Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders

by Josh Peter

  But Lee, who’d gotten bucked off Paleface that night, engaged in no banter with the fans or other riders as he dutifully signed autographs. He served as the ultimate contrast to Moraes, who was lifting children over the arena railing and posing with them as their camera-toting parents snapped pictures.

  “Think about that million-dollar smile,” someone shouted at Moraes.

  “I just want to ride all my bulls,” he said.

  Since the stop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he’d ridden only six of his past 16 bulls, a stretch that included four straight buck-offs. Despite his lead in the standings, Moraes knew he needed to find his old groove to keep challengers from overtaking him. That is, unless some of the challengers boycotted the finals.

  Saturday morning in the hotel restaurant, Pastor Todd Pierce picked over his grits and paged through his Bible. He was worried about the feud between Hedeman and the PBR board and likened the situation to a bitter divorce where the parents waged their battle through their children.

  “You’ve got to decide who’s really got the riders’ best interest at heart,” said Pierce, who like many of the riders found himself torn.

  Yet Pierce feared that the riders-only meeting Hedeman had called for Sunday might split the riders. So later that morning, during his sermon at the Cowboy Church service, Pierce urged the riders to watch out for Satan, suggesting that the angel of darkness was hiding behind the brewing controversy.

  To other people, Satan was the rodeo’s first full-fledged agent—Mark Nestlen, the paunchy man with the wire-rimmed glasses who walked into the hotel lounge at 1:30 that afternoon. Nestlen, according to PBR insiders, settled disputes with legal threats and litigation, whereas some cowboys settled disputes with their fists.

  Curt Lyons, a lanky 32-year-old rider from Oklahoma, was still bitter about a deal gone bad when he spotted Nestlen in 2000 during a PBR autograph session in Laughlin, Nevada.When the session ended, Lyons recalled, he walked up to Nestlen and with one punch decked him.

  But most of the time, Nestlen was able to roll with the punches. He knew the rider contracts he signed better than the riders did, and he knew PBR rules on sponsorship and rider endorsements better than the PBR officials did—and he never hesitated to take action any time he felt his clients had been cheated out of money.

  Every time Clint Branger heard the latest dustup involving Nestlen, Branger cursed himself. He felt partly responsible. In 1997, the two met on a connecting plane in Charlotte, North Carolina, with Branger explaining he was a professional bull rider and Nestlen explaining he’d spent the past 13 years working as a lobbyist for the agriculture industry. The two got to talking about how the cowboys needed help managing their sponsorships and endorsements. Nestlen expressed an interest in the matter and said he was ready to leave Washington, DC.

  “Next thing I know,” Branger said, “he’s calling up and wanting me to sign on with him.” Branger did.

  Until then only stars like Tuff Hedeman and Ty Murray commanded significant endorsement deals. But that was about to change. Later that year Nestlen quit his lobbyist job, moved to Oklahoma, and, with help from his new wife, started a firm called Cowboy Sports Agents.

  At the 2000 finals, Branger’s endorsement deal with DeWALT Power Tools had expired. He was set to be inducted into the PBR’s Ring of Honor that weekend, and a friend of his with DeWALT asked if Branger would mind riding in a DeWALT truck as part of a promotional deal. No problem, said Branger, though he mentioned that Nestlen wouldn’t like the idea.

  Branger was right. “He was madder than hell,” Branger recalled. “You could see like the blood vessels bursting through his eyes. He was almost threatening to sue.”

  The two men parted ways and never spoke again. But by that time, Branger’s defection was no big deal for Nestlen, who had a foothold in the world of bull riding. His star client was Shivers; and with Nestlen’s help, the young rider landed a six-figure deal when he became the exclusive endorsee of the Ford Motor Company. For his 28 clients, Nestlen said, he had brought $1.2 million in endorsement deals, with Cowboy Sports Agents getting a 15 percent commission.

