Keeping up with the stats on almost every PBR bull is a full time job, and at times it can be pretty monotonous.

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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.

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I've noticed the comments on my post about Guilherme Marchi and how bulls are marked with him aboard. I've also received an email or two on the subject, so let me offer some clarification, and answer the question I asked in the original post.

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I suspect that very few bull riders will be singing the blues Saturday at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont.

The draw looks favorable for a lot of riders to make the whistle in round 1. There are a lot of bulls out Saturday that haven't seen much PBR action, but are very good bulls, and have proven to be reliable high score producers.

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Reading McKee's last post, I felt I ought to investigate whether or not bulls are really marked less with Marchi than they are with other guys. I'm sure statisticians everywhere love it when commentators say "I guarantee if we looked at all the stats...." Because if there's one thing statisticians do, it's look at all the stats.

In this case, we are really trying to answer a basic question... Are bulls marked less with Marchi? And depending on the answer, many other questions may be raised.

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Unlike human babies, young bucking bulls often do not get named at birth. Most young bulls get a brand number early in life and are known by that until they earn a name in the arena at age 2-4 years old.

At the recent ABBI Classic event in Duncan, OK, one semi-anonymous young bull known only as Page 499 may have earned himself a real name. Young 499 posted a bull score of 48 points and won the Classic event with an official score of 92.25.

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Plenty of bull power will be on display at the Ty Murray Invitational in Albuquerque this weekend. Round 2 and the short go will be draft rounds, and both of those rounds have some very seldom ridden bulls in them, so it will be important for riders to get off to a good start in Round 1.

L.J. Jenkins and Sean Willingham drew pretty well, and if they can stay on, they could have a big advantage going into Round 2 where there will be 19 bulls that have better than 85-percent career buckoff percentage. So the first draft round at Albuquerque will be about surviving with some kind of score, and a bad showing in Round 1 could lead to an even tougher task in Round 2.

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Among the people who really look at the numbers in bull riding (me and one other guy), there has been one major topic of discussion so far this season. Riding percentages have been up around 10% in the PBR in 2008.

That may not seem like much, but typically the riding percentage of all riders in all PBR events is around 30%, and to this point in 2008 it's been hovering around 40%. On the Built Ford Tough level, it's gone from the usual 37% to close to 50% at times. That's really quite an increase.

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