'This week I have good news and bad news'

Hello again to the cowboy nation. This week I have good news and bad news.

First the bad news, we did not get an ESPY nomination this year, but by the time the decision makers started getting the word and all the input from the fans along with the packages we sent them and the letters some of you sent it was really down to a last minute deal.

They're aware of how many deserving athletes we have and, I think, we'll have some luck in that next year.

They're also talking about maybe using me as a presenter this year or something along those lines. I don't know for sure on that just yet, but it is something they brought up and I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

The good news is the trip to Pittsburgh, where I went and talked to the sports editors from the Associated Press, went great.

The head of our PR department, Katharine Sherrer, and our COO, Sean Gleason, went along with me and put together an excellent power point presentation. Sean gave a great speech that really encapsulated the PBR--what we're doing, what we're all about, what our reach is, what kind of fans we have and he showed them geographically what an even and far-reaching spread we have across the United States, and not to mention Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia.

It really seemed to be an eye-opener for everyone.

My speech was about what is involved with being a bull rider, athletically speaking, both mentally and physically. I tried to explain, in a nutshell, what bull riding is because it can be so foreign to them.

The good news with that is that they had us slated for a 15-minute presentation and we talked for about 45 minutes. Eventually they had to cut it off because it is a national convention and they have one class after another, meetings and various appointments, so they really did stretch our time a good 30 to 45 minutes longer than they intended to and even when they did cut us off there were 15 to 20 people with their hands in the air hoping to ask more questions.

After we gave our speeches we had opened it up to questions in the room and everyone had a ton of things they wanted to ask. It was fun for me to see the surprise on a lot of their faces when they saw what our demographics are and what our male to female ratio is.

I think a lot of them thought, "Bull Riding? Hmm, that must be a southwestern thing." And not they got to see truly how geographically all over the map we are and what an even spread it is so, I think, as I mentioned before, that was a real eye-opener for us.

Then when they saw the amount of TV viewers and the amount of people coming to our live events, I think, it would be safe to say that everyone in the room was fairly surprised.

The woman who oversees the entire sports department for the Associated Press already said she wants to do a major story on the bulls and she got really fired up about the whole thing.

I don't think it could have gone any better.

Whenever I talk about building this thing there's only one way to do it and that's brick by brick. I don't think we have any concrete evidence of what this trip meant, but I definitely think it was another huge brick put into place.

When these editors are able to see the passion and the loyalty of our fans, I think, that's something that everyone sees as powerful.

It doesn't matter if you're a sponsor trying to sell products or, at the end of the day, the Associated Press selling newspaper stories or magazine articles, when these editors see how big the cowboy nation is and what loyal fans they are and how starved they are for the coverage that is something that will stick with them and that's something that they're going to think about.

You just have to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day and these things have to take place in the right order. We'll just have to keep working at it and I want to thank everyone for following along.