The pre-Christmas bowl games as destinations are all a bit inconvenient when compared to Las Vegas. Hawai'i, while beautiful, is expensive, very far away, and would require the move of at least your immediate family for the holiday because you have to commit to spending Christmas there. As beguiling as San Diego can be, it's still not loaded with casinos, booze, and gout-inducing buffets. St. Petersburg has Sunken Gardens and affordable prosthetic limbs for sale at a number of very interesting businesses.
So if you had to pick one bowl to go to, the Las Vegas Bowl knows it has the advantage, and that's why they can get away with playing it at Sam Boyd Stadium, a spot that qualifies as half a respectable Texas high school stadium with a vantage point at the end of an invisible wind tunnel that sits somewhere above the north endzone.
Ryan and Luke join us to pitch the post-apocalyptic action film Mad Mex, predict Tom Rinaldi's weepy Vegas human interest piece, and to make bold predictions about Dennis Erickson's short but spectacular career as a stuntman. Yes, that is an unedited cameo by Magnus around the 9:00 mark with him chirping "BOOK! BOOK!" in the back. We left it in because he is cute, and we are terrible sound editors recording 35 podcasts around a full holiday travel schedule.
Listen here, or in the embeddable player below.