PUEBLO, Colo. – As the minutes ticked down to the PBR Team Series Draft, presented by ZipRecruiter, at Texas Live! on May 23, Austin Richardson may have said it best.
“It’s history,” Richardson said. “This is something new to everybody that’s in this room, and I think great things are going to happen, especially with this Teams deal. We’re all going to bond together and try to make the best coming out of all of us.”
It’s history. It’s new. Great things are going to happen.
But before the great things happened, all that newness meant nerves. Lots of them.
The second episode of PBR Team Series: Getting the Job Done, presented by ZipRecruiter, brings fans behind the scenes of the first-ever draft, getting the inside scoop from coaches, general managers and riders alike as picks – and history – were made. The series airs on RidePass on Pluto TV, with episode two set to debut on Sept. 8 at 8:30 p.m. ET.
But back to the nerves.
Even the coaches of the eight teams – all grizzled veterans themselves – were feeling the strain on draft night.
“I’m feeling more nervous than the last time I got on a bull, I think, maybe,” said Colby Yates of the Arizona Ridge Riders. “This is pretty exciting. It’s a tense moment for us. We’ve been doing a lot of homework and a lot of studying over the last few months, so we feel prepared. I think it’s probably just the anticipation and not knowing. The unknown of what teams are actually going to do. We have an idea of what we think they’re going to do, but more than likely, we’re going to be surprised today, and that’s the part that kills us right now.”
Austin Gamblers head coach Michael Gaffney echoed similar sentiments.
“We’re here, and I think everybody’s ready to go,” Gaffney said. “It’s been highly anticipated. It’s exciting. I was telling somebody just earlier that I think I’d rather climb on a couple of bulls, even at my age, than deal with this. This is making me a little bit nervous.”
Even the stoic Cody Lambert, head coach of the Texas Rattlers, hinted at some emotion.
“I’m pretty excited about it. I’m just not knowing how to feel about it. It’s my first draft,” Lambert said, cracking a wry smile.
While every coach is a bona-fide bull riding expert, having to build a team from the ground up was new territory for all of them. All the grit and try in the world wasn’t going to supersede doing the work and crunching the numbers.
“I think we’ve done all the preparation that we can do,” said Cord McCoy of the Oklahoma Freedom. “It’s time to play ball, and we feel like we’ve scouted, we’ve called, we’ve kicked tires, we’ve watched rides, wrote notes over notes over notes, had meetings over conference calls over Zoom calls over text message. Today, you’ve kind of got to get on the court and lay your cards down.”
“We’ve been putting a lot of effort in at the Cowboys organization, going through a lot of stats, trying to make the best picks we can,” echoed Carolina Cowboys GM Austin Dillon. “But everybody’s kind of holding pat right now. Nobody’s showing their cards. I hope it opens up a little bit and we see some trade action later.”
(Spoiler alert: Dillon got his wish thanks to… well, himself.)
In the rider green room backstage, the mood was similarly buzzing with nervous anticipation.
“I feel like I was on no one’s radar,” said Cody Jesus, who was coming off the best week of his career, nearly winning the 2022 PBR World Finals. “I wasn’t riding anything like I should’ve, but I got it turned around, talked to a bunch of coaches, and just feel excited about it.”
Chase Outlaw, who was returning from several years beset with injuries, knew it would affect his draft stock.
“I’m just curious to see where we’re going to go,” Outlaw said. “You can get hurt at any time, and so whoever’s passing me up because of my injuries I’ve had, and when I come back and we kick butt, it’s going to have them scratching their head. And so, whoever does pick me is who I’m going to be dedicated to because they believed in what happens when I do put my hand in the rope.”
So how did things go when the draft started?
Well, you’ll have to tune in to find out.
Episode two of PBR Team Series: Getting the Job Done, presented by ZipRecruiter, debuts Thursday, Sept. 8 at 8:30 p.m. ET only on Pluto TV’s RidePass.
Photo courtesy of Andy Watson/Bull Stock Media
