Some years ago, I ran into an old acquaintance of mine who had ridden bulls briefly at the amateur level and was pretty good at it. This fellow was a standout athlete in football and baseball in high school and had several offers to play those sports in college, but never did.
I asked him why, and he replied that once he tried bull riding, other sports seemed like games to him, and he just wasn't that interested in them. He rode bulls for several years with some success, and eventually quit, got married and settled down. He said that of all the success he had experienced in sports in his youth, his favorite memories were of the few years he spent riding bulls.
My friend is a rarity in our sport, and especially so in his day. Most athletes who are fairly talented at football, baseball, or basketball will never be introduced to bull riding, and even if they were it's not likely that many of them would have the moxy to pursue it. But his experience points to what it is that makes bull riding a great sport, and why it is inherently attractive to people – even people who have never tried it.
Bull riding is simple and easy to understand. The rules are not complicated, and they usually don't get in the way of understanding what is taking place. What you see or experience in bull riding is almost all there is to it. It is an elemental contest between man and beast.
There is great risk and great reward in bull riding. In some other sports the financial stakes are higher, but the risk is not. In bull riding, the risk is to life and limb, and the reward is all the greater for it.
There is absolute parity among all competitors in bull riding. If you can ride, you will succeed. If not, you will fail. If another bull rider is better than you, you have every opportunity to become better than him. There is only one way to improve in a sport, and that is to compete in it. In team sports, whether or not you are allowed to compete is not for you to decide, but for the coach or manager of the team. Therefore, the most talented players tend to benefit the most from experience. In bull riding, anyone can compete, and if you get good enough, you can compete against the best, and if you beat them, you beat them. You can reach the pinnacle of the sport in a short time, whereas a good baseball player could spend a large portion of his life playing baseball and one bad outing could ruin him if his coach loses confidence in him, and in any case he is not likely to ever get to compete at the highest levels. Bull riding is one of the few sports in the world where the less talented have a chance to become champions, because while it may be true that one rider has more talent than another, in the end the prize usually goes to he that makes the most of the talent he has.
Bull riding is among the purest of all sports, with greater risk and reward than most, and the camaraderie among competitors is far greater than in many other sports. Great bulls are awe inspiring creatures, and great rides are awesome to witness and even more so to experience. There are no shortcuts to success, and there are no coach's favorites who play while others do not. There is only the beautiful, violent and pure contest that is bull riding.
