Fans feel fever of March Madness

Paul Howard wants you to know his betting tickets are for sale. The ones with Siena and Texas A&M and Virginia Commonwealth winning the NCAA Tournament.

The ones he received 1,000-to-1 odds on plays between $20 and $40.

"I don't have enough money to hedge those bets if any of them make the Elite Eight or further," said Howard, a former sports radio talk show host on ESPN (1100 AM). "I had a job when I did this."

Welcome to the first two rounds of March Madness at the South Point, where no bet is bizarre enough, nothing generates loud cheering like the next favorite covering a spread, Brigham Young is thoroughly mocked for losing another first-round game and where they might have held the longest free-throw shooting contest in history Thursday.

More than anything, the tournament's opening week in Las Vegas is identified by the C-word. Camaraderie.

The showroom table had enough seats for eight bodies and in its chairs sat men from Atlanta and California and Indiana and Ohio and New York and Illinois and Minneapolis.

And from those states you had fans of Duke and Xavier and Minnesota and Dayton and ... College of New Jersey?

"I don't think they made it this year," Mike Kalashian told his friend with a face straighter than any playing poker in other spots on the property.

This tournament in this town is defined by a group like the one Kalashian sat amongst, all current or former Hewlett Packard employees who gathered in memory of a friend who passed away in October and who 15 years ago began the March tradition in Reno.

It is when a No. 15 seed like Cal State Northridge scares a giant like Memphis to death and makes a sports book director like the South Point's Bert Osborne a happy man ... at least until the evening session of games.

It is Greg Lanthier, the coach of Porterville (Calif.) College, who has come to Las Vegas for 20 years to watch with a collection of friends that over time has swollen to near 40 at different sports books up and down the Strip.

"We really started to come because back then, you could only see the one crappy game CBS decided to put on," Lanthier said. "Here, you can see every minute of every game. It's the big escape."

For the past 13 years, I spent this portion of the tournament writing from some NCAA regional across the country, attending news conferences and focusing solely on those teams at the site, never able until now to do what so many promised was the definitive way to view the spectacle.

The lounge near the South Point sports book began filling up at 4:30 a.m. and by the time the day's first game tipped off less than five hours later, both sides of a massive banquet room on the second level was busy with those making bets and ordering drinks and saving tables and propping up minitournament boards with their favorite teams listed.

BYU was the choice of at least three names on one board, meaning those people have obviously not seen the tournament in 16 years, which is the last time the Cougars won a game in it.

"I love it," Howard said. "BYU walks around like it's North Carolina and (they) haven't won since 1993. Win a game."

In one corner of the room stood two baskets and a bracket for a free-throw shooting contest.

Where have you gone, Ed O'Bannon?

Here. At the South Point. The former UCLA star and now Las Vegas resident spent the day chatting with fans and awaiting to challenge the winner who emerged from four rounds of shooting. O'Bannon might still be waiting.

It was a surreal scene. Long chunks of time would pass where the only real commotion would be the rush to bet halftime odds. It wasn't a loud atmosphere, until games wound down and point spreads came into play and people like Howard began to count the $60,000 they would collect when Siena won it all.

This tournament in this town is this: Three buddies (one from New York, one from Los Angeles, one from Minneapolis) sitting among several empty beer bottles and wearing one of the more classic T-shirts you will find.

On the front, it read "Good coaches win." On the back, "Good coaches cover" in the middle of a dollar sign. It might be worth a month's salary to see Lon Kruger wear one for five minutes.

"We saw the shirts here last year and found them on eBay," Scott Cassman said. "I had a deadline (for getting engaged) as December, but because of March Madness, I extended it to June. It's just not the right time of year."

Said his friend, Mike Sutton, who is getting married in October: "I wasn't planning on coming with having to pay for a wedding, but I got a cheap flight out here from New York. I'll be back, for sure. Absolutely."

Let's repeat that. He's getting married in October.

Poor kid. It's his last trip here for the madness and he doesn't even realize it.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.