Fried Twinkies, Buckle Bunnies, & Bull Riders Read online

  With $21,000 in seed money and with Applebaum serving as president, the group founded the Professional Bull Riders. The riders knew little about business, but they knew enough to realize $21,000 wasn’t going to get them far. So they hired a sports agency owned by David Falk, who then represented basketball star Michael Jordan, and paid him to find potential sponsors. Falk came back without a list; there were no takers.

  Undaunted, Applebaum, Hedeman, and Lambert took things into their own hands. With the Gaylord family, owners of The Nashville Network (TNN), arranging the meeting, the three PBR executives went to the offices of Anheuser-Busch. It turned out the company wanted to break into the rodeo market, but the PRCA had an exclusive deal with Coors. Hedeman and Applebaum made their pitch and got what they wanted—a commitment from Bud Light. Then they got a deal with TNN to televise the PBR events, and the riders could hardly believe their good luck.

  The inaugural season in 1994 included eight events and $660,000 in prize money. The tour culminated at the world finals, which offered a $275,000 purse. By 1995 the prize money had shot up to $1.2 million, but the PBR founders realized they had a problem: Sam Applebaum.

  He was a smart and tough negotiator, but what he possessed in brainpower, he lacked in manners. Swaggering into corporate offices, he’d prop his cowboy boots on an executive’s desk and squirt tobacco juice into the nearest waste can or office plant.

  If the PBR hoped to make it into the American mainstream, the board decided, it needed a polished leader. Firing Applebaum in ’95, the PBR board settled on an unlikely choice as the next CEO.

  For starters, he was only 28 years old and had limited background in the rodeo business, much less corporate America. He’d grown up in San Ardo, California, a small town in the center of the state, where his family owned a 5,000-acre ranch and raised cattle and grew wheat, barley, and alfalfa. His name was Randy Bernard.

  After getting married during his senior year of college, Bernard dropped out of Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo and took an internship with the Calgary Stampede, one of the world’s best-known rodeos. That in turn led to a job at the California Mid-State Fair. While his marriage failed, Bernard’s career took off. He earned a reputation as a can-do workaholic, helping book shows that included MC Hammer and George Strait concerts and bull riding events. At one of those bull riding events, he met two of rodeo’s best-known cowboys—Lambert and Ty Murray, a seven-time world champion all-around cowboy who had established his Hall of Fame credentials competing on the PRCA circuit but also was a founding member of the PBR.

  Hedeman, Lambert, and Murray. It was a powerful triumvirate; and when Murray and Lambert helped persuade Hedeman that Bernard was the right man for the job, the PBR hired him as its next CEO. His new title was more impressive than his new office, which Bernard later joked was little more than a broom closet, a card table for a desk, and a milk crate for a chair. In truth, it was a cramped space in downtown Colorado Springs donated by Douglas Quimby, a lawyer who worked part-time for the PBR. That’s all they could come up with for an office, and it was unclear how they were going to come up with the money to pay for Bernard’s starting salary of about $50,000 a year. When he took over, the PBR had $8,000 in the bank and $130,000 in bills.

  Desperate to balance the books, Bernard focused on sponsorship and brought aboard Wrangler, Jack Daniel’s, and the city of Las Vegas. He also dragged the tour out of the Old West and into the 20th century, replacing the rodeo-style show with high-tech pyrotechnics, lasers, fireworks, and rock music. The idea was to market bull riding as an extreme sport, with Bernard instructing the in-arena announcers to start shows with the following line: “This isn’t a rodeo. This is the one and only PBR!”

  Then, with urging from Hedeman, at the 1996 PBR finals, the tour put up $1 million in prize money, more than double the money the PRCA offered bull riders during its 10-day NFR championships. Also announcing plans for an 18-city, $2.2 million tour in 1997, the PBR reduced the PRCA to the minor leagues of bull riding.

  When it came to ideas, Bernard begged, borrowed, and stole, studying the business model of the World Wrestling Federation under Vince McMahon and establishing ties with Brian France, chairman and CEO of NASCAR. And through Ken Hudgens of Clear Channel Entertainment, he formed a partnership with the company to help the PBR start promoting its own events. The tour was taking off—despite internal controversy.

