Las Vegas hosting Big 12 Media Days for first time

LAS VEGAS — On a whim Sunday afternoon, 24 hours before I’d be landing in Las Vegas, I flipped open the weather app on my iPhone to check out the desert temperatures. The number was stunning: 117 degrees.

Little did I know. Sunday went on to reach 120 degrees in Las Vegas, a record high for a city known for its blast-furnace Julys. And Monday, when we landed at Harry Reid International Airport, the temperature was 113 and got up to 114.

Tuesday and Wednesday, the projected high is 115, about 13 degrees above normal. After 120 on Sunday, we feel fortunate to be dealt a 115. I go 63 years avoiding Las Vegas, and my Vegas debut coincides with the vaunted heat going into overdrive. Good thing the Hoover Dam is close by; Vegas needs all the electricity it can get.

Walking out of the airport Monday, the heat hits you like a fiery force field. I'm thankful the humidity was only 13 percent.

Welcome to Big 12 Football Media Days. I don’t think this is what commissioner Brett Yormark had in mind when he wanted to make the Big 12 a hot conference. Going to Vegas is vintage Yormark, whose marketing touch has become a hallmark of the Big 12’s survival/revival mode, after OU and Texas pledged to the Southeastern Conference.

For those of us making our Vegas debut, the bright lights and the casinos and the shows and even the football could take a backseat to the heat. I mean, 118 degrees? In a city with concrete everywhere? Are you kidding me?

As a point of reference, the state of Oklahoma record high temperature is 120 degrees, in 1936 in Altus. Who remembers that heat wave?

Of course, the Dust Bowl and 21st-century Las Vegas have little else in common.

My only Vegas experience, outside of the airport, was renting a car back in 2010 after my connecting flight was delayed, so I drove the 300 miles down to Greater Phoenix for an OSU women’s basketball game in the NCAA Tournament.

So the Vegas Strip. Classic downtown. The shows, the casinos, the lights, the sports. Never seen any of them live. And I won’t see all of them during these three days. But I’ll at least have a new perspective of Sin City, or Sun City, as it seems to be.

Clark County, which roughly is the Las Vegas Valley and serves as Metro Vegas, has an estimated population of 2.33 million, which means it has more than tripled in size since 1990 (740,000).

Give Vegas credit. It makes things easy on tourists, of which there were 40.8 million in 2023, in the neighborhood of the record 42.9 million back in 2016. The airport is just a couple of miles from the Las Vegas Strip, where the famed casinos and resorts sit.

The Big 12 set the Bellagio as the media hotel this week, but we’re staying at the Excalibur, because we got a better room rate, $98 per night. And the Excalibur doesn’t skimp on air-conditioning: my room was set at 62 degrees when I entered.

The Excalibur is a little kitschy, with its medieval-castle theme, and the hotel rooms seem quite dated. But as they say, nobody comes to Vegas to stay in their room.

The 28-story Excalibur boasts 3,981 rooms. You read that right. When the hotel opened in 1990, it had 4,032 rooms, making it the world’s largest. Three years later, the MGM Grand opened with even more rooms.

Today, the Venetian is the largest hotel in Vegas and the second-largest in the world (behind only the First World Hotel in Malaysia), with 7,115 rooms. The Excalibur now is the seventh-biggest hotel in Vegas.

A hotel this big has several entrances, and our Uber driver dropped us off in front of the Royal Tower, which meant we had to walk through the casino to check into the hotel. That’s not by accident, of course.

I’m no casino veteran, but the Excalibur gambling hall looked exactly how I would picture a Vegas casino. Machines everywhere, flashing all kinds of colors, maybe a third occupied but people milling around everywhere, including lots of families. I don’t know why anyone would bring kids or even teenagers to Vegas, but maybe I’m missing something.

I’ve never been tempted by the gambling bug, except for my going-away party from the Norman Transcript at Remington Park in Oklahoma City 33 years ago. Someone taught me how to play the ponies, I won $20 and I figured I’d better stay away after that. Besides, all these massive casinos aren’t being built by speculators hoping the slot machines go their way.

I’ve wondered how Nevada’s allure to gamblers would continue, with so many states, like Oklahoma, opening to gaming, but it’s clear that Vegas knows what it’s doing in attracting visitors. The proliferation of high-profile shows and attractions keeps people coming. The Excalibur, considered one of the budget resorts, contributes by hosting Thunder from Down Under, the longest-running male striptease show in Vegas, and Tournament of Kings, a medieval-themed show with sword fights and jousting, which is the longest-running dinner show on the Strip. Vegas’ answer to the Dixie Stampede.

But this is a business trip; I’ll have time for dinner and not much else. And for dinner Monday, Tulsa World colleagues Tyler Waldrep and Ashton Slaughter joined me in hooking up with a local, former World photographer Ian Maule.

Ian’s been out here in Vegas about a year, shooting all kinds of events for Getty Images and The Associated Press and ESPN. Something’s always going on in Vegas, and Ian’s the man to shoot it. He’s also one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, and I’m bummed we didn’t get to work together.

But it was great seeing Ian. He recommended a small Mexican joint, Milpa, a few miles west of downtown. Ian says Vegas is a great food town, and that makes sense to me. I had a shrimp bowl that was quite tasty, and we had a great time catching up.

Then it was back to the Excalibur. I assume many of the Big 12 media hit the casinos Monday night, but not me. In this land of temperatures that are 120 degrees outdoors and 62 degrees indoors, I’ve got work to do.