  By the 2004 season, the company’s stable of clients featured 18 bull riders, including Owen Washburn, the 1996 PBR champion; Luke Snyder, the 2001 PBR Rookie of the Year; Mike White, the 1999 PRCA champion; and Greg Potter, a standout rider from Australia. The riders Nestlen helped make money tolerated his behavior, but many PBR officials loathed him. With disregard for the tour’s primary sponsors, such as Wrangler and Jack Daniel’s, Nestlen cut deals for his clients with Wrangler rival Cinch jeans and Jack Daniel’s rival Jim Beam. Of course, that didn’t keep him from cutting deals with Wrangler and Jack Daniel’s—for the right money.

  By the middle of 2004, every rider who started the season in the top 10 had at least one sponsor, and more than half of the riders who started the season ranked between 11th and 55th had sponsors. The increasing corporate interest in sponsoring riders stemmed in part from the eight BFTS events to be televised on NBC. With the exposure making them valuable billboards, the riders plastered stickers on their protective vests like NASCAR drivers plastered stickers on their cars.

  Encouraged by Nestlen’s success and, in some cases, prodded by PBR officials hoping to limit Nestlen’s influence, others joined the agent game. But no one operated with as much power or instilled as much fear.

  “Piece of shit” is how Hedeman referred to Nestlen. Adriano Moraes chose more polite words to express the same sentiment, but later that year he enlisted Nestlen’s help when his deal with Resistol was set to expire.Moraes knew no one worked harder for clients than Nestlen. And there he was Saturday afternoon in Oklahoma City, meeting with Joe Loverro, producer of the Outdoor Life Network’s PBR telecasts. It was Nestlen in prime form.

  Arriving with a representative from Theragenics Corporation, Nestlen told Loverro that Washburn was serving as a spokesman for the Atlanta-based company, which sells implantable radiation devices. A can’t-miss story for OLN, Nestlen assured him, but Loverro had some questions.

  Did Washburn have cancer and use the devices? No.

  Did anybody close to him need the radiation devices or use them? No.

  Loverro didn’t see the point of the story, but Nestlen continued to push. Wearing down, Loverro said he might be able to squeeze something in during the finals telecasts. No surprise there. More often than not, Nestlen got what he wanted.

  Loverro looked drained. Earlier that morning, he’d huddled with Bernard and Lambert in the presidential suite of the Renaissance Hotel, across the street from the Westin. The talk centered on Hedeman and his future role with the PBR and OLN. Bernard and Lambert wanted Hedeman off the broadcast team. For one, they hated that Hedeman was still making money off the PBR while privately attacking Bernard and the board. They also feared Hedeman might air his beefs during a broadcast. But Loverro worried about something else.

  Pulling Hedeman from the broadcasts without explanation in mid-season, Loverro said, could cause a backlash from TV viewers. The three men met for 3 hours and arrived at no decision except to hold off until they got details from Hedeman’s riders-only meeting Sunday.

  That night, inside the Ford Center, Moraes was trying to redeem himself. All season, when making it to the 8-second buzzer or getting bucked off, he’d acted as cool as a running back crossing the goal line for a touchdown. But in the second round, when Moraes rode King’s Court, he pounded his chest with both fists, releasing 6 weeks’ worth of frustration.

  The 88.5-point ride earned him a spot in the championship round on Smokeless Wardance. During that ride, Moraes stayed in the middle of the bull and leaned forward, trying to neutralize Smokeless War-dance’s power. He strained with his powerful left forearm, and his thick legs gave way. The bull jerked forward. Momentum pulled Moraes. There was no holding on.

  Moraes slammed face-first into Smokeless Wardance’s right horn, and the ride ended with Moraes tossed to the ground before the 8-second buzzer. He looked d
azed as he headed for the sports medicine room.

  X-rays showed that the force of the blow had cracked his eye socket and fractured his upper jaw. Pressing an ice bag against the left side of his face, Adriano Moraes emitted garbled words between his bloody lips. As Moraes eased himself off the examination table and got dressed, Tandy Freeman called a specialist to schedule surgery. For the second straight BFTS event,Moraes would leave needing surgery—first for his knee and now for his face.

  Five concerned Brazilians stood huddled outside the sports medicine room when Moraes emerged. He muttered a few words in Portuguese and walked past. Alone, he headed toward the arena exit and every few steps spit blood on the concrete floor.

