FORT WORTH, Texas - The first time Tom Teague attended a PBR event, he was captivated by the atmosphere and saw the potential for the sport of professional bull riding.

He turned to his good friend, the late Dale Earnhardt, and said he thought the PBR could represent a smaller version of what NASCAR had become.

They were in Charlotte, N.C., and Teague was an instant fan.

He asked if he could meet Randy Bernard, and before they had even had a chance to shake hands, Teague was peppering the then CEO with one question after another. Liking what he heard, Teague told Bernard he was interested in getting involved.

PBR co-founder Cody Lambert recalled Teague "really believed in Randy."

Teague grew up the son of a tenant farmer and, much like the PBR, Teague had made his own way in life. Before he and Earnhardt left Charlotte, he famously told Bernard, "If you ever need anything, you just call me."

It was common for the fast friends to call one another and share business ideas, so it wasn't a surprise for Bernard to place a call to Teague.

But this call was different.

Bernard told Teague he had good news and bad news.

The good news was that Bernard found a way for the North Carolina businessman to become a partner in the PBR, as well as have an opportunity to become an equal stockholder, as if he were one of the founding members. Teague then asked about the bad news. It was the close of business on a Friday and first thing Monday morning, Bernard needed $6 million to help secure television rights for the PBR.

The bad news, according to Teague, was that Bernard didn't have any way of supporting the investment, other than to offer a handshake and his word that it would work out.

"I said, 'Jeez ma-ninny,'" recalled Teague, who slept on it for three nights.

"My chief financial officer said, 'You have to be crazy, Tom.' My partner said, 'What in the (heck) are you doing?' It's something I believed in and it's a heck of an opportunity and I said, 'I really like the guy who's running it.'

"That's the way I got started in the PBR."

The ability to purchase back its television rights was the catalyst to an even more important moment in PBR history, its network television debut on NBC.

"Anybody who doesn't appreciate what Randy and Tom Teague did for bull riding and for western sports in general, especially rodeo, if anybody doesn't appreciate it they don't know what they've done. Every one of us owes those guys so much."

Throughout its 20^th anniversary season, the PBR will profile the Top 20 Moments in PBR History. "PBR debuts on network television" is the latest in an ongoing series of moments.

In 2001, the PBR made its network television debut on NBC after buying back its television rights from producer Allen Reid. The deal orchestrated between Bernard and Teague played an instrumental role in the organization developing a national following via television.

In the early years, the PBR had signed a deal with Reid, who agreed to pay the PBR for each event, but the PBR quickly outgrew the deal after five years. To this day, the organization owns its rights and continues to negotiate television agreements, which would not have been possible without Teague.

Reid, who owned a television production company in Nashville, Tenn., approached the PBR prior to the 1994 World Finals in Las Vegas. At the time, he was best known for producing a gardening series and other home improvement shows that were broadcast on TNN. He also produced the Mesquite Rodeo.

Historically, the only television that rodeo had ever had was when they bought the time.

"We didn't have any money," Lambert said, "so we told him we couldn't buy any television time, but we'd love to be on. He said, 'No, I want to pay you to be on television.'"

Reid calculated the production cost involved and said he'd be able to afford paying the PBR $12,000 per event. In exchange, the PBR had to agree to produce a specific number of events each season. They started with eight in 1995, and went to 12 and then 16 per season.

For bull riding, or rodeo, not having to pay to secure a timeslot was unheard of.

However, in return, Reid owned the television rights for the term of the contract, which Lambert recalled being longer than 10 years.

At the time, the PBR's television time had little value, but that would quickly change as the sport began to grow in popularity.

Initially, both parties had gotten along great for the first couple of years, especially considering the PBR had become the highest-rated show on TNN. Reid would air the PBR one week and the Mesquite Rodeo the next, before producing more and more of the PBR from week to week.

Within five years, the deal that once seemed unheard of was actually limiting the PBR's potential.

Reid would send a stripped-down crew to film two-to-four PBR events, edit them all at once, and then fly in the broadcasters to his Nashville studio to record the commentary. Unfortunately, the events would sometimes air two months or more after they took place.

"We wanted to be respected as a sport," said Lambert, and that meant more timely broadcasting of PBR events.

