Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders

by Josh Peter

  In July, about 2 weeks before McBride’s 25th birthday, College Sports TV, a new cable network, called Beadle and offered her a job hosting a regular hour-long show. She accepted even though she knew McBride would never move to New York City.

  The first weekend of August, the weekend of McBride’s 25th birthday, Beadle packed her belongings and brought two suitcases to the Bullnanza–Oklahoma City. She was leaving for New York on August 7, the day of McBride’s birthday. He was angry but made no plea for her to stay—and he had no interest in continuing the relationship long-distance.

  The split came as no surprise to Rich Blyn, one of the PBR’s athletic trainers.

  “You ever hear of the expression ‘She’s a little bit country and he’s a little bit rock ’n’ roll’?” Blyn asked. “Well, he’s a lot country.”

  Only 5 weeks after the split, McBride was in Reno and waiting on the arrival of Jill Ericksen, a former schoolmate of his in Mullen, Nebraska. She was living in Austin, Texas, and working as a graphic designer, and she and McBride had started talking more frequently. The weekend of Bullnanza–Reno, McBride paid for Ericksen to fly in and stay with him. It looked as if he’d already put the breakup with Beadle behind him; but Leah Garcia, one of the commentators for OLN, was among those who suspected he was still hurting. She and others also speculated about how the breakup might affect his riding, while others wondered if the broken cheekbone and eye socket Moraes had suffered 5 weeks earlier might affect his riding.

  About an hour before introductions, Moraes was posing for photos to be used on a promotional poster for the finals. He positioned himself in front of the camera so as to hide the red, swollen area on his face—the lingering signs of the broken left cheekbone and eye socket he’d suffered 5 weeks ago. But that wasn’t his only concern.

  Moraes grabbed the loose skin under his chin. “I hate it,” he said. “I’m going to do liposuction on that.”

  Mark Scott, the photographer, smirked. “I forgot you’re not young,” he said. At 34, Moraes was among the oldest riders on tour. But he still felt confident about his chances of winning the 2004 championship, despite his latest injury.

  Outside the sports medicine room, rider Rob Bell entered the foyer with his right hand between his legs. “You ever get poison ivy on your nuts?” he asked the three riders relaxing in chairs.“Keeps you scratching.”

  Bell said he’d been clearing brush at his house when he got poison ivy on his stomach, legs, and crotch. Not much Tandy Freeman could do for him other than offer some cream. Then Moraes arrived.

  “Where’s your helmet?” Freeman asked.

  “Who, me?” Moraes replied with a thin smile.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “What for?”

  “Your head, I think.”

  “If I wear a helmet,” Moraes said, “Justin and the boys won’t talk to me anymore.”

  He was only half-joking. They’d still talk to him, but helmets were decidedly uncool in the view of McBride and most of the other riders. Moraes continued to rationalize his decision not to wear a helmet.

  “It took 20 years to break,”Moraes reasoned about his cheekbone injury. “You think it’s going to break again? It’s going to take another 20 years.”

  Then Moraes claimed he was worried a helmet would impede his vision, prompting Freeman to roll his eyes. What everybody could see—with or without a helmet—Moraes was closing in on an unprecedented third PBR championship.

  During the introductions that first night, the PBR executives watched through clenched teeth. Because it was a Bullnanza event, the PBR had only partial control of the opening and no way to stop the ending. Last man out and under the spotlight: Tuff Hedeman.

  The crowd cheered long and loud. But instead of taking his usual spot behind the chutes and putting on his TV headset, Hedeman stayed in the arena and helped work the chutes. It wasn’t by choice.

  With Hedeman falling out of favor with the PBR, he and OLN had parted ways. Since his riders-only meeting in Oklahoma City, he’d made no effort to mend fences. In fact, on the second weekend of August, at a Challenger Tour event in Weatherford, Texas, Hedeman had convened yet another riders-only meeting and continued to urge them to pursue the Bull Riders Alliance. Bernard and the board were tired of the distraction and thought removing Hedeman from the broadcast crew would help refocus attention on the race for $1 million.