  Mike Mathis, an in-arena announcer, stopped Moraes in the corridor.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Moraes said. “Hey, who won?”

  “Brendon Clark.”

  “Really? Cool.”

  Two steps later, the co-owner of Smokeless Wardance wrapped his arm around Moraes’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Moraes shook his head, indicating there was no need for an apology. “That is a good bull. I’ll be fine.”

  Off he went, out a back door and up a ramp that led to a parking lot. A young member of the PBR crew caught up to Moraes and stared at the rider’s puffy red face.

  “Champ,” the kid said, “you look like Rocky Balboa.”

  Yet once again, Moraes’s top challengers failed to land anything resembling a knockout punch. After opening the competition with an 88.5-point ride, McBride fell off his last two bulls. Lee got bucked off both of his bulls and failed to make the championship round. And after Shivers’s 87-point ride in the first round, he fell off his last two bulls. Though Farley rode two bulls and served notice that he was more than a minor leaguer, the $1 million bonus was out of reach for him and most of the other riders. But that didn’t stop several of the cowboys from partying later that night.

  With music throbbing in Club Rodeo, the PBR crew gathered on the second floor. In walked Bernard. He wasn’t there to drink but rather to gauge the mood of the riders less than 10 hours before Hedeman’s meeting.

  At 9:45 Sunday morning, the cars began pulling into the parking lot at Chelino’s Mexican Restaurant. By 10:30, more than 40 riders had gathered in a second-floor room. Instead of a buffet, the breakfast fare was an open bar. Ross Coleman sipped a margarita as the meeting came to order.

  Hedeman sat behind a table in front of the room. Sitting alongside him were Ron Pack, Hedeman’s close friend and business advisor; Tommy Joe Lucia, the PBR’s outgoing production officer; and Terry Williams, a stock contractor and friend of Hedeman’s who had started his own tour, Championship Bull Riding (CBR). The men passed out a six-page overview of their goal on letterhead with a logo for the “Bull Riders Alliance.”

  Hedeman spoke for less than 10 minutes before turning things over to Pack and Lucia. One of the riders interjected, saying he didn’t think the PBR had the riders’ best interest at heart. Gaffney, one of the three active riders and PBR board members, spoke out.

  “I beg to differ.”

  “How are you trying to make things better?” Hedeman demanded.

  “Why are you insinuating we’re not doing anything for the riders?” Gaffney asked.

  “Give me some examples of what you’re doing.”

  Gaffney glared. Hedeman glared back. Lucia interrupted the showdown.

  “The purpose of this meeting is not to get into personal deals,” he said. “It’s to find out how to help the bull riders.”

  Among the list of things they wanted for the riders, Pack and Lucia said, was better insurance coverage, more say in picking bulls, a retirement fund, and to get rid of the competition clause that subjected riders to a 1-year suspension if they missed a BFTS event without a medical excuse or PBR permission. They talked about taking these demands to the PBR with the following ammunition: Give us what we want or we’re not going to ride.

  “Basically, what you’re telling us is if we join this, we’re going to have to boycott,” rider Lee Akin said. “In my opinion, the PBR will call our bluff.”

  “Unfortunately,” Lucia said, “that sounds like something that could happen. Hopefully it won’t.”

  Akin wanted to make sure he understood. “Once we take this stand and join the alliance, if the PBR doesn’t agree to go by our regulations, we are not to go (to the next event)?”

  “Yes,” Lucia responded. “That means we’d have to boycott.”

  More than 25 riders signed a sheet expressing interest in the Bull Riders Alliance, and they agreed to meet again in Reno. McBride was among those voicing strong support for Hedeman. But Akin and B. J. Kramps were among the riders who left the meeting thinking it had raised more questions than it had provided answers.

  The next day, the board of directors held a teleconference and discussed Hedeman’s meeting and the actions of Pack, Williams, and Lucia. “Traitors,” Bernard branded them. Yet the board members knew they had to address the riders’ concerns or risk a boycott. So they agreed to create a rider advisory committee to help pick the bulls and discussed contributing more money toward rider insurance coverage. In short, they planned to do everything in their power to head off a mutiny and undercut Hedeman’s Bull Riders Alliance.

