Riding Percentages in Professional Bull Riders Teams Are Soaring

Riders in Anaheim set Team league record for 62 qualified rides over the 3-day event.

Courtesy of PBR

Last weekend in Anaheim, the cowboys were riding lights out.

No, it wasn’t a problem with California’s shaky power grid – the world’s best bull riders hung on for 8 seconds on 62 of 132 attempts (46.96%) at PBR Teams: Anaheim inside Honda Center.

That’s a record number of qualified rides in three seasons of five-on-five bull riding games.

The previous best for rides in a PBR Camping World Team Series weekend was 53 – accomplished this year at Freedom Days in Sunrise, Florida and Outlaw Days in Kansas City, Missouri as well as in 2022 at Rattler Days in Fort Worth, Texas and Ridge Rider Days in Glendale, Arizona.

Teams went 4-for-5 four times over the weekend – the Texas Rattlers and Oklahoma Wildcatters on Friday and the Kansas City Outlaws on Saturday and Sunday.

While Southern California may not offer as rank a pen as in Oklahoma or Texas, the more revealing analysis for when, how and why riders are making the 8 is if an athlete is on a team or competing individually.  

The data is clear: Riders are generating qualified rides at a much higher rate in the team format.

This season to date, the cowboy athletes are riding at 38% in team competition compared to 29% for the full 2024 individual Unleash The Beast season.

Courtesy of PBR

That doesn’t surprise 2022 World Champion Daylon Swearingen whose league-leading Carolina Cowboys head into their 2024 homestand in Greensboro on Friday night. 

“Guys in Teams are getting on bulls that fit their style. The coaches (who pair the riders against the bulls they’re given) are trying to make every bull fit each guy as best they can,” he said.

In 2023, the riding percentage in Teams was 33% versus 28% for UTB. Prior to that in the first season of Teams, the difference was smaller: 35% for Teams to 32% for UTB.

Those numbers point to riders on teams having more success in a team format with each passing season.

But why does the gap in teams’ riding percentage compared to individual competition continue to widen?

Courtesy of PBR

New York Mavericks head coach Kody Lostroh points to more consistent training, particularly with the mental framework it takes each bull rider, previously on his own, to thrive in a new team environment.

While coaches may be getting better at being coaches, the challenge remains keeping riders healthy.

The league’s expansion this season to 10 teams has given teams periodic byes, creating pockets of much-needed rest and recovery.

Teams like the Austin Gamblers are now using advanced data analytics to calculate their match-ups, also helping riders.

Swearingen’s Carolina Cowboys were off to a blazing 10-0-1 start. The rocketing team returned to earth and enter their homestand at 15-4-1.

Conventional wisdom accepts lowering the bar over time. You can’t win ‘em all. Every sizzling-hot team has to cool off.

But do they really have to?

Former U.S. Navy SEAL Sean Murphy was hired by the Cowboys to make sure the team is getting every qualified ride possible.

While the cliché is winning is contagious, Murphy points out the unique challenge the Cowboys faced in maintaining their extraordinary early-season success in a punishing milieu like bull riding. 

“Later in the season you’re physically and mentally exhausted, and you’ve already faced a number of challenges,” he said. “If an athlete has had success, not adversity, it could make him complacent to drop off on areas he needs to pay attention to.”

Murphy works with the Cowboys to manage the deepest parts of a bull riders’ mindset – to stay hungry and maintain discipline to focus on all the things that were driving each individual toward the good habits that keep the cycle of success spinning.

“You’re not a champion by default,” Murphy said. “How a rider manages losing, when it comes, is what separates him from mediocrity. The question is always: What am I doing to continue to grow and get better. Winners continually challenge themselves.”

Coach Mauney / Courtesy of PBR

While he said it in a different way, that sounds a lot like Oklahoma Wildcatters head coach J.B. Mauney.

“You better always be thinking about improving,” the two-time PBR World Champion said. “You never get to perfection in this sport. Even during my best riding in a championship season, I didn’t think I was riding the bull correctly. There’s always something you can be doing a little bit better.”  

Bull riders who buck off naturally get disappointed. Might even throw or kick some stuff.  Murphy helps the Cowboys deal with the inevitable frustration.

“If you throw a fit, it’s creating the bad habit of letting your emotions control you,” he said. “The faster you get back into the hunger mode of wanting to get better, the better you’re going to be. The disappointment will be there, but you need to get back into the focus and discipline of being hungry and overcome the challenges of doubt. Success is a cycle. We want riders to quickly get back to learning and growing – and not letting one mistake control you. You are the one who always has control.”

In individual competition, bucking off and heading back to a lonely hotel room can be a deflating proposition.

Team competition in a shared culture is helping contribute to the increased riding percentages, Murphy says.

“Teams can build a strong culture with shared knowledge and others to lean on. It’s a shared weight with all the stressors of success and failure brought into that locker room. One guy doesn’t ride. Someone else does. The team can still win. He still contributed. He’ll get another chance. He can find success even without having a ride – it keeps him elevated. At the end of the day, the percentages have to go up.” 

Courtesy of PBR

2016 PBR World Champion and the Cowboys leadoff man Cooper Davis vouches for the benefits of the new kinds of training, which have included hauling a heavy log then trying to solve a three-dimensional puzzle while physically exhausted.  

In the Mavericks training camp, Lostroh had his riders move heavy objects under water while holding their breath.  

Just as bull riders are entering the part of the season when they’re tired and banged up, they’ve been trained on blocking out the external stressors, calming down, and focusing on the task at hand. 

“Murph to us has been the best tool we could have asked for,” Davis said about the former Navy SEAL. “Everyone is learning how to work through things and keep a level mindset. The strategies and exercises he’s brought us have been tough to get through, but that’s taught us how to handle stressful situations.”

Coaches. Mental training. More rest. Data-driven matchups. The brotherhood of the locker room. It’s all leading to more qualified rides. And few will disagree: hearing the whistle often is good for the sport.

This isn’t soccer; with all due respect to “the beautiful game,” bull riding fans watching David take on Goliath with nothing but a bull rope in his hand and courage in his heart want to see the improbable become possible through sheer grit and try. They want to celebrate all night long.  

And so, matched by savvy coaches against well-scouted, data-crunched bulls when they’re not exercising underwater while holding their breath to learn how to clear their heads during dangerous, stressful situations, bull riders are putting up scores at a higher rate.

Only one event this season this season has concluded with fewer than 40 qualified rides.

Mavericks Days at Barclays Center featured 28 rides over two days, which still would have paced as more than 40 for three-day event.

Regardless, this might not mean as much in downtown Brooklyn, a place where the fans cheer the loudest for defiant bulls who summarily dispatch their cowboy cargo then run round the dirt refusing to exit for the back pen.