Soap Box

I love sports, basically all sports, although I have my favorites. I'll go to great lengths to watch three football games on Sunday and when football season is over Sunday afternoon will usually find me keeping track of a NASCAR race.

I was an avid baseball fan all my life until the MLB went on strike some years back and the time period involved seemed to break my fascination with the game and, although I still enjoy it, I have never gotten back to the point that I would expend a lot of effort to listen to or watch every game my favorite team plays.

I get really into basketball about March Madness time when things get serious and thoroughly enjoy the sport up through the national championship game.

But the wildest, most unpredictable sport of all has to be rodeo.

First of all, it is probably the only professional sport left where the players are in it for love of the game. They have to be, because there are no guaranteed seven-figure salaries or long-term employment contracts in rodeo.

You're as good as your last ride and you're rated by the amount of money you've earned in any given season, number one money earner, number one cowboy or cowgirl.

You could say that a dollar is a point and whoever has the most points is number one and can change week to week as the boys and girls compete in rodeos around the country.

And those dollar-points are important because only the top 15 contestants get to go to the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) in Las Vegas to compete ten nights in a row for the big money, where the national champions are crowned and the cowboy who competes in at least two events and wins is declared All Around Cowboy and wears the big belt buckle for a whole year.

The NFR is the best of everything, the best 15 cowboys and cowgirls, the best bucking stock as rated by the PRCA, (Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association) and the contestants and since scores in the arena are rated half for the rider's performance and half for the animal's, the contestants want a bronc or bull that can turn the judge's heads.

The cowgirls event is barrel racing, basically running a set pattern on a horse around three barrels placed around the arena and getting back to your starting point in the least amount of time, a race against the clock.

The calf roping and team roping are also timed events with the calf roper who can rope and tie a calf in the least amount of time wins the go around. The team roping requires two contestants roping both ends of the steer, the header's loop around the horns and the heeler's loop around the steer's hocks, and again is a race with the clock.

Two of the most authentic events would be bareback and saddle bronc riding as it would closely apply to the profession of the old time bronc busters who rode the rough off the fresh string of ranch horses so they could be used in working cattle.

This event requires the contestant to stay on the animal for eight seconds or be disqualified. It's said that the best rides are about seven and a half seconds, which won't get the job done no matter how many style points you've collected, it's eight seconds or you walk out of the arena without a check.

Most any rodeo fan would tell you that the most exciting event in rodeo is bull riding. That's where a 130-pound cowboy gets on a 2,000-pound Brahma bull and rides him to the eight-second buzzer.

It's also the most dangerous because many times when you hit the ground, the bull will come looking for you to trample you or toss you twenty feet in the air.

That�s when some of the bravest, most talented guys in rodeo go to work. Known as bull fighters or rodeo clowns, they do whatever it takes to get the dismounted bull away from the cowboy, up to and including jumping right in front of the bull's horns, attracting his attention at their own very real peril.

The animals used in rodeos are all healthy and kept that way by the best nutrition, medical care and transportation available, they only work eight seconds a day and live a life of relative ease in the off time.

I love all rodeos, but the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas every December is a spectacle to rival any circus, race or extravaganza you'll ever experience. From the grand opening until the last ride it's excitement personified as you find yourself caught up in the color, the clamor and the all-American, down home feeling that takes over Las Vegas every year at NFR time.

Being along your cowboy hat, you'll feel right at home.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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