,” he said, “and wait to see if some LSU fan jumps in.”
He was only half-joking.
The weekend is still young, but as of noon Saturday the best I could do was find an LSU fan who was forced to make a fool of himself in front of the hotel and casino's famous lake-sized fountain because he lost a pre-Vegas bet (more on him later).
An LSU fan paying up on a bad bet in Las Vegas was pretty much a given considering how many fans are here. As they say in Vegas, the odds were in favor of such an occurrence.
The LSU faithful like to call Omaha, Nebraska, Alex Box North for how many of them trek up there for the College World Series every time the Tigers are in it. Well, with apologies to West Baton Rouge Parish, Las Vegas could be called Baton Rouge West this weekend.
This is the trip LSU fans have waited, I suppose, for forever, and a whole lot of them didn’t miss the chance to be here for the show. Purple-clad people are everywhere, filling up the hotels, restaurants, casinos and bars in a city that is glad to vacuum up every dollar they care to leave behind.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Southwest Airlines alone has added 56 flights this season in connection with college football games. Twenty-four of them were going to/from Las Vegas in conjunction with this game. A lot of them, like my connecting flight from Atlanta to Vegas on Friday night, were substantially populated by LSU people, I’m sure.
As for USC fans, whose Trojans play the Tigers here in the Las Vegas Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium at 6:30 p.m. Central on Sunday, here is my honest-to-goodness count of how many of their fans I saw from 9 a.m. Saturday until I sat down to write this column about 3:30 p.m.: Four.
No, really. Four. Obviously not every USC fan here is decked out head to toe in cardinal and gold. But to say LSU fans visibly outnumbered USC fans here Saturday 10-to-1, 20-to-1, was no exaggeration.
Michael Palmer from St. George surveyed the sea of fellow LSU fans filling up the immense sportsbook at Caesars Palace and delighted in the LSU dominance.
“There’s not a purple shirt for sale in this town,” Palmer said. “It’s unfortunate so many USC fans don’t have the means to travel to Las Vegas.”
Surely USC fans will show up at some point before kickoff. A drive from Los Angeles to Vegas takes about as much time as a drive from Baton Rouge to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and is probably a trip Southern California folks make just as frequently.
Who knows how the game will turn out? LSU has lost four straight openers entering this season, the Tigers’ worst streak since dropping five straight from 1991-95. With 24 hours to go before kickoff, LSU was only a 4.5-point favorite over USC, whittled down from a 6½-point choice with Vegas oddsmakers when betting lines were released earlier this year.
“It would be nice to start 1-0,” said Brett Borne of Covington, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.
No doubt, though, the Tigers clearly won the pregame festivities.
They started early, in every LSU-related sense of the word. The father and son duo of Tommy and Trey Smith of Broussard were parked on a pair of barstools in the sportsbook at Harrah’s at 9 a.m., each sipping a beer as the day’s first college football games kicked off (you have to love the Pacific time zone).
“At $25 for two” beers, Trey Smith said, “we’re sipping slowly.”
At least the tension of winning the season’s first game was for a day on some other team’s shoulder pads.
Back to the Bellagio fountain, which is fronted every 50 feet or so with large green “no swimming” signs.
LSU fan Ethan Stock of Dallas had no plans to break that local law. He had other obligations.
According to what we will call for now his … ahem … friends, Stock finished last in their football fantasy league last season.
“He had two wins the entire season,” Sam Boutte of Lafayette said.
Stock’s sentence for such football-managing ineptness? He had to stand in front of the Bellagio fountain for four hours, doing a live Instagram show while playing a flutophone (those little plastic flutes they teach kids how to play in school). He wore an LSU jersey, a purple floppy hat — at least his “friends” allowed Stock protection from the blazing Nevada sun — and a sign around his neck that read: “Don’t tip I (stink) at fantasy football.”
I tossed a dollar into his floppy purple hat anyway. The poor guy deserved some sort of reward for spending the afternoon making himself the laughingstock of the Las Vegas Strip.
Stock still got a couple of “Geaux Tigers!” between chuckles as LSU fans, in their legions, strolled past.
I imagine Stock was happy to lose his fantasy football league, and a bit of his pride, if it means LSU can come up with a crucial victory Sunday.