Sunday afternoon, sitting through my 16^th hour of watching football in the Mandalay Bay sportsbook my throat started to get scratchy. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling the onset of swine flu, a minor cold or the aftereffects of sleeping 5 hours a night and inhaling approximately 4,279 cigarettes worth of second hand smoke since arriving on Friday.

After a rest day on Monday, I awoke yesterday and still felt like I had been beaten about the head all weekend by Manny Pacquiao. No matter what the biological reason for this feeling – it can only be known as one thing – the Vegas Flu.

As a wise woman once said – back to life, back to reality. It is hard to come back from Vegas. After spending roughly 60 straight hours focused solely on either making money or not losing any more money while never once actually seeing the daylight, coming back to work can be a serious letdown.

As Shadow said in an email yesterday: “I miss Vegas. And Manute Bol is still F*ing purple” (an inside joke and what I am absolutely getting Bill Simmons to sign in my copy of The Book of Basketball on Friday). Add in the aftereffects of no sleep, a horrendous diet, too much alcohol and the steady stream of second-hand smoke and you invariably feel wiped out physically and mentally.

 But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have a blast while there. Therefore below I present the highlights of our trip to Vegas. Turner and Shadow can add anything I may have missed as when I went back last night to find some of the notes I scribbled on a hotel notepad I couldn’t find them.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a trip to Vegas if you didn’t have at least one casualty. On to The Hierarchy of Hate Vegas Road Trip – Fall ’09 edition.

As a frequent flyer I have many pet peeves related to travel – for example: people getting on planes and bringing absolutely nothing to do (You know for a fact you are sitting in a chair for the next two hours, a portion of which you can’t even use electronics, and you bring nothing to do? That is quite a monument to your lack of intelligence and foresight – spend 50 cents and buy a paper!) – but flying to Vegas is a unique experience. Is there any other flight more full of people with limited flying experience than a trip to Vegas? Ok, maybe a flight to Orlando but that is it. All of this is a long way of saying that when the guys sitting next to Turner and I showed up in matching Hawaiian shirts, we shouldn’t have been surprised.

Our trip started on Friday with lunch at Tacos and Tequila where we learned that ‘no two tacos are the same’. It was then followed by our blackjack dealer Kathleen telling us that one of her rules of play is to ‘whack it till it’s hard’. Let’s just say that Vegas has never met a double-entendre it didn’t like.

Speaking of Kathleen, if you ever wondered what Turner is like to gamble with, I will just say this. After Turner lost his stack to Kathleen and wandered off, she actually asked Shadow and I to buy him dinner. Yes, a Vegas dealer was concerned about Turner after she took his money. This either speaks to his incredible charm or devastation upon losing money. I will leave it to you to decide which.

Kathleen also asked us if we knew about the strippermobile. Umm…no we do not, can you elaborate? Apparently there was a story running around town about a truck like vehicle with a see-through back that enclosed two strippers – acting as an ad for a strip joint. Upon coming home, one quick Google search confirmed the story. Which begs the question – how does the club staff the truck? Do they pick their 2 best looking women? If so, are the women happy to miss out on an evening’s tips? Do people show up disappointed by the other ladies? So many questions.

During our last trip to Vegas, whenever I was in a cold streak of hands I would change up my bet – so if at a $10 table, I would throw $15 or $20 for a hand or two to change the momentum. This trip we christened this move the Sproles – after back-up Chargers running back Darren Sproles. This had lots of benefits as we could confidently announce “I’m going Sproles”, to the delight of the other two and the confusion of everyone else at the table. There are also the variations. A move to a $25 chip became the Jacob Hester. When I went to an almost exclusive $15 betting strategy at a $10 table, I told Turner I had ‘benched LT’. If this can become a standard phrase and philosophy I consider my work here done.

On second thought though maybe we should have labeled this the Chester Taylor. Then when we leave a table where we are doing poorly and try our luck at a new table we could say we are pulling a Favre.

