Meet Fort Worth’s first PBR bull riding team. Here’s where to watch them.
Four years ago, Mark George met with Sean Gleason, CEO of the Professional Bull Riders, an international professional bull riding organization. That’s when Gleason said he wanted to take the sport to the next level —through the creation of teams.
“He felt like it had been an individual competition for so long, but he wanted to create something that was more durable, that grandfathers and sons and grandsons could support together through multi-generations,” George said.
George, who was working in Major League Baseball at the time, loved the idea, and started working with Gleason to make it a reality. Gleason gave him a map of the United States, and told him he could make the team anywhere he wanted. Fort Worth, Texas, George replied. That’s how Fort Worth’s first professional bull riding team, the Ariat Texas Rattlers, came to be.
“This is a city that deserves to have a professional sports team. And given the history of the cowboy movement there, it’s where the West begins,” George, now the team’s general manager, told the Star-Telegram. “There’s just so much incredible programming that goes on there that we felt like it would be the spot to put the team.”
The Rattlers are one of eight teams in the new PBR Team Series, a league that will feature the world’s top bull riders playing five-on-five bull riding games. The inaugural season will start in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at 8:45 p.m. July 25 and 26. During the season, all teams will compete in 10 events, playing in 28 games, to crown a team champion Nov. 4-6 in Las Vegas. The Rattlers will compete from home, at Dickies Arena, from Oct. 7 to 9.
Bowie resident Cody Lambert, a retired bull rider who co-founded the PBR, serves as the head coach for the new team. Lambert is an icon in the bull riding world, having created a protective vest that bull riders are now required to wear for safety. He has held various roles at the PBR, including vice president, judge and livestock director.
“When it came to the draft and picking our riders, he had a very specific type of cowboy in mind — someone who has an enormous amount of integrity and brings a great sense of camaraderie and spirit to the team and has that winning mentality,” George said. “Those are values that are shared with the community in Fort Worth, and they’ll really rally behind our riders.”
George describes the Rattlers as family-oriented, patriotic and hardworking. The team has had two training camps, the latest of which was held last week in Bowie. For three days, the team trained with weightlifting, bull riding and team bonding exercises. On Monday, the team took a 13-hour trip to Wyoming, where they’ll be competing tonight and Tuesday night.
The three-day homebase event in Fort Worth this fall will feature live country music, a veterans celebration and family fun.
“I was there for the PBR finals in May and the place was absolutely buzzing. There were just thousands and thousands of people in the stockyards, so we expect to see a similar turnout for our home event,” George said.
How is the PBR Team Series different from other bull riding competitions?
There are lots of aspects of the new PBR Team Series that would be familiar to PBR fans, George says.
“The rider still has to make the whistle, so they got to stay on the bull for eight seconds,” he said. “And they get a score based on the difficulty of the bull that they ride, and how well they ride it.”
But instead of just one rider being scored, all five of the riders on a team get scores. The cumulative total of those points determines how the team does compared to another team.
Another difference is that coaches are able to match riders to bulls, whereas in an individual competition riders are assigned bulls. That will likely make rider percentages go up, George says.
“Prior to an event, we’re given five bulls per night and it’s up to our coach to decide which rider is best suited to that bull,” George said. “There’s a lot of strategy that goes into getting the highest possible score we can get across our five riders.”
Get ready for more suspense and drama, too. Attendees are likely to see interesting rivalries develop between riders and bulls, George said.
“We’ve got a couple of riders who have had four or five or six outs with a particular bull, and they may have a specific vendetta with that bull because of what happened the last time they tried to ride it, but it does create additional storylines that are intriguing,” he said.
During the Missouri Thunder’s game against the Ariat Texas Rattlers, three riders will face rematches from the 2022 individual season:
Adriano Salgado will have his rivalry with American Gangster renewed. As the lone rider to have previously covered his opponent, Salgado rode the bovine athlete for 89.25 points during Round 2 of the Unleash The Beast event in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Clayton Sellars will go head-to-head with Milk Mustache for the second time in his career. Earlier this year in Billings, Montana, Milk Mustached bested the Floridian in 4.24 seconds.
Cody Teel from College Station will attempt Bubba G after being bucked off the bull this winter in Glendale, Arizona in a close 7.62 seconds.
What should first-time watchers know about the PBR competition?
The most exhilarating part of watching a PBR competition is experiencing someone riding (or trying to ride) a one ton animal.
“Once you go, you’re totally hooked,” George said. “That first moment where you experience PBR, it’s something that you’ll never forget.”
That’s how it was for George, though he’s been to countless bull riding events since.
“I remember my first World Finals in 2011 in Las Vegas. It was still a spectacle even then, but it was a different different scale than it is now,” George says. “One of the things that PBR I think does so well is they create this immersive experience that is just unreal, whether it’s the flames that come out of the ground during the intro sequence and the way that they introduce the writers, the video programming that they have.”
Fast-forward 11 years, the sport has continued to grow even more, George says. Now, the inaugural season of the PBR Team Series is a chance for Fort Worth to further cement its place in bull riding history.
“In this first foundational season, we would love to bring the championship back to Fort Worth, and have the history books say that Fort Worth was a championship team for forever,” George says.
How will the team bull riding event work?
The Ariat Texas Rattlers finished sixth in the two preseason events for the Team Series.
During the two-day event in Wyoming, each of the eight founding teams for the PBR Team Series will compete in a head-to-head, five-on-five bull riding game each day of competition. For the four games on Monday and on Tuesday, each team’s head coach will select five riders to match against the five bulls assigned to their team. The team with the highest aggregate score will be the game winner, and ties will be allowed. The same process will be repeated on the second night of competition, with each team facing a new opponent.
A tie-breaker bonus round will follow Tuesday’s second round of games, with each team selecting one rider to attempt one final bull.
The winning team will be the team with the best overall win-loss record. In the event of a tie, a team’s bonus points will be the first tiebreaker. If there is still a tie, the second tiebreaker will be the team’s total aggregate score from its two games. The final tiebreaker will be combined buckoff time from a team’s games.
PBR Team Series Schedule
JULY 25: During the opening day of games for the PBR Team Series event in Cheyenne, Wyoming on Monday, July 25, the Ariat Texas Rattlers will play the Missouri Thunder.
JULY 26: Following their game against the Missouri Thunder on Monday, the Ariat Texas Rattlers will face off against the Kansas City Outlaws on Tuesday, July 26.
For the full slate of events, or to buy tickets, visit pbr.com.
How to watch PBR Team Series
CBS Sports Network will televise all the action from the PBR Team Series live, with coverage beginning at 9 p.m. on both Monday, July 25 and Tuesday, July 26. CBS Sports will also air a one-hour highlight show on Sunday, July 31 at 12 p.m.
PBR RidePass on PlutoTV will offer replays of the PBR Team Series plays. Check https://pluto.tv/en/live-tv/pbr-ridepass for the latest programming schedule.
