Columnist Ron Kantowski: The spur of the moment

Monday, Nov. 7, 2005 | 8:48 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

UNLV has a new champion, and he hails from the most unlikely of places.

Not the basketball court. Not the golf course. Not even the women's soccer pitch, where the Rebels won their first Mountain West Conference championship Saturday afternoon.

Try the rodeo arena.

That's right, the rodeo arena. Next to the football field, it's hard to imagine a more unexpected venue from which a Rebel would emerge as champion.

Perhaps it should be noted that Justin McBride, who Sunday was crowned the Professional Bull Riders world champion following an eight-second ceremony at the Thomas & Mack Center, did not graduate from UNLV. But then neither did Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon, and we're still proud of those guys.

McBride, 26, attended UNLV on a rodeo scholarship, but as they say on "Seinfeld," it didn't take. Not that he -- or at least his parents -- didn't think a college education wasn't a good thing to have. It's just that McBride believed a saddlebag full of $100 bills was a better thing for a 19-year-old with an undecided major to have.

So he and Ross Coleman, his longtime friend and former UNLV teammate, joined the PBR and became full-time students at the School of Hard Knocks (and Concussions).

"All the fun I had," he said with a big smile when asked what he remembered most about his year in Las Vegas.

Prior to enrolling at UNLV, the closest thing McBride had seen to a bright light was hanging from a lamppost. He said it was good to get away from his humble roots in Nebraska and see the neon before starting to pursue his lifelong dream.

"I can't remember when I didn't want to grow up and do this," said McBride, a third-generation bull rider who was probably destined to live his live in eight-second increments, given he first climbed onto the back of something bovine -- a calf on the McBride family ranch -- when he was just 3 years old.

He now calls Elk City, Okla., home. If you head out from Oklahoma City on old Route 66, Elk City is the last stop before Amarillo. About 10,200 proud Americans, as the arena announcer likes to say, call Elk City home, which makes it a metropolis among the tiny dots on the map that qualify as PBR hometowns.

But it's small enough that the Kentucky Fried Chicken on West Third Street is listed among the "Places to Dine" on the official Elk City Chamber of Commerce Web site.

McBride's original recipe for victory on Sunday was as basic as it gets -- stay aboard his two bulls for the required eight seconds, and the gold buckle (and the $1 million in a matching armored truck) would be his.

He even got a little revenge on the way to Millionaire Acres. He had been bucked off by his first bull, a two-ton bundle of joy named Little Lobo, in Columbus, Ohio, just three weeks ago. But McBride rode him easily on Sunday for a score of 86.

His second bull, Camo, had put him on his keister in Phoenix in 2004. McBride also rode him, although not as easily. At the end, he was holding on for an ugly score of 75 that was insignificant. What wasn't insignificant is that the crown was finally his with $479,230.99 in season earnings.

"This is a speech I should be prepared for," McBride said after accepting congratulations from a bunch of guys in cowboy hats, including former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. "I've been going over it in front of a mirror since I was 4 years old but now I can't think of anything to say."

So according to the bio on his Web site, McBride now has a decision to make.

"I can't quit bull riding until I win a world title," he said in reference to coming up short so many times that he had begun to answer to "McBridemaid."

Now that he has one, will he be hanging up his spurs?

"We'll talk about that next year," McBride said.

So maybe that suggestion of an early retirement was just a lot of bull.

From a lot of bull rider.