  STANDINGS

  1 Adriano Moraes 8,117 points

  2 Justin McBride 6,547.5 points

  3 Mike Lee 6,205.5 points

  4 Ross Coleman 4,746 points

  5 Brendon Clark 4,681 points

  6 Mike White 4,541.5 points

  7 Mike Collins 4,370 points

  8 Jody Newberry 4,355 points

  9 Greg Potter 3,937.5 points

  10 Owen Washburn 3,690 points

  SIXTEEN

  CONTENDERS & PRETENDERS

  Reno, Nevada

  Friday & Saturday, September 10 & 11, 2004

  They gathered in a conference room at the headquarters hotel for another riders-only meeting. But this time there was no open bar and no sign of Tuff Hedeman and the other men behind the proposed Bull Riders Alliance.

  Called by Bernard and the PBR board, the meeting was set up to end any chance of a rider boycott. A PowerPoint presentation included reams of information, much of it countering Hedeman’s claims that the board was looking out for itself, not the riders. One slide showed that since its inception, the PBR had paid out $37 million to the riders and only $1.2 million to its shareholders. Then Bernard told the riders the floor was open and encouraged them to air their concerns and grievances. At one point, Mike Lee stood up and said he felt like the PBR executives were acting like “big dogs” and treating the riders like “little dogs”; then he sat back down. Looking irritated by the comment, Moraes stood up and defended the board while jabbing a finger into the air. Lee came back out of his seat. “Don’t point your finger at me,” he told Moraes.

  As Lee inched closer to Moraes in the standings and as the finals approached, the relationship between the two looked strained. In recent weeks, Lee had stopped attending the weekly prayer sessions at Moraes’s house. They suddenly looked more like rivals than friends. But the tense moment diffused, and the meeting came to a civil end, with Bernard and the PBR board feeling encouraged. They promised to pay more attention to the riders’ concerns and encouraged them to pick four representatives who would be responsible for meeting regularly with the board to express those wants and needs. The riders agreed, selecting as their representatives Bart Jackson, B. J. Kramps, Cody Whitney, and Cody Hart.

  When the riders filed out of the room, the Bull Riders Alliance looked to be on life support. Issues like insurance coverage and prize money remained unresolved, but most of the riders seemed ready to turn their attention back to bull riding and the beginning of that weekend’s Bullnanza–Reno event.

  Later that day, Justin McBride was in the locker room at the Lawlor Events Center and pulling on his riding boots when Jay Daugherty approached. Daugherty,
who tracked the pre-event bull draws and postevent results from PBR’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, was making a rare appearance on the road and catching up with the riders.

  “Still hooked with Michelle?” he asked.

  “No,”McBride said flatly, staring at his cowboy boots.

  Daugherty broke an awkward silence. “Back on the prowl?”

  McBride lifted his head and flashed a grin, then half-shouted, “Yeah.”

  When Daugherty walked away, McBride gritted his teeth as he pulled one boot over a sore ankle. “Never let them see you sweat,” he said.

  He sure as hell wasn’t about to let anybody see him suffer over a breakup. Definitely not in the locker room at Lawlor Events Center, where, after a 5-week interlude since the last BFTS event, riders were preparing for the 24th stop of the season.

  Time was running out on those hoping to catch Moraes. In just 6 weeks, the PBR and the top 45 riders would converge on Las Vegas for the finals. But the news about McBride’s romantic life provided a little conversational diversion.

  There was no mention of McBride’s and Michelle Beadle’s breakup in People magazine, but on the PBR tour it was headline news. Beadle, an effervescent and quick-witted blonde, and McBride had met in 2002, when she did a stint as a commentator for the PBR telecasts. They’d been dating ever since. McBride had even given Beadle a promise ring. Semiengaged is what McBride said it meant.

  The relationship was serious enough for Beadle to have left her apartment in New York and moved in with McBride in Elk City, where he was building a two-story stone house on 400 acres of property. The two had talked about making that house their permanent home, and McBride had even talked about the town near Elk City where he wanted to hold the wedding. But Beadle, 29 years old, wasn’t sure she was ready to give up her career in television to settle down and start a family.