  On the first night of competition, Lee rode Grumpy for 86.5 points, McBride rode Artemus for 85.5 points, and Moraes rode Sheep Dip for 84 points, with all three riders looking in prime form. But it was a rookie, Zack Brown, who took the first-round lead, with a 90-point ride on Desert Storm.

  The next day, Hedeman huddled with a handful of riders, including McBride. He wasn’t ready to give up on the Bull Riders Alliance or the idea of serving as the riders’ representative in negotiations with the PBR. But the bulk of riders looked headed in another direction. Before the second round, about 25 riders gathered for a meeting in the locker room at the Lawlor Events Center and sounded comfortable with their four new representatives—Jackson,Kramps,Whitney, and Hart—addressing their concerns with the board. But McBride and Shivers were conspicuously absent, along with about a dozen other riders who had skipped the meeting. But all 45 were on hand when the second round of Bullnanza–Reno began.

  Riding Grumpy to the 8-second buzzer, McBride hit the dirt, and the bull’s back hooves came down hard. The quick-spinning McBride avoided getting stomped by just inches.

  Exiting the arena, he was far more excited about the close call than his score of 82.5 points.

  “I’m glad you rolled over when you did,” Freeman said.

  “Me, too,” said McBride, breathing hard. “That’s why it’s an exciting sport, Doc.”

  Jody Newberry was less fortunate. Thrown off the right side of Kryptonite less than 3 seconds to the buzzer, he found himself facedown in the dirt when the bull stomped on the middle of Newberry’s back.

  After a visit to the sports medicine room, he came out with his right arm wrapped. “You okay?” Ross Coleman asked.

  “I got a broken rib, but I feel like I got a broken arm,” Newberry said. “I hurt bad.”

  Then, after a brief pause, Newberry asked, “You got any snuff?” Ah, Copenhagen, one of the riders’ favorite antidotes for pain. But Chris Shivers looked like he needed a pep talk more than a chew.

  He sat alone, head bowed. After getting bucked off by Lying Eyes in the first round, Shivers, having fallen to 62nd in the rankings, had needed a qualified ride when he’d boarded Foul Play. Three bucks to the left, Shivers appeared in control. But the bull reversed direction and shot Shivers off his left side before the buzzer sounded.

  Shivers pounded his right fist into his left hand. Though he tipped his hat to acknowledge the crowd as he left the arena, he found a quiet place to ponder his situation: With four regular-season events left, he was in serious danger of missing the finals for the first time in 8 years.

  While Shivers had failed to qualify for the championship round, all the riders in position to unseat him as champion had made it. In that final round, riding Stretcher, McBride had held on when the bull staggered before slipping off the left side. The bull nailed McBride on the back pockets of his Wranglers before McBride could scramble to safety. Then he checked the clock: 7.4 seconds. Damn.

  Moraes, riding Sheep Dip, had fought to hang on until the buzzer as his bull rope slipped out of his left hand. He hit the dirt and checked the clock: 7.9 seconds. Double damn.

  The two riders crossed paths behind the chutes. “You suck, as I did,” Moraes said.

  McBride winced. “Took me a shot in the shorts. My ass hurts.”

  Two riders left. First up, Zack Brown, the surfer-turned-bull-rider and a rookie from California. He looked like a seasoned veteran atop Red Alert, staying in rhythm with the massive bull until the 8-second buzzer. The 89-point ride catapulted him into the lead. But there was still one man left—Mike Lee, with yet another chance to wi
n his first event of the season.

  In the chutes, Lee slapped Spinner Bait, who was leaning against the back of the chute. Lee finally squeezed his cowboy boot down the backside and called for the gate.

  Spinner Bait made two huge leaps to the right, lifting Lee off the bull’s back. Gravity brought Lee back down, and he settled back into the pocket. The bull turned left with another series of bucks, none of which could unseat Lee.

  “Mike Lee makes the whistle,” shouted OLN commentator Brett Haber. “Will it be enough?”

  Lee performed his signature pirouette with extra spunk before dropping onto his right knee in prayer. Then came the score: 88 points—a half point shy of tying Brown, relegating Lee to his fourth second-place finish of the year. Though Lee remained a paragon of consistency, some wondered how he could win the finals if he couldn’t even win one regular-season event.