That was a big deal.

An even bigger deal was the idea the PBR could grow even more if one day it could be on network television.

Reid was resistant to the idea. He liked how the deal was still working out for him, considering he produced several shows on TNN and had sold them as a package to the fledgling cable network.

"He was making the best deals he could," Lambert recalled, "but we wanted to go a different direction."

Bernard saw securing those rights from Reid as the key to their future, and so he and members of the PBR Board of Directors began meeting with Reid to negotiate a buyout.

According to Lambert, the PBR only had $1 million in the bank and they needed to keep that money there, which meant they could only borrow $500,000 against it - far short of what was needed.

"There was no sense in borrowing half unless we could find a way to get it done," Lambert said, "and Randy Bernard found a way to get it done."

Nine-time World Champion Ty Murray, who was another instrumental player among the founders, remembers Teague often asking, "What can I do? How can I get involved?"

"When it came time to buy the TV rights back and we needed about $6.5 million, we were like, 'Hey Tom, we know something you can do,'" Murray was quoted as saying in the documentary "This is Not a Rodeo."

"Tom didn't bat an eye," Lambert said. "He made it possible."

With control of the PBR's television rights in hand, Bernard then turned his attention toward network TV - namely NBC - but the risky idea was met with some resistance.

Tuff Hedeman was among those who opposed buying the TV time - a move that had bankrupted Bull Riders Only a few years earlier.

Former PBR vice president Tommy Joe Lucia charged that the PBR would also be broke within a month, according to the documentary. He and four other senior-level executives told Bernard not to pursue the plan or they would leave.

"I was so mad and so upset just in the way they had presented it to me," Bernard said in the film.

The irony was that those who wanted Bernard to fail were the ones who failed to see what he and others were trying to build for the future of the sport. Not only was the broadcast a success - its 2.3 rating was twice what anyone had predicted - it set the table for an explosion in popularity that no one could have foreseen.

The network event took place in Austin, Texas, at the Frank Erwin Center and featured sportscaster George Michael (famous for hosting the nationally-syndicated Sunday night recap "Sports Machine"), along with Hedeman, who despite his disapproval, served as an analyst.

Bernard said the one-day show created a momentum swing in favor of the PBR.

With television rights secured and network exposure, the PBR quickly became known among media types as the "fastest-growing sport in the world."

"It was a step that we needed to take," said Lambert, of the risky decision to buy the time on NBC. "We were trying to grow the sport. The thing is, we felt a responsibility from day one to be stewards of the sport. We felt if we don't do it, then nobody else will.

"A lot of times you can't see the big picture, and Randy sees a bigger picture than all of us guys that were rodeoing could see."

Bull riding by nature is an individual sport in which individual success depends on your ability to look out for yourself and take care of yourself.

As a result, that inherent personality trait found in all professional bull riders creates a narrow focus in which it's easy, according to Lambert, for riders to say, "How does that affect me?"

But the long-term success of the PBR called for the same unified vision the 20 founders had when they voted to organize the PBR in April of 1992.

Television is a big business and it's risky.

However, risk is nothing new for bull riders.

"We paid a lot of money for our television rights and we paid a (heck) of a lot of money for our first network television show, and we needed to do it again, too," Lambert said. "We didn't just need to have one pretty successful network television show and then say, 'OK, we've done that.' We had to be able to do it again and again."

The PBR eventually went from TNN to OLN to Versus and then NBC Sports Network, before CBS Sports Network became the exclusive home of the PBR, including 10 broadcasts this season on CBS.

This year's Last Cowboy Standing will feature back-to-back network broadcasts for the first time in PBR history, May 11-12.

Most people never saw bull riding or rodeo on television until the PBR was regularly televised. Lambert lamented the notion that a vast majority of fans didn't know bull riding was a sport prior to Adriano Moraes and Chris Shivers.

"Anybody who doesn't appreciate what Randy and Tom Teague did for bull riding and for western sports in general, especially rodeo - if anybody doesn't appreciate it they don't know what they've done," Lambert said. "Every one of us owes those guys so much."

More importantly, Lambert concluded, "This moment is about the PBR."

Follow Keith Ryan Cartwright on Twitter @PBR_KRC.