About: Ted

ARLINGTON, Texas – Tim O’Connell knew the 2020 National Finals Rodeo was going to be a battle. Tough bucking horses and 15 great bareback riders are part of the show, and that means every jump out of the chute can be big time for just about anybody. After faltering a bit in the third round, the three-time world champion rebounded with a 90.5-point ride on Fettig Pro Rodeo’s Pop A Top to win Sunday’s Round 5. “(Saturday) night wasn’t near what I wanted to do,” said O’Connell, 29, of Zwingle, Iowa. “I had a great horse underneath me (Sunday). It gave me an opportunity to show off and show out, and that’s exactly what I wanted. We’re in this thing. “I’ve had this No. 1 spot in the world all year, and I don’t ever plan to give it up.” He entered the NFR atop the world standings, but four-time world champion Kaycee Feild had gained ground after Round 3 – Feild pulled to within $1,900 prior to Sunday’s round. By collecting the $26,231 first-place payout, O’Connell extended his lead. There are six rounds remaining to decide this year’s world championship. “Kaycee and I are going to have a slugfest, but he’s not the only one in this thing,” said O’Connell, the 2015 national champion bareback riding champion at Missouri Valley College who earned world titles in 2016-18. “There are a lot of guys in this, and people forget it. There are four or five guys that are real players in tis race, and we’re not even to the halfway point. “I feel confident in my riding; I feel confident in my mind. I’ve got my joy back riding bucking horses, and we’re ready to roll.” It helped to have a horse like Pop A Top, one of the few horses that are at the NFR that O’Connell hasn’t ridden. “I knew he was going to be a shot, especially when I saw him,” he said. “He’s a really built, thicker stud with a shorter back and a little bit smaller. I’d seen him buck, and he’s so electric. He really gave it to me that first jump out of the chute. He fed it right back to me, and I fed it right back to him. “After about that second spur stroke, I knew he was going to take the spur stroke I was going to put to him, so I just let it go after that.” It was a veteran move, but it’s also why O’Connell is on track for his fourth Montana Silversmiths gold buckle.

ARLINGTON, Texas – In just three nights of ProRodeo’s championship event, Bridger Anderson has made a name for himself. The steer wrestler from Carrington, North Dakota, has placed in just two rounds, but he’s placed high. He won Friday’s round, then he tied for second place in Saturday’s third go-round with his fastest run of the week. He grappled his steer to the ground in 3.6 seconds to tie Louisianan Jacob Talley and earn $18,192. In all, he’s pocketed $51,673 at Globe Life Field in Arlington and has pushed his season earnings to $95,550. He has moved up nine places to second in the world standings. “We knew we had a good one that ran a little bit,” said Anderson, a senior at Northwestern Oklahoma State University. “I took a fairly aggressive start, and I wasn’t sure if I broke the barrier.” If he had, he would have suffered a 10-second penalty, but that didn’t happen. He grabbed ahold of the animal’s head, then stopped the clock in a hurry. Only Will Lummus of Mississippi was faster, but by just one-tenth of a second. “That steer was good and felt awesome,” Anderson said. “Looking up and seeing 3.6, I was excited. Stockton (Graves, his hazer) did a great job lining him out for me, and my horse allowed me to get my feet on the ground.” Steer wrestling is always a tight race, and this year is no different. Anderson trails the leader, Matt Reeves, by just $6,900 with seven nights in a row. Although he didn’t earn a check in the opening round, he has performed well enough to sit fourth in the aggregate race with a cumulative time of 13.1 seconds on three runs. “I’m feeling really comfortable,” he said. “The first night, I missed the start and ran him a long way. We knew we had to clean that up. As long as I hit the start and keep making solid runs, I feel real confident about the next seven nights. “I’m really comfortable with my hazer and my horse. Everything feels really confident right now.” Between performances, Anderson takes care of himself and spends time with family, something he doesn’t get to do through the year while living 800 miles from home. Graves, who also serves as the rodeo coach at Northwestern Oklahoma State, handles the horses and makes sure everything’s ready by the time the rounds begin at 7 p.m. each night. “Stockton’s in charge of the horses this week,” Anderson said. “He’s been to the NFR seven times as a bulldogger and several other times outside of when he’s qualified. I’m entrusting him with the horses this week. I can trust him with about anything. “We’ll talk about the draw, but really we bulldog thousands of steers. Take what you’ve got drawn, and see what happens from there.

ARLINGTON, Texas – In a pen of really tough horses, Mason Clements found a familiar foe in Frontier Rodeo’s Show Stomper. “That was the fourth time I’ve had Show Stomper,” said Clements, 28, of Spanish Fork, Utah. “That was definitely the hardest I’ve ever been hit by Show Stomper but not the rankest trip.” Scores are based on a 100-point scale, with half going to how well the animal performs and half going to how well the cowboy rides the animal. In bareback riding, the cowboy is scored on how well he can spur in rhythm with the horse’s bucking motion. On Saturday night, Clements and the big bay matched moves for 83 points, good enough for sixth place in the third round and worth $4,231. It was the second time in three nights Clements has earned a paycheck at this year’s National Finals Rodeo. “I’ve just got to go back to the basics and be no different than riding my spur board at home,” he said. “You’ve got to be super strong and super-fast. You have to keep your chin tucked down and keep everything together.” That’s easier said than done on horses like that. The third round featured the “Eliminator Pen” of bareback horses, meaning they were the toughest to ride. The cowboys will have one more sot to ride them this next Thursday during the eighth round. It can be a true test of man vs. beast. “I feel good, and I feel like we’re just getting primed up,” Clements said. “It’s a marathon, so you’ve got to just keep your head in the game. My body is doing good, so it’s just mental work now.” The NFR features only the top 15 cowboys on the money list from the regular season. This is set up to be a test of how well each man can ride different types of animals. There are 100 horses that the 15 cowboys select to be at Globe Life Field in Arlington, and they’re set up in five types of pens. “The next few rounds are going to be really fun, especially with the horses like (Sunday), which are just going to be super nice, easy-to-ride horses,” he said. “Then the next night will be my favorite round and favorite pen of horses, the TV pen, a mix between the semi-eliminators and the eliminators. They will give you a shot to ride them, but if you stub your toe a little bit, they’ll make you look like you’re on and eliminator. “I just love those horses. I eat those horses right up.” He’s earned $32,423 in just three nights. He has moved up two spots to seventh in the world standings, and he’s hungry for more. The good news is he has seven more plates of bucking horses in front of him.