  In 2001, at Bernard’s behest, the PBR bought back the TV rights it had sold in 1995 to Allen Reid, a TV producer who had put together the deal with TNN. The PBR had agreed to the 1995 sale before Bernard took over and at the time thought those rights were worth next to nothing. In fact, Hedeman, Lambert, and the rest of the founders could hardly believe their luck when Reid paid them $300,000 and guaranteed another $100,000 a year thereafter.

  Six years later, Reid’s investment looked awfully shrewd. When Bernard inquired about buying the rights back, Reid set a price: more than $6 million.

  The board members were furious. They demanded Reid lower his price. He refused. Talks stalled.

  Bernard and other board members worried that as time passed, the value of the PBR’s TV rights—and Reid’s asking price—would only increase. So despite concerns about the costs, they voted to buy.

  To come up with the money, Bernard enlisted the help of Tom Teague, a multimillionaire from North Carolina who had made his fortune running a truck-leasing business. Teague, who’d met Bernard 7 years earlier and had expressed interest in the PBR, chipped in about $3 million in exchange for half ownership of the PBR’s TV rights. A month later Teague joined the PBR board.

  While Hedeman welcomed someone with the business savvy of Teague onto the board, he and others outside the board grumbled about how much the PBR had paid Reid. In 2002, the PBR parted ways with TNN and negotiated a deal with the Outdoor Life Network. That wasn’t the only change.

  Donnie Gay, the eight-time world bull riding champion, had been the lead commentator of PBR broadcasts, taping a voice-over at an office in Nashville for the delayed telecasts. That wasn’t going to cut it for Bernard, who wanted Gay and the rest of the three-person crew to do the telecasts live. But Gay turned down a raise of $1,000 an event, testing the PBR’s resolve.

  Bernard and the board fired the entire crew. Ignoring a hailstorm of angry e-mails from fans loyal to Gay, Bernard ushered in fresh faces meant to attract new and younger fans. The diehard fans bellyached, but not as loudly as some of the PBR’s own employees did when the board, taking Bernard’s advice, voted to pay $710,000 for a single 2-hour telecast on NBC. He argued it was more than worth it to put the tour on national TV and suspected that Hedeman was behind the ensuing resistance.

  Objecting to the plan to pay for NBC airtime, five high-level employees walked into Bernard’s office one day and threatened to quit unless Bernard did first. Bernard asked the men to remain in his office while he called Lambert and Murray and put them on speakerphone. Murray was the board member who had broken the board’s deadlock vote that gave Bernard approval to buy back the PBR’s TV rights. He was known to be a smart, blunt, take-no-bullshit cowboy.

  “If I were you,” he told Bernard loudly enough to be heard by the five employees, “I’d fire every one of them sons of bitches right now.”

  Bernard fired just one of the dissenters and moved forward. Though the PBR lost money on the first NBC broadcast, the tour negotiated better deals for future broadcasts with the hope that national exposure would attract more sponsors and fans. By 2003 the PBR had grown to 28 regular-season events plus the PBR world finals—which in 1999 moved from the MGM Grand Garden Arena to the larger Thomas & Mack Center to accommodate growing crowds—and had increased total prize money for the BFTS and minor-league events to more than $8 million.

  Playing the dual role of corporate CEO and cowboy, Bernard kept a sport coat nearby and a cowboy hat on the back ledge of his Lincoln LS V8 sedan. But the cowboy decor is limited in his two-story house in Colorado Springs, with a
barbecue on the wooden deck, dark fabrics on the living room furniture, a Buddha statue in front of the fireplace, and, stacked across a shelf near the kitchen, books that include Patton on Leadership, The Millionaire Next Door, Business @ the Speed of Thought, and Sex, Lies and Headlocks, the last being an unauthorized biography of Vince McMahon, who built a wrestling company into a billion-dollar juggernaut.

  Keeping a round-the-clock work schedule, Bernard went weeks at a time without seeing his second wife, Cameo, a two-time Miss National Fitness Champion and a TV fitness spokesperson who lives in Southern California. He traveled more than 200 days a year, met with potential sponsors and investors, and paid attention to details, down to whether the arena suites needed vacuuming. Hanging prominently on a wall in Bernard’s office was a charcoal print of Hedeman riding a bull, with the inscription, “To one of my best friends. Thanks for all your help. Best of luck.” But the photo had been signed in 1995. The start of their rift had taken place at the 1996 PBR finals.

