Football Las Vegas Bowl.
Cowboy fans whoop it up in Las VegasBy SALLY ANN SHURMURStar-Tribune Staff Writer
LAS VEGAS -- The streets of Sin City are paved with brown and gold.
There's Ellie Noonan of Rawlins, wrapped in a gold Wyoming knit scarf and brown suede jacket.
And there's Carroll Orrison of Casper, standing next to a portable bar at the Golden Nugget. He's wearing his leather Wyoming jacket and a shirt in "true gold." He disdains the tannish "prairie gold" adopted by his beloved Cowboys in the new millennium.
"I'll never wear the new gold," the 75-year-old beer distributor says. "I will never wear anything but this gold."
Whatever the color, Orrison is just happy to be accompanying his Cowboys to another bowl. He and other Wyoming fans are reveling in the Pokes' first bowl trip in 11 seasons -- which also happens to be Orrison's 11th bowl game with the Cowboys.
"I've been to every bowl we've been in since 1951 in Jacksonville (Fla.)," he says.
Wyoming fans are supporting their Pokes in a big way. They've bought more Las Vegas Bowl tickets than fans of any other school in the past four years.
Earlier this week, fans had bought 7,300 of the 8,000 prepurchased by the university, plus an unknown number bought through other outlets.
Many of the Wyoming fans flew in Tuesday on air charters packed with Cowboy enthusiasts -- including Jeremiah Burridge of Casper.
"We were in the air an hour and 21 minutes," Burridge says. "We only had time to sing 'Cowboy Joe' once. In fact, it took more time on the ground to get here from the airport than we were in the air."
Belinda Knievel of Casper, an elementary teacher at St. Anthony Tri-Parish School, came to Las Vegas with her husband, Ron. It's her first visit.
"I told Ron, 'Let's just do it, let's just go,' " she says.
Ed Ricks of Douglas played football at UW decades ago, when a winning season -- not to mention a bowl game -- was merely a dream. Now he and his wife, Donna, are here with their three children, all of whom are UW students.
"They're loving this," Donna Ricks says.
The Cowboys and most of their fans are housed at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino. Just across the street, the back end of Binion's Horseshoe does a brisk business supplying Wyoming fans with beer.
Forty-four-ounce plastic beer glasses shaped like footballs go for $8. A bartender named Derek offers his opinion about the visiting throng:
"I like them all," he says. "Rodeo, bikers, football, they're all very cool."
(Sally Ann Shurmur, editor of Casper Inside, is rubbing elbows with Wyoming fans at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino this week.)


- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 3:44 PM