Friday night we walked over to the MGM Grand to watch the Nuggets / Lakers game (which required crossing a pedestrian bridge over the strip). I am 94% convinced Shadow only wanted to go to MGM Grand to try and catch sight of the strippermobile while walking over the Strip.

We then went up the road to the Hooters casino. I like to believe we did this only as a sociological experiment. Hooters is like….well a Hooters with gambling tables. It is fascinating to see the demographic change from Mandalay and MGM Grand to Hooters. We went from a combination of moneyed older folks, a smattering of tourists and LA club kids to a fraternity house.

At Hooters, Shadow and sat at a single deck blackjack table where our dealer was named Ashli – yes with an I.  I put the over/under on the chance she dots that I with a heart at 100%. I would take the over.

The majority of the weekend was spent losing money in the sportsbook. This was our first time trying to watch a whole slate of games at a sportsbook and I would like to make a suggestion for any virgins planning a Vegas football weekend. Trying to watch approximately 10 games is overwhelming. Pick one game and focus on it. Only change your attention during commercials. Trying to track all of the actions on all the screens will leave not seeing any of it.

It wouldn’t be a post without my, at least briefly, discussing FSU. They were an early game on Saturday (starting at an ungodly 9 am Vegas time) and on Friday I couldn’t tell Turner and Shadow enough that picking Wake to beat FSU was a lock on par with my correct pick of Nuggets over Lakers. I mean – the pathetic FSU defense and a freshman QB getting his first start on the road versus a team that had beaten FSU three straight years? It was a gimme right? Oh well, I have never been happier to be completely wrong about a game. Maybe it takes me laying money against FSU for them to come through. If this is true, I should get back to Vegas to put some money on the Gators before the FSU/UF game in a couple weeks. Anyone want to donate to the cause?

Speaking of UF, my other highlight of Saturday was cheering and betting against them. Although after South Carolina came out with the core values of the military in place of names and a small section of camo on their jerseys  in honor of Veteran’s Day – how could anyone cheer against them? Why doesn’t Fox News get on this – spend a little less time worried about where Obama was born because there is nothing more unpatriotic than cheering for UF.

While I was enjoying winning money against UF, Shadow was dying a slow death for the Iowa/ Ohio State Rose Bowl playoff game. To get so close with an untested freshman QB in the Shoe was a great testament to Iowa. Though that didn’t stop Shadow from taking a little walkabout after the disappointing OT was completed. I can’t blame him. My team had won and even I was going cross-eyed after watching all of those screens for at least eight hours. Losing money the whole time.

But whenever we started feeling guilty about the money we were losing we only had to remember the kid that dropped $4000 at a blackjack table and another guy who stood in front of Turner dropped $5000 on the Broncos.

If I have the Vegas Flu this week, those guys must have the Vegas Plague.

It is a Thursday morning at PFB HQ. I arrived home from the City by the Bay late last night and in less than 24 hours we will be taking the official THH road trip to Las Vegas. It is hard to hate much when you are staring right at 3 days of the blackjack tables and sports book in Mandalay Bay. Other than unfriendly dealers of course.

What is it about a pending trip to Vegas that consumes your life? I went to Europe a couple months ago but did I obsess about all things European before going? Did I watch subtitled French art films, eat cheese and drink wine? Did I eat sausage and beer at every meal until the only thing keeping beer from seeping out every pore of my body was that the pores were clogged with pork fat? No, I didn’t. At least no more than usual.

Yet, with a trip to Vegas on the horizon, I am suddenly consumed with gambling. Whether it is innocent sport-picking games on espn.com, watching poker on TV or playing my little handheld blackjack game, it has been all- gambling, all-the-time for me this week. Why is that? I know I am going to lose large amounts of money, so it isn’t like I think all of this work will give me some sort of edge.

All of this makes we wonder if I have wee-bit of a gambling problem. But I don’t think I do for two reasons. First, is that I am too cheap to lose a ton of money. The second is that I have convinced myself that I only really like gambling as a way to stroke the competitiveness that is no longer a daily part of my life as it was back in my younger days. Now, that I am evolving into a decrepit old man that groans when he stands up and sighs when he sits down, I need some competition to keep me going. Demonstrating my superior knowledge through making money is the perfect avenue for that.

