Caution: Vulgarity Ahead

Here I am, folks, out in the Montana cold, rolling up hundreds of feet of garland and tiny LED lights that I had swathed over the fences and, truth be told, moping just a bit. No, I don’t have the post-Christmas blues. Fortunately for me, I really do love the holidays, probably because my parents did, and although I do sympathize with folks who find the season difficult because of personal losses or difficult circumstances, I don’t have any patience with people who want to piss on other people’s parades by railing about the “commercialism” and the rat race exhaustion and, of course and most important of all, the “War on Christmas.” If you have a problem about the holidays, I will thank you to keep your damned mouth shut about it. Go sit in the corner and brood upon your own self-righteousness and leave me the hell out of it.

The sad thing is that what I’m moping about isn’t like to get resolved anytime soon. The PBR season starts tonight, and I am finding it hard to work up any enthusiasm. I am more than happy to blame this on my dear friend and partner in crime, Pearl de Vere, because she recently reminded me of a post from way back in 2008 in which I was complaining about—wait for it—a lot of the same shit I’m still complaining about. 

Her observation prompted me to think about all the things that the PBR bosses still need to fix and seem oblivious to, from the very serious issue of making wearing a helmet mandatory to the less worrisome, but genuinely stomach-churning, matter of making Flint quit twerking. (In Pearl’s immortal words, “That shit has to stop.”) Is it really possible that he didn't get the fact that parents all over the country were horrified by Miley Cyrus' little display of bad taste?

Top it all off with the way the last championship was stolen from Silvano Alves, via a few points shaved off each successful ride at a time, and we are facing a disheartening situation. I will be very, very surprised if we don’t see the same thing this year, so as to guarantee that an American wins the title. 

I mean no disrespect to J.B. Mauney, who fought the good fight and gave us some spectacular rides in the process, but I would be lying if I said that I don’t think he got some help from the judges. I doubt that the PBR as a whole is organized enough to orchestrate a conspiracy, but I am also just pretty damned sure that some individual judges decided to take matters into their own hands and make sure Alves didn’t three-peat. (For more on this subject, I invite you to check out Kris diLorenzo's excellent posts on her blog, Bull Riding Marketing.)

All that being said, I don’t mean to suggest that the dudes who run the PBR should be jumping every time I say frog, although that would be nice. But it would also be nice if they would quit acting like anybody who makes a suggestion is the Antichrist and obviously just out to spoil their fun.

 

Let’s consider for a moment just one issue—making wearing helmets mandatory. Virtually anybody with any sense (which mostly means people over the age of 21 who weren’t born in a barn and who aren’t trying to ride bulls for a living) would agree that bull riders should wear helmets. It is, as Ruby would say, as plain as the nose on your face. But aside from the issue of public opinion, there is an ever-growing body of hard evidence that repeated concussions and even less significant head injuries have serious long-term effects. 

And now there's a formal medical diagnosis for a condition that can be the end result of multiple head injuries: chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Just trot on over there, please, and read about what this condition entails, and then ask yourself if it makes any sense for the PBR to continue to ignore this very serious threat to the health of the riders. How can simple bullheadness and misguided adherence to what they perceive to be the Cowboy Way possibly make more sense than adopting a policy to diminish such a clear and present danger?

 

Back in August, the National Football League settled a class-action lawsuit with a bunch of its retired players who had suffered multiple concussions and are now living with the consequences. The league shelled out $765 million bucks to help care for these players, and now it looks like that amount won't be nearly enough to take care of everybody. 

Granted, the PBR does not have anything like the number of participants as the NFL, but does it seem at all likely that the PBR could afford anything approaching a settlement that, let's say, set aside a similar amount per rider? I'm sure that the riders sign their lives away for the privilege of riding in the PBR, but there's always the prospect that an athlete might take on an organization that deliberately sidesteps important safety issues. Even if it was impossible for a rider to file a lawsuit, the publicity he would get for raising the issue would not be good for the PBR.

And that’s just one example of the PBR’s hell-bent determination to ignore the thoughtful and well-meant urgings of observers of the sport. We could go on forever, and sometimes it seems like we have, and literally nothing ever changes, and we continue to hear the same bullshit justifications from the organization. 

Honestly, it’s no wonder I’m in a funk. Who do we have to fuck to get some action?