BULLSH*T!

So who knew that bullriding was so freaking awesome? I just casually turned on the Outdoor Life Network yesterday in a bit of post-dinner-food-coma and, oh, man -- there are just so many things that made in more interesting than I possibly would have thought.

1) The bulls are insane-looking. They're so huge and muscly and there are an assortment of amazing physical details on them - some have amazing patchworky colors, others are longer-haired and curly-ish, some have that black, shiny hair. Some bulls have some bizarre huge lump (fat? muscle? no idea!) just behind their necks. And, of course, there are the horns, some long, some short, some beat-up, some elegant and scary-looking. And these things are just gigantic, 3000 pounds or more. Amazing. And they all have different styles of bucking and jumping, but more on that later.

2) The cowboys themselves are just models of steely, manly, intense resolve, as one would expect from a sport that requires you to routinely walk away from being stepped on, gored or slammed into walls. There's something really cool about them, all swagger and intensity. Seriously, this is much more of an "extreme" sport than something like skateboarding or snowboarding - not to downplay the danger boarders face, but their boards are not actively trying to get them off their backs. Just saying. BAD-ASS.

3) The commentators were awesome. It's hard to just step into a sport that you know nothing about and watch it, but they made it really easy, with background & strategy commentary. Like people who oversimplify NASCAR and don't see the strategy behind a lot of it, I always had an idea in my head of what bull-riding was like, and it certainly didn't involve any of the strategy of picking what bull you're riding or the constant counterbalancing and anticipation of what the bull's going to do next. I didn't know, for example, that it's a judged sport - it's based a lot on style and your dismount. Crazy! And I wouldn't have thought that I'd be able to pick out a good bullrider from a bad one (aside from the bad bullriders not making it to 8 seconds), but you really can tell - the good ones look like they're locked onto their bull, moving as one unit - making it look easy. When it happens, you can totally tell. And it's really beautiful to see.

So there we go. I'm hooked, at least for now. The final round of the Mohegan Sun Invitational is today at 3 o'clock, and I'll be watching. Perhaps with a beer in hand. Feeling damn manly, I might add.