TAKE FIVE: LAS VEGAS BOWL

At a few minutes past five on a chilly Thursday afternoon, a couple of Air Force fighter jets screamed through Sam Boyd Stadium's airspace as mass quantities of fireworks exploded over the scoreboard in their wake.

Duck season officially was under way in Southern Nevada.

Apparently, Oregon's season-opening four-game winning streak was not all it was quacked up to be. No. 19 Brigham Young capped its best season since 1991 by blasting the feathers off the Ducks 38-8 in front of a stadium-record crowd of 44,615.

John Beck passed for 375 yards and two touchdowns while Most Valuable Player Jonny Harline, the Cougars' tight end with hands like peach baskets, caught nine passes for 181 yards as BYU finished an 11-2 season by winning its 10th consecutive game and first bowl game since 1996.

"I try not to count how many yards and catches I have," Harline said after thousands of BYU fans had rushed the field in the manner of Craig Breedlove racing across the Salt Flats. "I don't know what to expect. You never know when the ball is coming your way."

That, apparently, is something he shares with the Oregon secondary.

With apologies to Donald, Daisy, Daffy, Cold, Howard The and any other Duck who didn't cover, here's a look back at Las Vegas Bowl XV.

1. The crowd

Apparently, Provo, Utah, was closed Thursday night because seemingly everybody who lives there was at Sam Boyd Stadium. The crowd of 44,615 was the largest to witness a team sporting event in Nevada history, surpassing the stadium record of 42,075, last year's Las Vegas Bowl turnout of 40,053 and the 38,415 UNLV boosters who jammed the Rebels' basketball locker room in Tucson during the 1991 Far West regional.

Portable grandstands were set up beyond both end zones to accommodate the surplus of blue-clad Cougar backers and to give Wisconsin fans, who had set the stadium record in 2002 (with an a small assist from the UNLV faithless) something to shoot for next fall when the sausage runs out.

2. Grin and beer it

The beer vendors I talked to say they can't wait for Wisconsin to get here.

Or for Wyoming to return in 2008.

While BYU leads the Mountain West Conference in a lot of categories, drinking suds isn't one of them.

Midway through the first quarter, three Oregon fans were spotted puffing on cigarettes and inhaling Bud Light under the pie section of end zone seats.

One said he grew up in Klamath Falls and was the "biggest Ducks fan in the world."

Only when he said "biggest" it came out "big-esh."

When I asked how many beers he had had, he hiccupped and said, "12 o'clock."

3. Tickets, everyone

With portable traffic boards flashing, "LAS VEGAS BOWL PARKING KEEP LEFT, EVENT SOLD OUT," ticket scalpers were plotting strategy at the Jack in the Box on the corner of Russell Road and Boulder Highway as early as 11 a.m., a full six hours before kickoff.

"That's when you know you have arrived, when they're scalping tickets and they're selling them on eBay," said Tina Kunzer-Murphy, the Las Vegas Bowl's executive director, as fans continued to file into the stadium midway through the first quarter.

But the scalpers I passed on Russell weren't exactly wielding tomahawks.

"Buyers' or sellers' market?" I called to one.

He reached into his back pocket and made a fan with about a dozen tickets.

Buyers', I guess.

4. Uniform behavior

Although the Oregon offense - and for that matter, its defense - wasn't much of a mystery Thursday, which of its 700 or so uniform combinations it would come out in was.

The Ducks wore black shirts with green sleeves, which was sort of appropriate for the holiday season. What uniforms were these? They had little metallic slashes on the shoulders, giving the jerseys an industrial look, like those stores in the mall that sell skateboards.

For the first time, Oregon wore virtually unadorned chartreuse-colored helmets. Save for the chin straps, they looked identical to those big glass lawn ornaments you see out in the suburbs.

5. The proud (grand) papa

That would have been longtime Sam Boyd Stadium and Thomas & Mack Center public address announcer Dick Calvert, whose grandson, Ryan Mattice, is a sophomore backup wide receiver at Oregon.

Mattice's mother is Calvert's oldest daughter, Jennifer.

One of Calvert's trademark phrases during Rebels basketball games is "Three-point goal" followed by the player's name. So I asked at halftime if his grandson were to get in the game and catch a 2-point conversion pass would he say, "Two-point catch. Ryan Mattice," or something similar.

"No, I'll play it down the middle," he said.

And he almost got the chance. Mattice was the intended receiver on a long pass to the end zone on the game's final play, but the ball sailed over his head.

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