Cedar City, Utah – The Thunderbirds mens basketball 🏀 team returns to action today (hopefully) at 5pm MST versus Northern Arizona which is located in picturesque Flagstaff. Cedar City is a beautiful place that sits roughly an even mile in the air and goes by the title Festival City, USA. This title comes from the large number of Annual events that take place in the area which range from theater to farming.

The Big Sky conference runs on what I call flip schedules as the same two schools will be playing a Women’s game today down in Flagstaff. SUU was to have played at home on Thursday but those games were rescheduled due to Covid concerns within the visiting team.

Dixie State University is the home of the Trailblazers located in beautiful St. George, Utah and the folks in the Athletic Department have been more than a little busy.

DSU started out as a Junior College before making the move up to Division 2 and are now in the middle of the Four Year transition period to become a full fledged member of D1. The folks in charge of the Western Athletic Conference invited the school to join the league in all sports except Football as the Trailblazers will remain as an Independent member of the FCS on the gridiron 🏈.

Tonight’s Men’s Hoops game found the Abilene Christian University Wildcats in the visitors lockeroom. A quick look at the over/under line (for the purpose of expectation of play ) had set up some high hopes at 150.

That number of 150 has one thinking about two teams playing the game at an up and down pace but that simply wasn’t the case. Both teams ran a very patient half court offense while playing aggressive man to man defense. For the better part of the game the teams breaking 100 total points was in serious doubt but eventually DSU settled into an offensive groove and played the second half to a 33-33 tie. The crowd was listed at 917 for the 64-50 decision and it should be noted thar while the crowd was small in size the Marketing folks kept them entertained throughout the evening!

Las Vegas was my Summer home 🏡 a couple of years ago which allowed me to watch the Raiders new home park get built from the ground up.

Fast forward to tonight when Booogz and I were able to attend the SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl to watch Arizona State of the Pac-12 take on Wisconsin out of the Big 10. It’s our third time taking in the Vegas Bowl but the first time inside the new Diggs.

Getting to hold the game annually in the Gem 💎 of the Desert 🏜 moved it WAY up the Bowl food chain including trading out the Mountain West Conference for the Big 10 as opposition for the host Pac-12.

The stadium was advertised as one that would have every bell and whistle possible which it does and then Marc Davis added a 90 foot tall torch to pay homage to his Father, Al Davis. Behind the torch is the East end of the park which is all glass allowing the fans to see the Lights of the Vegas Strip. Capacity is listed at 65,000 which includes a large number of Luxury boxes. There are a large number of similarities to the Falcons new park back in Atlanta but having the Strip as a backdrop might be hard for the next Best Thing to match!

Wisconsin has made itself at home here in the first quarter taking a 14-3 lead in the battle of 8-4 squads.

Just a few days after Hawaii had to pull out of its Bowl game in Honolulu, leaving an already arrived Memphis team out in the (not) cold – we have more news regarding the Military Bowl and inaugural Fenway Bowl.

The no-go in Boston comes from the Virginia side of the match-up with SMU and there’s no official word on what happened between Boston College and their opposition in Annapolis.

More updates to follow…

Each year there are few bowl games 🏈 that stick out in my mind that might be harder on folks that others and this year is no exception. The three that come to mind are the Bahamas 🇧🇸 Bowl, Hawaii Bowl and Camellia Bowl.

Going to the Bahamas involves passports so it is the one set of bids that get announced a full week earlier than the others. Happy to say that this year’s contest was played without any major issues.

The reason that going to Honolulu makes the Tough List is that the game is played on Christmas 🎄 Eve and it pretty much guarantees that many a family will be apart on Christmas Day 🎄.

Memphis vs Hawaii was called off late yesterday as Hawaii was / is dealing with numerous Covid issues within the program. The announcement was made within 24 hours so there is no alternative plan to get the game played today.

Now Memphis will try and come up with an alternate plan for getting back to Campus in hopes of making the best of the Holidays.

The third of the 3 is the Camellia Bowl 🥣 being played on Christmas 🎄 Day in Montgomery, Alabama. While there’s not the 6 hour flight to get to the game it’s the one actually getting played on Christmas Day. Here’s hoping that both Georgia State and Ball State stay healthy enough to play.