  That week boxes of Cinch jeans arrived at the MGM Grand, then site of the PBR finals. It was like a shipment of Coca-Cola arriving at the offices of Pepsi. Cinch was a chief rival of Wrangler, one of the PBR’s top sponsors. But Hedeman had an endorsement deal with Cinch jeans, and the boxes that arrived at the MGM Grand were addressed to him. When Bernard learned about the surprise delivery and that Hedeman intended to pass out the jeans to the PBR’s riders, he confronted him in front of a few other people.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Tuff? Wrangler is our sponsor, period. You don’t do shit like that.”

  The public tongue-lashing enraged Hedeman.

  “You and me are going outside,” Hedeman said.

  They exited through a nearby door.

  He grabbed Bernard by the throat. “I ought to kick your ass.”

  Moments later Hedeman dropped his hands and walked away. Hedeman later claimed that his limo driver had inadvertently dropped three or four boxes of Cinch jeans at the arena and that somebody opened the boxes without asking his permission. He also said he had had no intention of passing out the jeans to fellow riders until he got back to the hotel. But his relationship with Bernard only worsened.

  In 2002, with Bernard leading a meeting that included the riders and shareholders in Louisville, Kentucky, Hedeman had stood up, accused the board members of raking in most of the PBR’s profits, and criticized Bernard and the board for voting against increasing prize money. Bernard explained that in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the economic downturn, he wanted to proceed cautiously. Board members chided Hedeman for his unexpected remarks, which led to a tense 6-hour meeting between Hedeman, Lambert, and Murray. After that meeting, Hedeman and Bernard coexisted without further controversy. But hope for permanent rapprochement ended in June 2004 after the PBR’s stop in Nashville.

  Even before Bullnanza–Nashville June 12 and 13, Hedeman had objected to Bernard’s having dropped some original PBR sponsors who couldn’t match the money offered by new sponsors. He also objected to Bernard’s having cut ties with some promoters and having demanded others split the gate receipts with the PBR. The rift intensified when Bernard suggested the PBR should get 30 percent of the profits from the Tuff Hedeman Challenge instead of allowing Hedeman to keep 100 percent of the profits. The 70-30 split was the same deal the PBR had with the Ty Murray Invitational and the Bossier City event that Hedeman and Pack copromoted.

  Ultimately, Bernard and the board backed away from demanding a split of the profits at Hedeman’s signature event, but animosity festered.

  When the rumors about Hedeman’s badmouthing Bernard persisted, Lambert confronted Hedeman at a board meeting. “Do you think Randy should resign?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  But Hedeman found himself alone. All seven other board members, including Murray and Lambert, expressed support for Bernard. In private,Hedeman continued to gripe about Bernard’s bottom-line-driven philosophy—a philosophy that in June 2004 ended the tour’s relationship with one of its earliest partners, Gaylord Entertainment, producer of the Bullnanza bull riding events. Since Bullnanzas had become part of the PBR tour in ’94, the event had assumed all the risk and reaped all of the profits. Under Bernard, that was about to change.

  He presented a new deal: a 50-50 split.

  A. G. Meyers, a friend of Hedeman’s who had produced the four Bullnanzas in Nashville, Reno, Oklahoma City, and Guthrie, refused the deal, and that ended the PBR’s 11-year relationship with Bullnanza and the Gaylord family.

  A few days later, committed to producing the events in 2005 without the PBR, Meyers called the Oklahoma City arena to book his regular dates. No luck. Bernard, anticipating the PBR’s split with Bullnanza, had booked the coveted dates months earlier.

  Meyers retaliated by calling a handful of riders, including Justin McBride, trying to secure a commitment from them to ride in future Bullnanzas. PBR rules called for a 1-year suspension for any rider who missed a BFTS event without a medical excuse or permission from the PBR. But Meyers’s politicking concerned Bernard enough that during the 2nd week of July, he was on the phone with McBride.

