An Interview With Author Josh Peter

By Allen M. Jones, 11-22-05

	Caption: Josh Peter

New West As a sportswriter, you've worked full time for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and published pieces in The Sporting News. What is it about bull riding (as opposed to say, boxing or tennis) that attracted your attention? That led you to devote more than a year of your life to writing about it?

Josh Peter Well, I’ve dabbled in Indian stickball, trained with professional wrestlers and gone to war on a paintball battlefield, all in pursuit of story. Too many writers mining the same terrain strikes me as a losing proposition and not much fun either. So I tend to stray off the beaten path. But with bull riding, the path came to me. I knew little about the sport until 2000, when the Professional Bull Riders tour made a stop in the Big Easy. I spent the week working on a profile of Chris Shivers, a star rider who lives about four hours from New Orleans, and a story about the bulls, then covered the event. These were athletes like none I’d ever seen. And I just got swept up in the visceral thrill of it all, not to mention the cowboy culture. By the end of the event, I knew there was a book here. It just took four years for everything to fall into place.

NW Reading through Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, and Bull Riding, you come away with a real sense of some of the idiosyncratic personalities behind the sport. These guys are all across the board, pious and profane, tee-totalers and beer guzzlers. What do they have in common? What sort of personality does it take to become a successful bull rider?

JP Only a certified psychiatrist, and a very good one, could give you a definitive answer. But here’s my best shot: Psychologically, the only way to conquer our greatest fears is to confront them head on. To do so is at once terrifying and empowering – a seemingly dangerous path to emotional freedom. Might sound like a bunch of, well, bullshit. But I really believe the bull riding is a literal extension of what the brave among us choose to do – confront are deepest, darkest fears. And so the riders serve as a literal extension of that, or at the very least a powerful metaphor for what we do internally, in confronting the prospect of death each time they climb board a bull.

Psycho-babble aside, they’re all risk-takers and brave sons-of-bitches.

NW Bull riding is one of the fastest growing sports in the nation. To what do you attribute its success?

JP Television. Sad to say, but TV is responsible for spreading the good word about the PBR and bull riding. Yes, it took some bold cowboys to break away from the main rodeo circuit, pool together their money and start the tour. It also took some bright minds to repackage bull riding as an “extreme sport’’ and shed the “rodeo’’ label that marginalizes the sport. But ultimately, only TV could, and did, deliver the repackaged the sport to millions of viewers and new fans.

Now, why are more and more people tuning in? In large part, for the same reason people watch NASCAR – the sense of danger and the possibility of horrific and even fatal wrecks. There’s nothing quite as compelling as watching someone risk their life. But I also think disaffected sports fans – those tired of owners leveraging cities for new stadiums, those tired of multimillionaire athletes holding out for more money and those simply tired of the dark side of sports – find bull riding refreshing. Sure, bull riding has its dark side, too, and the increasing bottom-line mentality has stripped away some of the charm. But there’s still an unmistakable purity to it all. Think about it: The season champion gets a $1 million bonus. Most members of the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball would refuse to suit up unless guaranteed at least $1 million per season.

NW One of the things that's striking about the book is how thoroughly you were provided behind-the-scenes access. How did you manage it, being able to gain the confidences of the different riders?

JP It wasn’t my cowboy boots, oversized belt buckle or stiff-brimmed Resistol that gained me access, because I showed up without any of the standard bull rider accoutrements. I’m pure city slicker, and these guys knew it. But I have a knack for blending in and earning the confidence of “strangers.’’ And ultimately, I think the riders knew I had a genuine interest in understanding them and their sport.

Why the hell else would I have been following them around all year?

NW Given the egos associated with the sport, it seems like most bull riders would readily proclaim themselves the best in the business. Who, in your opinion, has truly been the best? What made him that way? And what about bulls. Is there a bull that's been the greatest bucker in the world? What makes for a great bucking bull?

JP Funny, I recently wrote a column on my blog (which, excuse the shameless plug, readers can find at www.friedtwinkies.com) addressing that question: Who’s the best ever? In my opinion, it’s a dead heat between the likes of Adriano Moraes, Tuff Hedeman, Donnie Gay and maybe even Troy Dunn. Among those four, only Adriano, at age 35 still is riding. The other day he won the 2006 season opener – the 2006 season opener in 2005? Don’t ask – and vowed to become the first rider to win three PBR championships. If he does, the debate is over. Adriano Moraes is the world’s greatest rider – ever.

As far as the bulls go, I’ll defer to Cody Lambert, a veteran rider who barnstormed the country with the likes of Tuff Hedeman, Lane Frost and Ty Murray, “The King of Cowboys.’’ Lambert has seen thousands of bulls, and he says the best ever is Little Yellow Jacket, the only three-time PBR champion. The bull is quick, strong and unpredictable. Kind of like a pitcher that can come at you with the 100 mph fastball, sharp-breaking curveball and dastardly knuckleball.

NW Any predictions for the sport itself? Where can we expect bull riding to go in the next ten years?

JP As George Allen, the Hall-of-Fame football coach, once said, “The future is now.’’ The PBR could not have scripted the 2005 Finals any better, and in reigning champion Justin McBride it has an ideal ambassador – funny, coarse, tough, smart, handsome. A little too skinny to serve as the Marlboro Man, but the embodiment of what many people love about the American cowboy, and articulate and charming enough to convey that to the general public.

Also, with a confluence of events – a 10-episode series focusing on three PBR Riders set to air in January on The Learning Channel, a story set to run in the New York Times Magazine and the book – the PBR has moved into position to break into the mainstream consciousness of American sports fans and TV viewers. Which was a nice way of avoiding your original question: Where can we expect bull riding to go in the next 10 years?

If the PBR seizes the moment, the sport can become another NASCAR. If not, it’ll be where it is today, paying for time on NBC and waiting for the elusive breakthrough.

[End of article]