  STANDINGS

  1 Adriano Moraes 8,314 points

  2 Mike Lee 6,936 points

  3 Justin McBride 6,830.5 points

  4 Mike White 5,226 points

  5 Brendon Clark 4,758.5 points

  6 Ross Coleman 4,746 points

  7 Greg Potter 4,551 points

  8 Mike Collins 4,520.5 points

  9 Jody Newberry 4,436 points

  10 Rob Bell 4,193 points

  SEVENTEEN

  THE GRAND RAPIDS JINX

  Grand Rapids, Michigan

  Saturday & Sunday, September 25 & 26, 2004

  Justin McBride pushed open the door and strode into the room filled with camera equipment. A film crew was waiting. They were making a video tribute to the American soldier that would air during the PBR finals, and McBride was honored to participate. Three of his former high school classmates were fighting in Iraq, and at times he spoke eloquently about the sacrifice they were making on behalf of America.

  The producer, who had filmed a few other videos for the PBR, reintroduced himself to McBride. They hadn’t seen each other in 2 years.

  “You’re having a hell of a year,” the producer gushed.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “You’re right there,” the producer said, referring to the standings. “Where do you want to be?”

  It was a silly question. Everyone knew exactly where McBride wanted to be—atop the overall standings and on the way to his first PBR championship. Instead he was in third place, trailing Adriano Moraes and Mike Lee, and in a building that dredged up painful memories. A year earlier, he’d arrived at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids having just overtaken Chris Shivers for the lead in the overall standings. But that weekend, McBride got stomped by a bull and suffered a punctured lung and a broken rib—injuries that essentially cleared the way for Shivers and relegated McBride to 2003 reserve champion.

  “Nobody remembers who won second,” McBride grumbled.

  Yet inside that room in Van Andel Arena, before the first round of the Grand Rapids Invitational—the 26th BFTS event of the 27-stop regular season—he refused to let any of that spoil his mood as the taping was set to begin. “Hey, can I swear when I do this?” McBride joked.

  The producer handed McBride a script, part of a patriotic poem he was to read. “That’s good,” he said, “rather than letting my dumb ass try to figure out what to say.”

  It looked and sounded like the same old McBride—cocksure, profane, loose, the consummate cutup. But privately he lamented the failed rides from earlier that year that had him sitting third in the standings, rather than first.

  Referring to some of those rides, Justin McKee, the color commentator for OLN, called McBride one of the PBR’s “best 7-second riders.” It wasn’t meant to be a compliment.

  The last-second buck-offs were the most frustrating—not only for McBride but also for his supporters, like Tuff Hedeman. From the first time Hedeman had seen McBride on a bull, he’d loved the way the kid rode. So Hedeman pushed him, sometimes chewing out McBride when he felt the young rider could have performed better. McBride would turn quiet and angry. And Hedeman would just keep chewing.

  “You can take it or just quit,” McBride recalled Hedeman once railing after McBride had fallen off a rideable bull. “I’m telling you because you got the potential to do it. So go and do it.”

  In recent years, as the finals approached and the gold buckle hung in the balance, McBride found himself tightening up—“riding not to lose it instead of riding to win it,” he said. At the start of 2004, he vowed it would be different. But for all of McBride’s aggressiveness, the avoidable miscues and lapses continued. Like the one at the February 7 Atlanta Classic, where, in the championship round, McBride got bucked off Slim’s Ghost, a bull he could’ve ridden blindfolded. And the Colorado Springs Invitational in April, when he got bucked off twice less than a second from the buzzer. And at Bullnanza–Reno earlier in the month, when in the championship round McBride loosened up on a bull named Stretcher and fell off a half second before the buzzer.

  Untimely buck-offs didn’t keep McBride from being considered one of the PBR’s best riders, but they did keep him from gaining ground on Moraes. In Kansas City, when Moraes got bucked off one of his two bulls, McBride went 0 for 2. When Moraes failed to ride a bull in Nashville, so did McBride. But after reviewing his regrettable moments from that season, McBride made a prediction about the finals: “I’m going to leave Las Vegas with a pocketful of cash and all the girls.”

