Like all good ideas, it began with a commercial during the Maury Povich show. One minute Maury was sending troubled teens to boot camp, the next minute I was staring at a ten-second spot for the Professional Bull Riders’ Bud Light Cup. A slack-jawed city boy stared at the screen, enraptured by the harmonious mix of sporting event and livestock.

And so it began. Within the next 24 hours, I had cell phone conversations with the publicity agent for the PBR. I told her that I was the head editor of Pomona’s newspaper, that we had a circulation of 8,000, and that I would require three press passes. She bought it spurs, rope, and ten-gallon hat.

Courtesy of www.pbrnow.com Bullriding is the highlight of any rodeo, particularly when the bull is able to focus the rage inside him.

Saturday night, two friends and I showed up at Arrowhead Pond, cutting ahead of three ruddy-faced high school boys with their girls in matching pink cowboy hats to receive our free press passes. We wandered through the stadium conspicuously underdressed. Along the walls were booths promoting Copenhagen, Jack Daniels, and Carhartt’s. Whole extended families walked through the stadium towards their seats, all immaculately dressed in neatly pressed Western wear.

We took our seats at the front of the VIP seating area, next to the TNN and HBO camera crews and the cowboys’ wives. The lights went down. A deep manly voice announced that there was once a time when a hamburger cost five cents, Elvis was still the king, and bull riding was in its prime. With a tone of sadness, the announcer told the sold out crowd that only one of the three remained as it once was. Bull riding still stands for courage, endurance, and sacrifice.

Then the fireworks went off. One by one, the 45 contestants swaggered into the arena following a trail of fire in the stadium dirt. As the flames died down and the lights went up, the announcer led the stadium in a prayer for the athletes about to compete, because "Lord, ridin’ bulls is dangerous and these brave cowboys are gonna need all the help and courage they can get." After the prayer came the national anthem, sung by Jewel. After the anthem was over, the strong warm country voice on the loudspeakers introduced "those fearless gladiators," the rodeo clowns– men whose job it is to save cowboys from being trampled to death, and then tell jokes in the dead time.

The first bull to be ridden was anxiously pressing against the sides of a small corral while the cowboy climbed on top of his back. A moment of silence, then the gate opened. The bull leaped out into the arena. It was an intensely violent moment. The bull jumped three feet into the air, kicking out its back legs. The rider was thrown off its back, landing face down in the dirt. The bull bucked again, its rear hooves missing the fallen cowboy’s head by inches. The clowns threw themselves in front of the bull, distracting it for a moment as the cowboy ducked out of the way. Everyone in the stadium began to cheer. It lasted just six seconds.

It was for a valiant effort, not a successful one. To be awarded a score for a ride, a cowboy must remain on the bull for a full eight seconds with one hand in the air at all times. The first rider, Adam Carillo of Stevenville, TX, scored no points.

The rider grips a rope wrapped around the bull’s chest and clings on with a pair of dull spurs. The rope is not tied, and falls off as soon as the rider does. The spurs are animal friendly.

Once the eight-second mark has been reached, the ride is over. Points are awarded by judges according to two factors: how hard the bull bucked, and how much control the cowboy demonstrated. 70 is an average score, 80 is good, and 90 or above is considered excellent. After all 45 cowboys have ridden, the top 15 go on to a final round. The cumulative scores from both rounds determine the winner.

It is a subjective sport. The score a rider receives is based as much on the bull’s performance as his own: if the bull doesn’t put up a fight, the rider will get a low score. Likewise, certain bulls are so formidable that they buck off their rider nearly every time.

Difficult bulls receive nearly as much attention as do the cowboys. Each animal is named appropriately, such as Happy Hooker, Colt 45, Road Rage, and Thumper. On the PBR media fact sheet, the names of famous bulls appear next to the names of famous riders. Blueberry Wine, a champion bull of years past, was "born to buck." There is a tangible awe of and respect for the animals, aka "2000 pounds of the toughest grade A beef you’ve ever seen."

But we were not there solely to look at the fine bull specimens. We were there to see them ridden. As the announcer mentioned during some dead time, "Folks, if you don’t want your bulls ridden, don’t take them to the Anaheim Bud Light Cup." The second rider, Brazilian Adriano Moraes, one of the PBR’s leading riders, scored an 84 on "Hit List," in an unremarkable ride. Ty Murray rode fourth, scoring a disappointing 74 points, but was given a chance to ride a second time due to the general failings of Romeo. If this sounds like favoritism to you, it probably is. Ty Murray is known as "The Michael Jordan of Bull Riding," and with nine world championships under his belt, he gets special treatment from the fans, and perhaps the judges, too. When his original 74 was announced, the entire stadium booed the judges.

At this point, my memory drifts into a haze of wrenching blows and flying bodies. There is no sport that places a higher premium on sheer guts and stubbornness. Cowboy Chad Wareham was thrown from Red River, landing a few feet to one side of the bull. On impact his hat fell off, and as the bull leveled its head and charged, Wareham didn’t get out of the way. Instead, he picked up his hat, and was promptly run over by the bull from behind. He took his time to get back up, and limped out of the arena as the announcer proudly stated, "Folks, it’s not that bull riders don’t feel pain, its just that they handle it better than the rest of us."

