PUEBLO, Colo. – It’s been said throughout the first two seasons of the PBR Camping World Team Series, and it’s even more true for the 2024 season: the Carolina Cowboys have a stacked lineup.
With three World Champions on the roster, the Cowboys’ lineup has very few holes in it. While they’ve underperformed in past seasons, they’re finally looking like the PBR Teams Championship contender they are, going 2-0 at PBR Wildcatters Days, presented by Travel Oklahoma, to begin the season ranked No. 1.
Leading off for these very dangerous Cowboys is one of those World Champions – 2016 World Champion Cooper Davis.
Before Wildcatters Days, we hadn’t seen Davis on the back of a bull since the 2023 PBR Teams Championship. The 30-year-old decided to retire from the Unleash The Beast to rest his body and focus on Teams. So when he arrived at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, nobody really knew what to expect from him.
“I think there’s a big question mark next to my name right now, is, ‘How is he going to come back?’” Davis said before the Cowboys’ season-opener. “I definitely want to come back and show them that I’ve still got it. No nerves. Just excitement.”
That excitement shined through on the dirt, as Davis went 2-for-2 in his first action in nine months.
“It’s good to be back,” Davis said. “I feel refreshed right now. I feel like I’ve been able to focus on my body and get my body where it needs to be, which is not something we get to do in this sport very often. I’m 30 years old and am feeling like I’m 18 again. That’s a big plus.”
Another plus is that the Cowboys are getting a wiser version of the Cooper Davis that’s dominated the sport for a decade.
Davis spent the Unleash The Beast season in the CBS broadcast booth, doing color commentary alongside play-by-play announcer Craig Hummer. Watching so much bull riding with an analytical eye has given him some new insights into the sport.
“I think anytime you watch bull riding and you sit down with that mindset, you learn something,” Davis said. “And I learned a lot about the guys and what makes them tick, and what little things guys do differently on bulls that go into their hand vs. away, and where they set their ropes. I’ve taken and tried to apply some of that to the few bulls that I’ve been on lately. Bits and pieces of everybody’s riding style, I feel like I’ve tried to pick up on the things that I feel like we all need.”
It took him some time to adjust to his new role in the booth and not heading to the locker room with the rest of his friends.
“That was probably the weirdest part for me, was walking in the first few times and usually walking straight to the locker room. I almost didn’t know where to fit in,” Davis said with a laugh. “Then you walk past a guy and you think, ‘Man, I might’ve said something that upset him.’ All joking aside, it was different, showing up and working rather than going and getting on bulls and going to the locker room and hanging out with everybody.”
Davis did his best to balance giving honest commentary while being kind to the riders he would soon be sharing a locker room with again.
“The way I looked at it when I was in the broadcast booth is, if I said something, I wanted it to be constructive, and I wanted it to be where a guy could look at it and see, ‘Okay, he is right. This is what I need to work on,’ and not just hounding on him,” Davis said. “That way, if they did come to me and ask me something, or were upset at something, I could say, ‘Hey, it’s genuinely how I feel, and hopefully you can learn something from it.’ Because as a bull rider, we all talk back and forth on things we could do better and try to help each other out. So that’s the mindset I had going into it, so I think that helped.”
Davis recalls the one time a rider took offense to something he said was former teammate Boudreaux Campbell, now of the Missouri Thunder.
“He called me one time and he had something quick to say,” Davis said. “Then he called me back and he said, ‘You were right.’ That’s good enough to know. But nobody called me upset. I hopefully helped some guys ride this year. I remember when Sage (Kimzey) was doing it, I could listen to him, and it helped me.”
Indeed, before Kimzey joined the Cowboys, he was a member of the broadcast team for the inaugural PBR Team Series in 2022.
In Oklahoma City, the pair both went 2-for-2. In the Cowboys’ first game – the third perfect game in Teams history, and the highest-scoring game ever – Davis led off with 87.25 points on Mikey’s Surprise, while Kimzey closed it out with 91 points on Killer Bee. The following day, Davis rode Buzz for 89.5 points and Kimzey added 71.75 points on Red Demon.
Not bad for a couple of color commentators.
“I’ve enjoyed myself in the broadcast booth,” Davis said. “It’s been fun getting to watch everybody. There’s been times where the event was not going as planned and thought it’d be a good weekend to jump in there and get on the back of it and get one rode. But no, I’ve had fun with it and am looking forward to doing it again next year.”
Before Oklahoma City, Davis had only gotten on ten bulls since the PBR Teams Championship in October, and eight of them were over the summer. He only got on twice between January and June, but said like he felt like he hadn’t lost a step.
“I feel like a lot of guys feel like they have to do it all the time,” Davis said. “For me, I’ve always thought of it as riding a bicycle. You get back on and don’t overthink it. It’s a reaction sport, so to me, I didn’t worry about it too much. I’ve dealt with injury and coming back after six, seven months, and that was just kind of how I approached it.”
Davis and the Cowboys will be back in action at PBR Teams: Duluth on July 26-28, where they’ll take on the Arizona Ridge Riders (2-0), Austin Gamblers (0-2) and Kansas City Outlaws (2-0). Fans can catch all the action in Duluth on Merit Street, with the Game of the Week on CBS.
Carolina head coach Jerome Davis, for one, is thrilled to have his superstar back and firing on all cylinders.
“Coop, he’s a blessing for our team,” he said. “When he rolls into the bucking chutes, he don’t bobble, and he just sets the stage right off the bat. One good thing we like about starting with Coop is that he usually starts us off really strong, and he’s there keeping the guys built up through the rest of the deal.”
And now that he’s feeling rested and strong, Davis is ready to go.
“I work my butt off other than getting on bulls,” Davis said. “I work my butt off in the gym, and that was a big part as well. My body’s ready, so I’m ready.”
Photo courtesy of Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media