  The crowd inside Van Andel Arena on hand for the first round of the Grand Rapids Invitational could have used some of McBride’s vigor. The tour had circled back to the Midwest for the first time since its March stop in Indianapolis; and even with many of the spectators wearing cowboy hats and flannel shirts, it felt like Valium Night—free sedatives for the first 10,000 fans. Finally, McBride and Scar Face helped bring the crowd to life.

  With McBride aboard the bull, Scar Face lunged out of the chutes, spun left, and then threw it into reverse, bucking backward for two jumps. Yes, backward.

  With the grace of Fred Astaire in his prime, McBride moved with the bull and stayed in rhythm with Scar Face all the way to the buzzer. The 88.5-point ride held up as the round’s best, qualifying McBride for the Mossy Oak Shootout and a chance to ride Lefty for $5,000 on the last ride of the night.

  “Git ’er done, Justin,” a fan screamed out as McBride boarded Lefty. “Git ’er done.”

  McBride stretched out his legs and lowered himself onto the bull that he’d failed to ride in two attempts, failures that made him only more determined to stay on the bull for 8 seconds. The chute gate opened, and out burst Lefty. Two jumps straight ahead, and then the bull turned hard to the left. McBride turned, too, quick enough to make the corner, and the bull kept spinning. Three seconds from the buzzer, the bull rope began slipping out of McBride’s riding hand, and the centrifugal force of the bull’s spinning shot McBride off the bull’s back.

  As McBride hit the ground, Lefty’s right hind hoof smashed down on McBride’s right leg. McBride speed-crawled away from the bucking bull, popped to his feet, and hobbled to the corner of the arena.

  He pounded his fist on the metal chute, then limped through the exit gate. And that was as far as he would make it alone. Two athletic trainers carried him to the sports medicine room and set him down on an examination table.

  “Smashed the fuck out of my spur,” McBride said, squeezing his eyes shut.

  Tandy Freeman took McBride’s right leg into his hand. “Can you feel your toes?”

  “I can’t feel them real good.”

  Freeman lowered his voice as if prepared to tell a patient he had a malignant tumor. “Broke both bones,” he said.

  “What?” McBride screamed. “I don’t got but one leg bone.”

  Freeman didn’t need to see the x-rays to know what had happened. The force of the bull’s hind leg had broken McBride’s ankle, a fracture of the tibia and fibula that would require surgery and at least 3 weeks of rehabilitation before McBride could even consider riding again. For the second straight year and t
he third time of his career, McBride had been in contention for the title, only to suffer a late-season injury.

  Watching his right leg swell up, McBride let out a primal scream and looked on the verge of tears.

  “I’m everybody’s favorite loser,” he wailed.

  “Only thing is, this year they made it where you got a chance,” Freeman said, referring to the new point system for the finals. “You still got a chance.”

  McBride looked up at Freeman.

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Adriano Moraes entered the sports medicine room and looked like somebody had just shot his favorite dog. He hugged McBride and whispered into his ear, and McBride hugged Moraes around the neck.

  “See you, Champ,” Moraes said. “I’ll be praying for you.”

  Few appreciated McBride’s determination as much as Moraes did. But the person who understood that determination best was John Howell.

  Howell and McBride were best friends growing up in Mullen, Nebraska, and the two small-town boys had oversize dreams. McBride wanted to win the world bull riding championship, and Howell wanted to win a Super Bowl ring. Together they hunted for white-tailed deer and coyote, fished for catfish and bass, canoed down the Red River, rode horses and four-wheelers, and talked incessantly about their goals.

  While McBride earned a scholarship to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Howell turned down scholarship offers from several small schools. He thought he was good enough to play Division I football, and McBride encouraged him to take his chances. So as an undersize free safety, Howell did just that and walked on at Colorado State.

  By Howell’s senior year in 2001, the same year McBride was in contention for the PBR championship before breaking his riding hand, Howell had emerged as one of Colorado State’s best players and was picked in the fourth round of the NFL draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

  Then came January 26, 2003.

  That day, the Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders for their first Super Bowl victory. Confetti was falling, a Jon Bon Jovi song was blaring, and Howell, then a 3rd-year defensive back and special teams stalwart for Tampa Bay, was on a raised platform and celebrating with his teammates when he saw McBride.