It’s 3:30 p.m. on Friday and I'm in a rackety, crowded bus hurtling through the retina-drying heat of the Nevada desert, seated next to a pink flamingo. The flamingo is sipping a bottle of Amstel light. Peering out the window, one half-expects to see two wild-eyed men—one wearing a white bucket hat and yellow-tinted sunglasses—pass in a red Chevrolet Caprice convertible.

The bus pulls into the sprawling asphalt sea buffering Sam Boyd Stadium, the horseshoe-shaped home of UNLV football, located twenty minutes east of the Vegas strip. The flamingo—actually a pixieish girl in costume with a thick Kiwi accent—stands and twists sideways in order to shimmy to the front, catching up with two other flamingos ahead of her. Outside, a cacophonous horde of revelers are entrenched at the stadium’s main entrance. Spangled throughout this crowd are girls dressed as jungle creatures, cops in speedos, oafish dudes in frilly tutus, and a fair number of guys wearing suits cut from their nation’s flags.

I have arrived at the largest annual international sporting event in the United States—the Las Vegas Sevens—and this just might be the only part of town where all bets are off.

Widely regarded as one of the fastest and most fan-friendly sports in the Milky Way Galaxy, Sevens is a blinding-fast variation of traditional rugby, a ferociously-paced showcase of sprinting, passing, and tackling for fourteen breathtaking minutes. The action never stops and therefore each game unfolds like a self-contained, 14-minute highlight reel.

(Hey, hear about the rugby player who ruptured one of his testicles duirng a match and needed to have it surgically removed? We've got the details here, including how Your Balls Are Tougher Than You Think.)

The Vegas Sevens tourney is one of nine stops in the HSBC Rugby Sevens World Series—a year-long global competition among the top sixteen sides in the world, including the U.S., which has emerged as an unexpected contender this year.

According to Jeff McDowell, the Vegas tournament’s EVP and all-around ambassador, this year’s tournament occupies a next level tier of vitality, explaining, “Starting in 2016, Rugby Sevens will become the world’s newest Olympic sport. This year’s HSBC Sevens World Series serves as an Olympic qualifying event, so the stakes are high.”

Shortly after four o’clock, a pylon-shouldered Portuguese man bombing down field is folded in half by an eye-watering hit from a stocky dreadlocked South African. The stadium erupts. The games are officially underway and the Blitzbokke—the defending champion South Africans—quickly blank an overmatched Portugal, 19-0.

Just like that, in less time than Tiger Woods takes between shots, the first match goes into the books. This will be the pace for the next three days—a relentless stream of one game after another, with only a few minutes between each.

The first two teams are barely off the pitch when the bludgeoning riffage of Metallica explodes from the PA, a siege of fireworks paints the rusted desert skies, and the USA Eagles storm onto the field beside their first opponents, Japan.

While team USA has fared reasonably well in the previous tournament stops, they have yet to offer a sustained threat to the nations who historically dominate this game—South Africa, Fiji, and New Zealand. By the ten minute mark of the USA’s first match, however, the Eagles have pasted 38 points onto a hapless Japan, eventually winning 52-12.

To compete at this level, players must develop an otherworldly level of cardio fitness, the physical endurance to both administer and absorb hits of pant-shitting ferocity and a preternatural sixth sense for executing Globetrotter-esque passes for two seven-minute halves.

San Diego’s Matt Hawkins, the former USA Sevens coach, captain and one of the team’s all-time leading scorers, explains, “In a Sevens game, the field is so big and there are so few players on the field that it’s all under a microscope because you don’t have a safety net. If you make a mistake, that’s it—you don’t have additional players to cover you. It’s a much more high pressure situation than any other sport.”

On Saturday morning, a mind-blowing cavalcade of players and fans have gathered in a warren of pitches just outside of the stadium. In addition to the international competition inside the stadium, nearly 5000 other players will compete in a network of other tournaments on these fields, including high school championships, club level tournaments, and even a few “old boys” matches.

NBC, NBCSN, and Universal Sports have encamped on the media floor, where they will broadcast a record 16 hours of live television coverage, with the tournament’s international feed expected to reach over 390 million homes in 121 countries. Once an obscure, roguish sport played only by expats with funny brogues, rugby continues to enjoy comet-like momentum among mainstream U.S. sports, thanks in no small part to the Vegas Sevens.

Inside the stadium, it feels like some amorphous halfway point between the World Cup and Mardi Gras; there is singing, flag waving, and people eating indigenous foods from the competing nations, including spicy New Zealand meat pies, giant Kenyan samosas, and some sort of artery-punishing South African sausage roll that is difficult to even regard.

Somewhat surprisingly, Saturday’s most exciting contest plays out between the Eagles and heavily-favored South Africa—an all-out, jaw-dropping flourish of no-look passing and full-field breakaway runs that ends in a last-minute draw, much to the noisy delight of the U.S. contingent in the stadium and the grumbly consternation of the South Africans.

Fiji, a perennially strong Sevens contender comprised of fearsomely-sized Polynesians with the speed of Pro Bowl linebackers, ruthlessly dismantle a French side who appear simultaneously baffled and awed by their opponents. Later, the U.S. blanks Canada, 20-0, to earn a spot in the semis.

The last matches of the second day feature a pair of championships from some of the invitational tournaments held just outside the stadium. The second, between Utah’s Humless and the Northeast Rugby Olympic Development Academy, sees the latter notch an exhilarating 14-5 victory.

On Sunday, Fiji seize the tournament crown with a 35-19 win over New Zealand. The Eagles take a respectable fourth in the tournament, catching a 31-0 beatdown from South Africa, although making an undeniably loud statement overall.

After three days, I leave the desert sunburnt, dehydrated, hoarse, and badly in need of a hot meal, a long shower, and eighteen hours sleep. And that, it's worth repeating, is what happens when you're in the audience.

(For another sport—in this case, basketball—that's been given an amped-up makeover, check out our Introduction to Fightball.)

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