Luke Snyder Gets Advice From His Fellow Cowboys, and From Imus

Luke Snyder and his Professional Bull Rider pals will take over Madison Square Garden this weekend for the fifth year in a row, and the event’s popularity comes as no surprise to Snyder, 28, the 2001 PBR Rookie of the Year.
 
“We like them very much,” he said of the New York crowd. “They pay for the ticket, and they use it. They either boo the loudest, or cheer the loudest.” He added, knowingly, “If you can get backing from New Yorkers, you’re doing something right.”
 
Missouri born and bred, Snyder is the first member of his family to “actually hop on a bull to try to make a living at it.” After attending a big rodeo in Kansas City as a kid with his father, Snyder propmtly signed up for a three-day rodeo school.
 
“I couldn’t stay on a stick horse to water for a year!” he said. “I couldn’t do it to save my life.” Eventually he got the hang of it, and the rest, as Snyder said, “is history.”
 
He and his fellow cowboys are able to make a living riding bulls because of the PBR, which does not sign its riders to contracts, instead requiring them to go out and do what they love if they want to make money doing it.
 
Like most of his peers, Snyder has “probably broken a bone in every section of my body,” he said. The cowboys are judged on a scale of 1-50 for their form, and then another 1-50 on how well their bull performs. “We’re supposed to make that look as effortless as possible, which is very hard.”
 
If the bull doesn’t perform up to par, the bull rider is offered the option of a re-ride. “If you’re not going to be able to compete with your bull counterpart with the rest of the field, you’re not going to have a very good shot,” Snyder said.
 
The cowboys study as best they can the different characteristics of the 300-plus bulls in the PBR’s retinue, and even though they are competing against one another for prize money, the cowboy community is “very close-knit,” according to Snyder. “We all help each other.”
 
And while they can offer each other advice, no cowboy can really ever predict how a bull will act out of the gates. “Anytime you’re dealing with a wild animal like that, they’re going to do something different as soon as you’ve got them figured out,” he said.
 
Later this morning, Snyder will appear on Fox & Fiends, where a mechanical bull has been set up for one of the anchors, a woman named Gretchen, to ride.
 
“Don’t get confused now and get on her,” Imus cautioned his guest.
 
-Julie Kanfer