College Rodeo

"Fannin' and battin'" the shanks of a red-eyed Brahman bull, Harley May of Sul Ross College came winging out of the chute, absorbed three spine-cracking jolts, and ended up flat on his back on the tanbark of Fort Worth's Will Rogers Coliseum. Grinning sheepishly, May got up, dusted off his skintight blue jeans and admitted ruefully: "I didn't do so good."

It was one of the few events in which 24-year-old Harley May had not done well in the fledgling (three-year-old) National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association championships. The son of a New Mexico rancher, May helped found N.I.R.A. three years ago, ever since has been the association's "All-Around Cowboy." Last week Cowboy May, who got his riding start atop a mule at the age of two, was out to repeat in the roughest of all collegiate sports.

Wild & Woolly. The 1951 championship, backed by the fast-growing 41-college association, was not on the grand scale of the famed Pendleton Roundup, but even the old pros admitted that the kids put on quite a show. Before the competition began, the Hardin-Simmons College cowboy band came whooping into the Coliseum, followed by the Apache Belles, a 34-girl marching and dancing group from Tyler Junior College, dressed in abbreviated white satin outfits and Indian headdress. Down behind the riding chutes, the college cowboys carefully checked over their equipment--from the slick "piggin strings" (for tying calves) to the larger pieces of "rigging" (saddles, boots, chaps) that cost the more sharply dressed competitors more than $600 an outfit.

For the five days of the championship competition, 73 competitors roped and rode through the full rodeo schedule. The rough & tumble rides (for eight-second "eternities") on the 1,500-lb. brutish Brahmans* were matched by other wild & woolly events: bareback bronc riding, bulldogging, wild cow milking.

It was no game for beginners. Explained 22-year-old Cotton Rosser of California Polytechnic, who has been competing as a rodeo pro/- since he was 14: "This is a sport you have to grow up with. It isn't just something you go out for."

Pounding Hooves. By the last performance ("go-round" in cowboy lingo), the contestants' gaudy shirts were in tatters, the carefully creased broad-brimmed hats had been mashed and shredded by pounding hooves, and the embroidered boots were mud-splattered. But the show was a rousing success.

Thousands of Fort Worth rodeo fans had come to watch the educated cowboys, had seen little Sul Ross College (enrollment: 1,000) of Alpine, Texas, ride off with the team title for the third straight year. Cotton Rosser's tight seat on the "rank" (i.e., fighting) stock won him individual show honors. But Sul Ross's captain, Harley May, again rode away with the All-Around Cowboy title (based on total points accumulated in year-long competition), with an all-around performance.

* To make sure that rodeo mounts will come out bucking, they are harnessed with a tight "flank" strap, fastened around the belly and croup. The strap is tightened just before the chute door opens, is quickly released again at the end of the ride.

/- When legally competing for a college, N.I.R.A. recognizes a competitor's amateur standing, no matter how much money he has won in the professional circuit.

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