ARLINGTON, Texas – Technology allows for modern sports to do some different things to help make game plans before a game and adjustments during. Rodeo cowboys do that, too. Take Wyatt Casper, for example. He didn’t know anything about his Saturday night horse, Andrews Rodeo Co.’s Positive Times, but he did some investigating. He found that the animal’s name had been changed, and then watched some videos. It paid off quite well, as the two danced across the dirt at Globe Life Field for 87.5 points to finish second in the third go-round. That was worth $20,731 and pushed Casper’s National Finals Rodeo earnings to more than $62,000 in just three nights. “I just had some Instagram and Facebook videos Sammy had posted of him to go off of, and a couple of guys who had been on him lately, and he looked like fun to me,” said Casper, who increased his lead in the saddle bronc riding world standings to nearly $39,000. “It was a blast. This is fun. It has been a different feeling getting on all these good horses and being able to ride them.” He’s been riding well all season. He kicked off his campaign by winning The American at AT&T Stadium, which is directly west of the Rangers’ ballpark in Arlington. He pocketed $603,000 in March, of which $50,000 counted toward the PRCA’s world standings. He then added another $95,000 through the rest of the regular season to enter ProRodeo’s grand finale atop the world standings. Ryder Wright, the 2017 world champion from Utah, had gained ground on Casper over the first two nights, but the Miami, Texas, cowboy stayed strong. He has placed in the first three go-rounds and feels as strong as he has all season. He also became the first ProRodeo contestant this year to cross the $200,000 mark in season earnings. He sits at $207,600 and still has seven more nights to add to that total. “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “I’m beyond blessed to be here and compete against all those great guys who are just as happy for me to win as they are if they did. It’s just a great bunch of guys. “It’s been that way all year. If you need picked up from the airport, you just look at the list and call one of your buddies, and they’ll drive an hour out of their way to get you. That’s just how rodeo is.” This has been a season of mostly ups for Casper, who also earned his first NFR qualification. Of course, winning that kind of money at one rodeo will do that to anyone. It’s life-changing, but he has bigger visions for his career, and gold buckles are part of his dreams most nights. “I’ve had a lot of good times and very few bad times, and just being here and being able to put the whole thing together is amazing,” said Casper, the 2016 college national champion while competing at Clarendon (Texas) College. “You want to keep chunking away on the and hope you come out on top. “I’m having a blast. I’ve got my whole family here, and we’re all having fun hanging out.”

ARLINGTON, Texas – Jess Pope arrived at the 2020 National Finals Rodeo as a man on a mission, and he’s getting to live out a fantasy life in real time. “I came here with a goal, and I’m just taking it one horse at a time,” said Pope, 22, a first-time NFR qualifier in bareback riding from Waverly, Kansas. “I’m really enjoying this moment. It’s what I’ve dreamed about my entire life, and I’m here getting to live it now; it’s more than you could ever imagine.” On Saturday night, he earned is second paycheck in three nights by riding C5 Rodeo’s Black Eye for 86 points to finish fourth in the go-round. That’s worth $11,000, and he pushed his NFR earnings to $39,192. More importantly, he’s moved up two spots to ninth in the world standings with $88,804. In the one round in which he didn’t place – he finished in a tie for second place in Thursday’s opening night – he still rode well and sits tied for third place in the aggregate standings with 255.5 cumulative points on three rides. If that continues, he will continue to climb up the money list. Saturday’s round featured the “Eliminator Pen,” the toughest-to-ride bareback horses in the game. Black Eye definitely fit into that category. “I’d only seen him once, but I did my homework on him,” said Pope, a senior at Missouri Valley College. ‘I knew he was really going to buck and have a big rear out of the chutes, and it was going to be a dog fight. He throws his big old head back in the air, and he pushes those shoulders down. “He then whacks you in the back. It’s a boxing match the whole time. The only think I could think before I got on was, ‘If you’re going to start a fight, you better finish it and if he backs you in a corner, you better be ready to fight your way out.’ That’s what I did.” Bareback riding is often likened to a boxing match or even a street fight. The powerful equine animals can pack quite a whollop, and the best way to counter that is to punch back; in this case, it comes in the form of the spurring motion. With the “Eliminator Pen” of horses, their right cross is just a little bit harder than the others. “I was a little nervous, but we’re bucking horse riders,” he said. “That’s what we were called to do, and that’s what we live for. It’s about being able to get on them. Anybody could ride a fluffy hopper (the easiest-to-ride broncs), but not everyone can ride those son-of-a-bucks.” There are 100 bucking horses selected by the bareback riders to perform at the NFR. They are broken down in to five pens, with 20 horses in each. The Round 3 and 8 horses are the rankest of them all, but there will be opportunities for a variety of mounts. ProRodeo’s grand finale is meant to be a test for everyone in the top 15 in each event, and it allows each bareback rider to challenge himself against the best bucking beasts in the game for 10 nights. “We get two more nights in a row of easier horses, then it’s back to the buckers again,” Pope said. “I’m ready for them every round. I’m excited for it.”