What do they say? Admitting you have a problem is the first step? Well, I won’t be taking that step until at least Monday.  

Turner: I learned a valuable lesson this past week… The more you look forward to something, the more disappointed you will be.  That happened as the Shadow and I made a road trip to Lincoln to watch my beloved Sooners take on the Huskers.  My anticipation had been building for the past 4 months for this game.  It had been a dream of mine since I was a kid to go to Lincoln and even though the rivalry (or greatness of the teams) isn’t the same, it brought back so many great memories that caused me to love college football.   I Highly recommend everyone make it to Lincoln for a game, and if you do, you must attend Sidetracks, a local bar full of Huskers and a live band spending the entire time berating the other team with some good ol’ fashioned humor and jesting.  That was pretty much the highlight of the weekend…..

From there the Shadow and I woke up and worked out (not together for either item) and made our way to a local bar for the Iowa game.  I won’t go into any details on that painful experience but to watch a dear friend suffer in misery but try to maintain a positive attitude was not enjoyable.   We then went there and as SD recapped, did a bit of tailgating, beer drinking (me, not the Shadow), and watching pretty much all 80,000 people come up to the Shadow (who was wearing his Iowa Shirt and Hat) and say “Hey man, did you see the Iowa game today” or “Hey man, did Iowa pull it out” or “Hey man, you do know that you lost to Northwestern, right”.  At any rate, the Shadow handled himself much better than I would have, he simply smiled (showing his sharp pointy hawkeye teeth) and said “yep”.   No anger, nothing… I was proud to be near a man (not that near) that had such composure. 

The roles reversed as the University of Oklahoma apparently left their entire football team in Norman (or they stayed at Sidetracks much too long).  To watch your team march past the 50 so many times and yet never score was painful.  But like the Shadow, I never raised my voice or lost my cool (thanks mostly to the 8 year old boy sitting in front of us).  I simply accepted the fact that this season sucks and I drove 8 hours through smelly, flat-land to watch my team lay a gigantic egg.  After the game, the Shadow and I simply walked back to the car with everyone we know asking the same three questions to me that they were asking the Shadow early (except insert “crappy a$$ Sooners” in for “Iowa”).  We held our heads high knowing that it isn’t the end of the world.

Why?  Well of course is because as bad as last weekend was, this weekend will be 100,000,000 times better.  In 48 hours, we’ll be in Vegas and I’m feeling it, starting with my first ever poker tournament on Friday night.  Karma will turn and by the end of the weekend, you will be comparing the names of Turner, SD, and The Shadow to those of famous Vegas lore.  Hopefully the stories will be so deep that we’ll get 2 or three posting out of it next week.  So I bid adieu to Lincoln and welcome the bright lights of Sin City, what a week.

Shadow: The dream is over.  Jimmy Vandenberg’s debut reminded me of the Tommy “Turnover” Maddox era for my Broncos.  To be fair, it was his first extended action, but, dammit……it was Northwestern!  I would like to think we have enough talent to still beat Northwestern even without QB1 and RB1 and RB2.  Sad.  And this was after the Broncos had already succumbed to their first defeat, and have since added on another, and the offense looks atrocious.  The Autumn of the Shadow has now turned into The Fall of the Shadow’s Football Teams.  I am trying hard to focus on this THH, but it is difficult. 

 Last weekend started so promising.  Road trip with Turner to Lincoln for the big Nebraska-OU showdown.  Friday night stop at “Sidetracks”, a local Lincoln joint only open on home game weekends.  Not much talent in the room, although there was plenty on the stage as the Sidetracks Band revved up the crowd by taking well known tunes and replacing the lyrics to either glorify the Huskers or denounce the Sooners, including a rather scathing rendition of Boomer Sooner, where the band went ahead and added on a few verses since the song kind of lacks verbosity.  The other highlight from Sidetracks was that the little old lady leading the band would read anything the crowd would write on cocktail napkins and handed to her.  Let’s just say I heard anatomical references and various descriptions of “coupling” that would have made a sailor blush.  And it was most incongruous to hear it coming out of someone who could be my grandma. 

