Rodeo Cowboys Buck Stereotype, Form Riders Union
The rodeo is back in town, so watch where you step, for obvious reasons.
And for reasons not so obvious. Those snakeskin Justins you tread on may belong to a union organizer.
Say what? And the horse who rode in on?
Easy, big fella. When the Wrangler Prorodeo Classic commences tonight at the Spokane Arena, it’ll be the same ropin’, ridin’ and ‘rithmetic that 15,000 of you ponied up for a year ago - the same elements that turned rodeo into the spectator sport of choice for corral potatoes of the 19th century.
It’s just that, well, somebody’s filed a grievance at the Bar Lazy J. That would be the rodeo cowboy. He’s talking union. Actually, he’s talking players association - not a union in the strict sense, but still a drastic departure for America’s original free agents, our icons for dogged individualism.
“But this isn’t something we’re going to make anybody do,” said Rod Lyman. “We want to make it good enough to where guys say, ‘Hey, I want to be a part of that.”’
You’ll see Lyman in the team roping Friday night at the Arena - and, if you’re a diehard, steer wrestling in the post-performance slack. He’s one of the event’s headliners, a perennial in the steer wrestling top 10.
He’s a career cowboy from Lolo, Mont., - one of Missoula’s bedrooms - who’s as rank-and-file as the come. Yet a scant few months ago, he was establishment - a member of the 11-man board of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, which has governed the sport for 60 years.
Then in November, he resigned.
That’s when the PRCA board elected to add four more non-voting members - none of them contestants. Already outnumbered on the board 7-4 by stock contractors and rodeocrats, the cowboys felt squeezed. So they decided to squeeze back.
This week, a Florida marketing firm was hired and the Professional Cowboys Organization came into being. You want labor rhetoric? You’ve got it.
“We’ve been the gladiators,” Lyman said at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, “except the gladiators got a free meal before they went to fight.”
Not that the cowboys expect a free lunch.
They’re bucking for a retirement plan and comprehensive insurance - the same kinds of things that players associations in other sports have long had in place, to say nothing of us dudes here in real life.
They’d like more say about little things. And, yes, they’d like more money. “A lot of avenues haven’t been touched to generate more sponsor money,” Lyman insisted. “The sport needs to grow. But there are certain people in power who don’t want it to grow much bigger because they’re afraid of losing control. We feel like they’ve inhibited growth.”
PRCA commissioner Lew Fryer would hasten to stress that prize money has increased $7 million in his seven years. Not all of that has been pocketed by all-around wiz Ty Murray, though it might seem that way.
“The PRCA has glorified the high money winners,” said Lyman. “They’ll point out the five guys making over $100,000 and fail to mention that’s gross revenue. They don’t tell you these guys were away from home 260 days out of the year and the expense of rodeoing at that pace. “They forget about the other 4,500 guys who maybe went to 80 rodeos and made $12,000. That’s the message we need to get out - that this association isn’t just set up for the top guys.”
Lyman is a top guy - though the $76,303 he won in 1995 was down a few thou from his two previous years. He is one of the 260-days-a-year roadies who, pushing 35 now, notes that this cowboy empowerment will come to fruition “too late to do me a lot of good.”
You’d think the whole notion could be dicey PR for a sport with rural, conservative roots. “Players association” and “union” aren’t four-letter words, but a sports fan’s response to them usually is. The mindset, however irrelevant, is that the average Joe would play these kids’ games for free. Rodeo is different. None of us would do that for free.
“Someone at the Denver rodeo asked me if we all wanted to be treated like stars,” said Lyman. “Well, no, we’re not interested in that.
But we would like to be treated.”
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review