And handle it they did. There was glee in the announcer’s voice every time he announced another rider who was recovering from injuries sustained the previous week. Mike Collins of Haskell, OK rode Lickity Split with a chipped spine, against doctor’s orders. He was thrown hard, and had to be helped off because he couldn’t support his own weight. Three riders (including Ty Murray) had separated ribs coming into the event. However, the worst injury of the night by far was Dustin Hall’s. Thrown by Say La Vee, he was getting back up when he caught a hoof to the face. His head slammed back into the dirt, and he lay motionless for over a minute. Paramedics rushed into the arena, and checked his pulse. The announcer, though a little somber, reassured the fans that "I know it may be hard to believe, but last week there were three cowboys that looked worse than this, folks, and they’re all here riding today."

When Hall finally got up with a broken jaw, he was engulfed by applause. As the paramedics helped him out, the announcer took the liberty of saying "don’t worry folks, he’ll be back riding again next week."

The strange and terrible saga wore on for several hours. Watching 45 men grip lethal animals weighing several thousand pounds leaves a spectator feeling a little drained. Each ride demands one’s full attention; it is nearly impossible to casually watch. The competition between cowboys is secondary to the competition between the man and the bull. A good bull refuses to be ridden, and a rider struggles desperately to simply hold his ground for eight seconds. It is not long enough for either party to grow used to it, or to move beyond raw instinct. The cowboy is on the defensive, and the bull always wins. Watching it produces the anxiety of waiting for the inevitable.

After all of the riders have ridden, there is a break before the top 15 compete in the finals. We drifted toward the concession stands in a sea of blue jeans and boots. We stopped at one, and I passed up cotton candy and pretzels in favor of a shot of Jim Beam– no watered down stadium beer here. Never had it felt more right to drink some good old Kentucky Bourbon, even at four dollars a shot. Before I could get sloppy drunk, however, we heard cheering, and rushed back to the arena. The power tool contest had begun. Two men were competing to see who could put five screws into a board the fastest with a Dewilt‚ brand power tool in what was the most shameless bit of marketing that I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, there were multiple heats.

The next spectacle was children’s bull riding. Seven-year-old kids wearing crash helmets rode calves weighing easily three or four hundred pounds. The announcer proudly announced that the children we were watching were "the future of the PBR and the future of our heritage, folks." Seven-year-olds flew everywhere. One got thrown into the wall of the arena. Another couldn’t get off the bull he was riding. A third nearly slipped beneath the calf while mounting it in the pen, and then refused to ride. The carnage was awful.

The last halftime act was an HBO cameraman getting gored by a bull. HBO had arranged for a special ride for its cameras to tape. After bucking the rider however, the bull headed straight for the cameraman, running him over and sending his camera into the dirt. As the bull turned and prepared for another charge, the cameraman leapt out of the arena. Everyone laughed at him.

The sideshows finished, the final round began. It was vicious. Only two of the 15 riders were able to cover their bulls for the eight seconds. By the end, the announcer was taking more pleasure in talking about the bulls than about the cowboys. "This here bull is just plain mean, folks. He don’t like cowboys, he don’t like other bulls, I don’t think he even likes cows!" From the near shutout, two riders emerged with scores in the 90s. First, Tony Mendes rode Happy Hooker for 92 points. With only a few competitors left, Ty Murray rode for one last time, on a bull named Jersey Joe, that had never been successfully ridden before. The bull jumped and did a near 180-degree turn in the air. Murray held on, and finished the ride up easily.

It was Murray’s first win of the season, netting him $27,465, and putting him in second place in the league standings. His victory was all the more remarkable because Murray did it with two separated ribs. "It feels great to win my first event of the season," said Murray. "I’ve been second this year, but what you always strive for is first." At the age of 31, Murray has given most of his life to the sport and has been well rewarded. He "rode" his first bull at the age of two, and trained for bull riding by practicing juggling, martial arts, and riding a unicycle. Now, as the bull riding’s premier figure, he is second only to Chris Shivers in prize money, and has nine world championship belt buckles to his name. More importantly, however, as the PBR press release states, "Ty Murray is currently dating Jewel." Enough said.

It is a sport for mad men and the stupid. Most of the riders aren’t even earning any serious money. While baseball players making several million per year dodge pitches that would put them on base, the cowboys of the PBR climb on top of an angry beast weighing upwards of a ton and try to hold on with one hand. The lingo for accidents has a sadistic humor to it: The term for getting dragged behind the bull by the rope is "hung up," getting trampled is called "freight-trained," and when a bull throws back its head far enough to smash a rider in the face, the rider "kisses the bull". Every one of the cowboys I saw had at least a couple ugly looking scars from such accidents.

Riding a bull is as brutal as any eight seconds in life. The outcome relies heavily on luck. A bull could buck and gore the best rider under the best circumstances. This is the component of bull riding which makes it so fascinating to watch: the mix between animal, cowboy, and chance. It is rare to see a person caught without the safeguards with which we dominate our environment. Bull riding is one of those rare moments. An animal that for most of us exists only as lumps of hormone-laden flesh in a supermarket becomes powerful, and a man becomes weak. The fun lies in being the underdog. Grab hold, try to stay on for eight seconds, and then run like hell… It’s a sort of self-exploration that few of us ever seek out.