 Since the big game wasn’t until 7 PM we had plenty of time to get up, watch the Iowa game, and tailgate with the Local Lincolnites.  As everyone knows by now, the day started shitty with Iowa losing their starting quarterback and then their first game.  I had to absorb some good natured ribbing from the locals.  Many Nebraskan fans seemed overjoyed that Iowa had lost.  I took most of it with stoic grace, but one annoying fan that just couldn’t let it go and kept yelling at me that Iowa lost (as if someone walking through Lincoln with a Hawkeye shirt and hat on would not know what had occurred), so I kindly reminded him that Nebraska lost to the J.V. team from the state of Iowa.  They didn’t like this.

 We also got to tailgate with the CEO of our company.  He was really down to earth, and eats Fritos right out of the bag like the rest of us.  No bean dip though.  And he kind of thought I was just a friend of Turner’s rather than realizing that I work for him as well, and in fact spend most of my time making Turner look good…which is a tough job…I probably need a raise.  By the time we got into the luxury suite, and looked out upon the fabled “Sea of Red” it was a pretty amazing site.  I had never been to any big time college games, and it was truly an experience.  Turner’s Holieway jersey ensured we would be showered with wisecracks all game, especially with the game itself a true snoozer.  I am pretty sure both offensive coordinators should have been fired on the spot.

 So we ended the day with a loss for each of our team’s, including SuperDave’s Seminoles, and still had to face the 7 hour drive back to Denver.  If anyone asks me if I would ever do this again, I can answer quite honestly…….Damn Right I would!  Even with the losses, it was a hell of a lot of fun, and a perfect warm-up for the debauchery that will occur this weekend in Las Vegas.

College:

Northwestern @ Illinois

SD: Our theme this week is intrastate rivals – because nothing is harder than picking between two teams in the same state you couldn’t care less about. Our first match-up is the old classic state school v. uppity, smart kid private school (see also: UNC/Duke, Cal/Stanford). Well I am state schooler through and through – from my parents to my collegiate experience to my outlook on life (fun before social standing). So in honor of all those kids out there that weren’t born with a trust fund and didn’t spend their entire high school career only doing what looked best on their college application, I’m cheering for the Illini. Take that silver spoon and shove it Wildcats.

Turner: 1 giant bag of poop to SD for this one.  This is just rubbing it in the Shadow’s wounds.   Under normal circumstances, I’d always go with NW because of their academics and purple but because of the heartbreak they caused my friend (or should I say “my employee” because the Shadow always introduces me as “his boss” versus “his friend” which completely pisses me off every time), I have to go with the Illini.  They ruined last Saturday, likely ruined the Rose Bowl dreams, and even potentially ruined the big game on Saturday versus OSU by breaking Stanzi’s leg.  You might be smart but you weren’t considerate NW.

Shadow: F*cking Northwestern.

Idaho @ Boise State

SD: One of these is the most overrated team in college football since the 2007 Hawaii Rainbow Warriors and set the tone for my college fantasy season by taunting and (most likely) racially slurring my first round draft pick to that point that he sucker-punched a dude, tried to pull a Ron Artest on the crowd and got dismissed for the season (only to be re-instated this week, the first week of my fantasy league playoffs – for which I didn’t qualify thanks to the aforementioned losing of my first round pick in the first game of the entire year. Awesome). The other team is based in Moscow and is nicknamed the Vandals. There isn’t much to like about a state best known for its militias and Senators that like anonymous gay sex in airport bathrooms but aren’t gay, but a city named Moscow and a team named Vandals is one of them. Please Vandals, save the college football world from suffering through this BSU team getting shellacked in an undeserved BCS bowl.  

