Photo: Paul J. Everett
A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In a bull riding, the end is the short go. The top riders across the event get on the rankest bulls. It's the high point. It's the shoot-out at the end of the movie. It comes at the
end. Not in the middle.
Oops, not anymore. With the new short round, the PBR has, oh they've just screwed the whole thing up.
Here are the facts as we have seen them in the eight events so far this year.
- In seven out of eight events, one of the riders who successfully rode in the first short go won the event.
- In seven out of eight events, one of the riders who successfully rode in the first short go came in second in the event.
- In two-day events, all of the riders who successfully rode in the first short go were in the top ten for the event and most of them were in the top five.
- Robson Palermo is the only rider to win an event without having ridden in the first short go at all. Not only that, no other rider has won an event without having successfully ridden in the first short go.
- Over eight events, about 70% of the riders competing in the final championship rounds also competed in the first short go.
A rider who fails to score in the first round of a two-day event, or fails to score well, whether it's due to a sub-par bull performance or a just a bad out for the rider, can pretty much kiss the event win goodbye. To have something so early in the event affect the outcome of the event so directly is just bad sports and bad story telling. Maybe it's good for attendance. Maybe it improves ratings. They say it gives riders a chance to make more money and the audience a chance to see more riders get on the rankest bulls. It definitely gives breeders and owners an chance to showcase their rankest bulls, and I'm all for that. I get it. I do. And I love the PBR. But I'm a story teller, and stories are supposed to have endings that come, you know,
at the end.
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