Cope Cup Finale News

Dallas or Bust!
Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2001

Probullstats.com Corporate HQ (my house) will be unmanned for the next few days, because Bryan and I will both be at the Cope Cup Finals in Dallas. Technically speaking, that's "The Texas Stampede Presents the Copenhagen Cup Finale of the Wrangler Prorodeo Tour." I thought the name was a bit long LAST year.

BUT, I think we have devised a way to do on-the-spot updates. It's difficult to update a website when you are on the road if you are an outfit with little or no cash, but we rigged up an old UHF antenna to Bryan's cell phone with some aluminum foil and wired it to a to a used laptop Bryan bought on E-Bay. We repowered the cell phone with a 6V Volkswagen battery, and besides that we have one of those crank-up telephone fishing rigs to give a little power boost. We might have to get Bryan to stand in the water trough to get it all grounded, but I think we'll have enough juice to bounce the updates off a couple of towers and up to the WWW so you can keep up online. Keep an eye on this page for further updates.

If our travelling rig doesn't work, I guess we will post breaking news to our message board, so stay tuned!

More later... maybe...

Thursday, Oct. 25 -- 2:40 pm

Well, it looks like the new remote web site updating system is a go. I'm now in Dallas, and haven't been to the Arena yet.

On the way here, I stopped at a gas station in Longview, and in the restroom I noticed a picture of Bodacious on the condom machine... "Cowboy Up Condoms" it said. Hmmm... wonder what kind of girls they have around here that you would need COWBOY UP Condoms for? I'm not sure I want to know, but I bought one just in case. I wonder if Sam-Bam has a licensing agreement with the condom company? I'll have to ask.

Thursday, Oct 25 -- 11:10 PM

Round 1 Results & Round 2 Draw

Friday, Oct 25:

Round 2 Results

Saturday, Oct 25:

Round 3 & 4 Results

4 Rounds are in the books, and the Top 8 Draw is up. After the 4 rounds & avg., the bootlegs look like this:

Mike Moore -------- $9500 (+ another $6000 Grd. Money from Rd. 2)
Vince Stanton ---- $9000
Fred Boettcher --- $6500
Jason Mcclain ---- $4500
Come Bouvier ----- $3500
Jesse Bail ---------- $3500
Rob Bell ------------- $2500
Lee Akin ------------ $1000
Phillip Elkins ------ $500

There are no average scores carried over, so the top 8 guys going on start dead even and shoot for the big $$ to be won here. If I were betting, I would have to put my chips on Fred, because he just looks to be hot at the right time. He's ridden his last two for $4500 total, and in Round 1 he was 7.? to win 1st. In Round 2, 7.97 to win 2nd. So for the lack of a fraction of a second, he could have $12K won already.None of the rest of these guys are going to make it easy for him though. I might save one chip and put it on Jesse Bail. They've thrown him off three in a row after he was 91 in the first round, and the law of averages says he's due for a win. Can't keep a guy that rides that good out of the $$ for long. But, as they say, anything can happen... and tomorrow it will.

Dropping out are:

Come Bouvier - Leaves with a $3500 bump in the standings but could've used some more. Got KO'd in round 4 and was out cold for a little while, but was up and walking around in short order

Lee Akin - Won this event last year, and came here in the lead in the world standings and riding good. Will get another shot at the big $$ and the gold buckle in Vegas. Great guy and a good friend.

Casey Baize
Jeff Rupert - I pulled for both these guys. Both of them needed a big bump in the standings worse than the others, but neither got it going this weekend. Could've been the two biggest come-from-behind surprises in the standings because of this deal, but it didn't happen this time. You can bet they will both be back.

Monday - Oct. 29

Ok, so it took me an extra day to get back... The last perf was probably the best rodeo I can remember seeing. Even the calf roping made me want to cheer. The crowd really got into every event.

I lost all my chips on Fred, but I have to say I would bet on him again if we had do-overs. He did everything humanly possible to get 142 of Baileys rode, but the bull came out on top.

In the end it came down to Cody Vs. Mike Moore. After Mike rode G21 in the 8, The crowd blew the roof off the place, and he was easily the crowd favorite coming back to the 4. In the finals, Cody was first gunner and stuck 4 of Bailey's for 93. They held Mike to last, his bull had him thrown, and then belly flopped on him... and he gets a RR. So they had to wait on him to get on his RR (581 of Sammy's), and by the time he crawled over in there the crowd was really whooping it up. Sounded like Packers fans in a goal line stand situation. They REALLY wanted him to win it. BUT, in the end he came down. Probably didn't have enough bull to take 1st in the round, but 2nd did pay about $9000 I think.

Vince and Rob both made good rides in the final 4, but Vince didn't have enough bull to beat Cody, and Rob's bull pulled a knife on him. Ran back up in the chute and about ironed him off on the fence. Rob slapped him coming out of that, and was DQ'd - no option. By the rulebook, it was probably a good call, but still... not much of a fair chance. Similar thing happened to Phillip in the 8; 731 of Sammy's hung his foot in the slat back of the chute, and it made him go down in the back end and he set Phillip up and brought him. Again... no foul, but hardly fair. Both of those situations would have resulted in RR options in the PBR, and I would suspect there will be some official discussion about adjusting those rules, but don't know that for sure.

Vince Stanton walked out with the most $$ (22.5K) , and Mike Moore was close behind, but $6000 of his was ground money. Still spends. Cody Hancock came away with $18.5K

The American Airlines Center is a pretty nice place. There are TV's in the elevators if that tells you anything. There's a ritzy club level with nice carpet and trendy looking bartenders staffing the bars in the concourse. They have the coolest light strip thing around the arena about halfway up... You'd have to see it to understand. The seats were nice, and very expensive, but were filled with people for most of the perfs.

The whole deal turned out to be a first class rodeo, both in the quality of competition, and in the apparent success of the event. You would have thought the concerts after the perfs would have been the major draw, but even while the concerts were going on, the lobby was packed with people going by the autograph tables. The cowboys were without a doubt the stars of this deal. Hats off to the Texas Stampede for pulling it off, and let's hope they want to do it again next year.

Slade Long
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