Turner: Great match up here and having been in Idaho twice in the last month, the entire state is gearing up for this game.  Mark Schlereth of Bronco fame is an Idaho alum and has been talking the Vandals up for the past three weeks on ESPN.  I’m going to have jump on the Vandal bandwagon on this one only due to the fact that BSU has been whining about how great they are when they really aren’t.  They need to go down now so we can stop listening to them think they deserve to be on the big stage.  I don’t mind a TCU or even a Cincy but Boise has done absolutely nothing to impress me over the last month (ok – since Oregon) so I just want the smurfs to be quiet for a while so we can focus on the future of Idaho football.

Shadow: Congrats Idaho!  You get my vote.  Boise State- if you are wondering why I hate you, you can thank Eric Weaver who works for 5280 Solutions right down the road from your Smurf Turfed stadium.  His obnoxiousness about why if Boise State runs the table next year they will definitely be in the national title game made me start to feel intense hatred for all things Boise State. 

NFL:

Tampa Bay @ Miami

SD: The battle of the sunshine state.  I have never cheered much for the Dolphins, mostly because I had a long-running Marino vs. Elway debate with my huge Dolphin friend Doug. Actually I should say ‘have’ not ‘had’ because the debate still rages to this day – a full decade after Elway proved without a doubt that he was the better quarterback. Doug is just a little slow. Anyway, with that I would lean toward the Bucs – but don’t think I haven’t forgotten what they did to the incomparable Derrick Brooks this offseason and don’t think I haven’t immensely enjoyed every single point scored on this inept team. If Jay Cutler weren’t in the league, Raheen Morris might be the most hated NFL individual around PFB HQ these days. But, even my cheering for the Dolphins doesn’t change how much better Elway was than Marino.

Turner: Tampa Bay is on my sh**-list right now.   Why?  Because I was there a few weeks ago and wanted a tag-along (you know those peanut butter girl scout cookies) blizzard from Dairy Queen.  First off there is only 1 DQ in the entire city which blows my mind since you can find a wings place and a Waffle House on every corner.  And that 1 DQ didn’t carry the Tag-along brand of blizzard because “they aren’t very popular”.  I’m sorry, who just said that to me?  It was ridiculous that the Thin Mint or Samoa would be better in a blizzard than a tag-along…… I get back to Denver and within 24 hours, the Shadow has one on my desk.  That is service and quality that I expect from a city.  One that obviously that is something I can’t expect from Tampa Bay.  While I don’t know if Miami offers the tag-along, they can offer me a Cuban (sandwich or Cigar) and South Beach.

Shadow: Flowers……..Plumber……….Candygram.  How can you root against a team that plays in Landshark Stadium?  Go Dolphins.

[Editor Note: While that is a fantastic reference by the Shadow, no reader under the age of 30 is going to understand it – so let me just add  this]

Atlanta @ Carolina

SD: So, they aren’t in the same state – sue me. I can only work with what the NFL schedule makers gave me. But they are pretty close, especially when you factor in the Panther intentionally going with ‘Carolina’ rather than ‘North Carolina’ where they are actually located in the hopes of confusing South Carlinians into cheering for them as well. Which, given these are the people who believed that McCain had an illegitimate bi-racial daughter in 2000 and therefore inflicted 8 years of Dubya on us, is a reasonable assumption. Contrast this with the Falcons, who joined the league back in the days when the only reasonable name being the city where you are located (other than the greedy Patriots who preemptively claimed an entire region for themselves). It is almost a giant ‘F-you’ to the rest of Georgia. Basically saying, we don’t want your kind cheering for us. Judging by the number of empty seats at a typical Falcon game, this plan was a great success. But I like the elitism of going with the city name, so for that I am cheering on the Falcons in this one.

Turner: It annoys me that cities that generally have good weather have stadiums that are solely indoors.   For that reason, Atlanta needs to go down this week.  I use to hate them because of Vick but now I’ve moved on and can find other reasons and this week it is this one.  I like Jake Dehlomme (as my 5^th string starter in fantasy) so I hope they prevail.

Shadow: Seeing as it is Veteran’s Day, I will be rooting for the Air Force Fighting Falcons!  What?  Huh?  It’s the Atlanta Falcons?  Oh well, whatever.  Close enough.