  “He’s badmouthing us pretty good, huh?” asked Bernard, smiling as he leaned back in his office chair. “That just pisses me off. Jesus Christ, all we’re trying to do is make it the best deal for the PBR. We’re kicking ass. I can promise you that.”

  While riders and fans continued to speculate about Hedeman’s resignation, Bernard had turned his attention toward finding a replacement. Having lost one star, he and the PBR board grabbed at another—Murray, one of the PBR founders who had pushed for the hiring of Bernard. Since retiring, Murray had spent most of his time in semiseclusion in Stephenville, Texas, where he ran his 2,000-acre cattle and horse ranch, retired his parents, and built a boat and a guesthouse with his father. He enjoyed the spotlight about as much as he enjoyed a bull’s horn in the ribs.

  On the PBR’s top circuit, any rider who skipped a postevent autograph session was fined $500. During his second-to-last season, Murray had blown off so many autograph sessions that his fines exceeded $10,000.

  Bernard called Murray and, with help from Lambert, made his pitch. Then he scheduled a telephone conference with the voting board members, including Lambert; Cody Custer, a retired rider and the PBR’s primary back judge; Aaron Semas, a retired rider and an original investor in the PBR; Teague, the multimillionaire from North Carolina; and active riders J.W. Hart and Michael Gaffney. The men needed less than 30 minutes to make Murray its unanimous selection as the PBR’s next president. Then they called Murray.

  “If you need me, I’ll do it,” he said.

  The PBR immediately posted a story on its Web site heralding the appointment of Murray as the new president and another unanimous vote adding Adriano Moraes to the board. Hedeman’s resignation was mentioned in the last sentence of the story. Yet the story failed to address concerns about replacing the fan-friendlyHedeman with someone like Murray.

  But Bernard did his best, announcing that Murray had forfeited his six-figure salary and donated the money to top riders who signed autographs. Unlike Hedeman, however, Murray agreed to appear at no more than 12 events a year. On July 9, Bernard gathered his staff in a conference room, and they had to squeeze in. The two-person team when he took over in 1995 had mushroomed to an army of 47, none of whom had ever ridden a bull; they were hired to help run a business, not a rodeo. They were called in to hear Murray address them via speakerphone.

  Before he called and began his remarks, someone must have told him about the staff’s volleyball party scheduled for that night.

  “You better buckle down,” Murray said. “And if anybody drinks beer at the volleyball game, you’re fired.”

  The staff cracked up, knowing if Murray had been at the party, he would’ve been pounding beers rather than the volleyball. Then he praised the PBR staff for all it had done and said he wanted the employees to know how much he appreciated them.

/>   “I’m not just trying to blow smoke up your asses,” he said.

  “You ever going to leave the ranch?” piped up Sean Gleason, the PBR’s chief operating officer.

  “Not if I can help it,” Murray shot back.

  Less than 2 weeks after Hedeman stepped down, Bernard gathered his senior staff members and called for a plan that showed how the PBR was going to increase its revenue in 4 years from $35 million to $100 million.

  “I thought you said 5 years,” Gleason said.

  Bernard grinned. “Well, I’d like to do it in 4.”

  He asked each department head to look for ways to cut costs and increase revenue, and he wanted it on paper in 2 weeks. The PBR had 23 corporate sponsors, including the big three—Ford, Wrangler, and Bud Light—and a newcomer, in the US Army. But HealthSouth Corporation was trying to recover from a financial crisis after the government filed suit in 2003, accusing the company and its former CEO of massive accounting fraud. The company delayed payments and eventually pulled out altogether. Now some riders were carping about the reduced money on the Challenger Tour, which many of the top-45 riders depended on to make ends meet. And the prize money the PBR had advertised would be available during the 2004 season was on pace to fall about $800,000 short of the original projection of $9.5 million. As a result, Bernard wanted to come up with a presentation to convince the riders, the stockholders, and the board that the PBR would continue to grow with or without Hedeman.

  Make no mistake; Bernard remained more than a little interested in what the industry and fans were saying about Hedeman’s resignation. Sitting in his office chair, he turned to his laptop and clicked onto the rodeo sites, breaking into a grin as he pointed at his computer screen.

  “Look at this.”

  It was a poll that got to the heart of the matter with one question: Will Tuff Hedeman’s resignation hurt the PBR?