The New Bronco Breed

Tom Ferguson, 23, is a surprisingly mild individual for a man who makes his living as a champion steer wrestler and calf roper. Unlike the ornery, untamed cowboys of rodeo lore, he does not brawl his way from one prairie town to the next. His rodeo skills were honed not on a hardscrabble ranch but on a college campus. Even so, almost every time Ferguson grabs a rampant 800-lb. steer by the horns to "bulldog" it to the turf, or smoothly lassoes a speeding calf, he places in the money. So far this year he has already earned more than $50,000, which makes him the biggest winner in the sport. Last week he added another $1,000 while winning the calf roping competition in Coffeyville, Kans., and the steer wrestling in Abilene.

In manner, if not in his top-level earnings, Ferguson is typical of a new breed of cowboy that is rapidly transforming the rodeo from a rowdy range spectacle to a disciplined, businesslike sport. Fully one-third of the 3,000-member Rodeo Cowboys Association today have attended college, and only half have ever worked on a ranch--rodeo's traditional training ground. For them the path upward winds through "Little Britches" (the cowboy's equivalent of the Little League), high school competition and eventually college teams.*Competitors put up with the serious training regimen in return for the cash prizes available on the rodeo circuit: a total purse of about $5 million, up 30% from a decade ago.

In corrals from Mineral Wells, Texas, to Deadwood, S. Dak., the basic ingredients of the community-organized rodeo have not changed. Bareback bronc and brahma bull riding, the meanest rodeo events, still delight the fans and break the bones of contestants. Shot into the arena on the back of an insanely bucking bull or bronc, the rider must stay aboard for eight frantic seconds, holding on by his spurs and a rope cinch that he is allowed to grasp with only one hand. If the cowboy survives the frenzied ride, two judges score his effort for degree of difficulty and quality, usually awarding the best performance 75 or 80 out of a possible 100 points.

Special Magic. Steer wrestlers, whose goal essentially is to pin cattle to the ground in the fastest possible time, engage in hand-to-horn combat with animals four times their size. Calf ropers have developed a special magic with a lasso--to say nothing of training their horses to keep the rope taut while the roper ties together three of the calf s legs.

The rodeo is still rock-hard with flinty characters. Wick Peth, 44, could be relaxing at his ranch in Bow, Wash.; instead, he runs around rodeo arenas as a bullfighter trying to keep marauding horned brahmas from impaling riders who have toppled in their path. Earlier this year, Peth was gored in the leg and ripped both Achilles' tendons; three weeks later he was back in action. Malcolm Baldrige, 51, is more fanatical than flinty. Chairman of the diversified Scovill Manufacturing Co. in non-cowboy Waterbury, Conn., Baldrige takes every chance he can get to join the tour and rope steers. "It's cheaper than golf," he says, "and it really relaxes me in a way. I love to compete and I go to win." His office even has a sawhorse with horns attached to one end so that he can practice from his swivel chair.

Struggling Cowgirls. "Rodeo is tough," says Steer Wrestler Walt Garrison, who doubles as a Dallas Cowboy running back during the football season. "You got to be in good shape." The cowboys are all business as they wait their turn to compete, watching the action to pick up pointers or carefully dowsing their gloves and chaps in resin to improve the grip. "These fellows have changed a lot," says Frank Barrett, rodeo doctor at Cheyenne Frontier Days (attendance this year: 101,000) for 23 years. "I can remember when cowboys used to squat down and drink up before riding. I treated a lot more injuries then."

Another change is cowgirl competition. The cowgirls have been around for years, but now, instead of performing merely as a side show to the men's rodeo, several hundred female ropers and riders have organized their own circuit. With only 30 rodeos and prize money so limited that the leading competitors earn less than $1,000 a year, the cowgirl tour is struggling to gain parity. "We're out there riding the same broncs and bulls the men are," says top Bareback Rider Benjie Prudom. "There's no reason we shouldn't get paid the same." Indeed, Prudom, a criminal-justice major at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, trains as hard as any cowboy, lifting weights (she bench-presses 140 lbs.), doing push-ups and riding. The women's first big paydays will come on Oct. 5 and 6 at the Girls Rodeo Association championships in Spring Creek, Nev. The purse: $25,000.

The wear and tear are greater on the men's circuit, where cowboys spend most of their time just "going down the road"--their phrase for traveling to the next competition. Because prize money is spread among the 600 rodeos that make up the organized circuit sanctioned by the Cowboys Association, they have to hit a hundred or more every season to hope to make a living. (Even then, few earn as much as $ 10,000 a year.)

Larry Mahan, the sport's biggest winner before Ferguson arrived, hops from town to town in his own Cessna 310. But Mahan took in $64,000 last year. Nonstellar cowboys endure an endless string of sleepless nights as they crisscross Western highways in their cars and pickup trucks.

No one knows the grind better than Tom Ferguson. Last year he drove 80,000 miles in his 1973 Ford camper to compete in 112 rodeos from Florida to Alberta. In a dizzying week recently, he made three 800-mile round trips to appear in a pair of rodeos in Utah and a nine-day competition in Cheyenne. "If there's a choice between staying one place and going," explains the tireless Ferguson, "I'd rather keep going."

With his $50,000 already in hand and the danger of injury looming in every arena, why does Ferguson keep up the pace? "I guess I just love the competition," he says. "Even if there weren't any money involved or any people watching, I'd still love to rope and ride."

Ferguson started roping chickens and cats at home in Tahlequah, Okla., when he was three. The son of a clothing retailer who was once a steer wrestler himself, Ferguson later attended California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo "because it was a good rodeo school." With him in the saddle, Cal Poly won the national intercollegiate championship three out of four years -- and for the period 1967-72, Ferguson won $40,000.

He hopes to keep winning big until he is 40. For now, he sees no reason to think about much else. In that single-minded devotion he is like most other rodeo hands. "I can't really say I'm looking forward to this forever," says one, "but I know that if my ass ain't spinning around off some bronc's back, I just ain't happy or content."

* More than 200 colleges, mostly in the West, have rodeo teams or clubs, though the National Collegiate Athletic Association does not sanction competition because many college rodeos offer cash prizes.

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