LAS VEGAS – Week 17 is always crazy in the NFL and, by extension, in the sports books here. Teams are trying to clinch postseason berths or wrap up first-round byes or home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, and then you have teams that the public is assuming are just playing out the string.

What do you get for the horse that’s done everything, or at least everything he’s been asked? In the case of Wise Dan, you let him do exactly what he does this time every year, which is hang out with a pal in a paddock on the farm of Charlie and Amy LoPresti near Lexington, Ky., weather permitting.

“We turn him out around this time every morning, once the frost gets off the grass, and he’ll live outside until, oh, five o’clock this afternoon,” Charlie LoPresti said. “He and Successful Dan – they’re side by side.”

Just about every track in America has a horse like Stephen Got Bud, the horse who, once he finds his proper level of competition, runs the same race month after month. In a game marked by inconsistency, bettors love the consistent horse.

Stephen Got Bud ran seven times on the main track at Penn National in 2013. He won five and was second twice. He mixed in a win and two seconds at Charles Town this year after he came north from Fair Grounds, where he was claimed March 28 for $5,000 from a race for nonwinners of three races lifetime.

If it seems inappropriate to dwell on the final day of Hollywood Park last Sunday instead of the first day of the 2013-14 season at Santa Anita Park on Thursday, well, you had to be there.

Uncounted thousands jammed the Turf Club and clubhouse boxes. Grandstand seats still filthy from recent rains were dusted off by the backsides of pilgrims turning out for one last look. To suggest that the lame-duck track management was neither ready nor willing to properly serve such a crowd is a gross understatement. Programs were gone by the fourth race. Soon after that, food became scarce.

In a 2009 article published in Harper’s magazine, the cultural essayist Richard Rodriguez dwelt on the looming end of a local institution, the San Francisco Chronicle.

“When a newspaper dies in America,” Rodriguez wrote, “it is not simply that a commercial enterprise has failed; a sense of place has failed.”

Hollywood Park management’s idea of a precious memento from Sunday’s final racing program in the 75-year history of the track is to imprint parimutuel tickets with famous tidbits from its storied past. This is either cynical or tone deaf – you be the judge – since a parimutuel ticket costs at least a dime, and if a player keeps it as a cheap souvenir they’ve either decided it is worth more than whatever the ticket paid, or they are hanging on to a losing ticket that extols the virtues of Lava Man, or Laffit Pincay, of which they already are deeply aware.

LAS VEGAS – Football contests have been popular offerings here for years, especially with the NFL, but college football (and college basketball contests around March Madness) have been lacking.

But that’s been changing, and local bettors (or those who can get to Nevada before the end of the year) have their most options this bowl season, which kicks off Saturday with four games.

William Hill Bowl Challenge

A month ago, Eclipse Award voters were wondering whether they could invoke amnesia about this year’s Triple Crown races long enough to ink in the name of Will Take Charge as the champion 3-year-old of 2013. There wasn’t a better alternative, but there was enough discomfort with the idea that some began constructing scenarios whereby a victory from Goldencents in the Cigar Mile might be enough to wrest the title away.

After Mucho Macho Man won the Breeders’ Cup Classic, most commentators declared that the turf specialist Wise Dan would earn his second Horse of the Year title. Mucho Macho Man didn’t have enough other accomplishments to take the honor, but by trouncing Game On Dude he had eliminated that gelding’s claim to the championship. The last horse standing was Wise Dan, winner of all six of his starts on grass.

We attend sporting events because we never know for sure what we might be about to witness. We watch stakes races for 2-year-olds because we never know when we might be about to see something very special. In the space of three hours last Saturday afternoon and evening, I saw a hoops/horses exacta that I won’t soon forget.