Proposed Rules Change Commentary from the Camarillos

Leo: What about that three seconds?
Jerold: They’re spoiling roping. A 3-second penalty for a hind foot is spoiling your roping just like the (5-second) broken barrier deal, and the thing about it is, it’s not helping you rope. It should be two horns/two feet or no time. What about that?
L: Exactly! What happen to trying to get better at what we do? It’s like saying, “O.K. when we go out to the golf course let’s make the hole bigger so it’ll be a lot easier to make a putt.”
J: Ya, or let the machine do the driving and we’ll just pitch it from there.
L: I wonder if they’re going to put their ropes on next? I mean, where do you draw the line? It seems they’re trying to make it better for the losers or the guys who don’t want to practice or progress, or the guys who don’t wanna--
J: I just think it’s going the wrong way. You know, when they have a dummy roping for the kids, they get 3 points if they rope two horns; they get 2 points if they rope a half a head; and they get one point if they rope a neck. You know, that’s the way things ought’a be going. They can’t be going the opposite way.
L: I agree. You know, you can tie your rope on, you only get 5 seconds for breaking a barrier, and you only get 3 seconds now for a hind leg. Whatever happened to promoting what’s right and trying to get better at what we’re doing rather than, you know, give away straight times to those who don’t actually make a straight time?
J: Yep! And what it’s coming to now is all the low number ropers don’t take time to professional-ize their roping skills, where they can rope two horns and two feet. They say,” Well I can't rope two feet like those other guys can, but you know, I can just throw my rope in there and dally, and I can dam-sure catch one foot; so, ya, let’s make it three seconds because I can’t rope that good to catch two feet,” and that’s bullsh*%.
L: Ya, and that’s the other thing, they don’t even have to dally. They can just tie on and throw it down there like they got a hook on their rope, and forget about it.
J: Yep, throw it down there and don’t even get a dally. And now when the header sees his heeler dally he un-dallies. Headers don’t even have to face their horse around because the flag goes down as soon as the heeler dallies.
L: Ya! Nobody says anything about that. At half the jackpots now, you don’t even have to face your head horse. When your heeler comes tight, you got time.
J: Right, cuz their trying to save the steers and all this other stuff. So now, you don’t have to face your horse, and you can catch one foot. If you break the barrier and rope one foot that’s only 8 seconds where before, if you just broke the barrier but caught 2 feet it was ten.
L: (laughing) Ya.
J: Now they give you a TWO SECONDS BREAK if you break the barrier and rope one foot. Instead of a broken barrier and one foot being 15 seconds, it’s only 8.
L: Ya. And the other thing is they’ve taken the horsemanship out of it. You don’t even have to face your horse, which is all part of it—riding your horse to face him around; cuz half the time them guys can’t face their horse, so you know you’ve got a chance if you’re a better rider and spend a little bit more time with their horse, so you know you’ve got a chance if you’re a better rider and spend a little bit more time with your horse to try to make him do things, you know? You log him, you make him understand how to turn and back up and so forth, so he’ll work better for you, but now you don’t have to worry about it. Just turn your steer off and drop your rope. If your heeler’s hooked you probably won the roping.
J: Ya.
L: What bothers me about the whole thing is now you don’t have to go to a roping school to learn how to rope or go to anybody to learn how to rope. You don’t even HAVE to learn how to rope. All the rules and skill requirements are out the window. You can just get on a horse and buy a rope, go through the motions of it and call yourself a roper.
J: Ya and you can buy a 35-foot or 40-foot rope and cut it in half,
J & L: (laughing) then you got two.
L: Two ropes for the price of one.
J& L: laughing…
L: You can almost go do that with a horse. Instead of buying a horse that looks good and knows what he’s doing and is worth the money, you can go buy two for the price of one. Get two donkeys that you don’t have to do anything on.
J: And the other thing, when we get into Perry’s roping over there…you know, if it wasn’t for me…the USTRC is trying to change Perry’s rules over there with no barrier, and 5 seconds for a broken barrier and now the newest deal—3 seconds for a hind foot. You know I had 15 guys call me last year and say, “Hey, listen, I heard Perry was going to make 5 seconds for a broken barrier, and I said, “Aah, bullsh*&! We ain’t doing that. I’m running that roping and we’re gonna have a barrier, and if you break it it’s gonna be a 10 second fine. That’s the way it is, and as long as I’m running the thing, that’s the way it’s gonna be.
L: And the same goes for roping a leg. If you rope one leg it’s a 5-second penalty.
J: Yep, that’s it.
L: And do they get three loops or two loops?
J: They get two.
L: That’s the way it should be.
J: Ya.
L: Well I don’t know who’s —obviously the losers are the majority, so they got the biggest pull, and I’m sure that they harassed the guys that run the whole deal, and those guys try to make it better, you know, instigating more people to get involved, but it just doesn’t seem right to keep bending the rules so much. It’s to the point they keep bending the rules so much that they’re breaking them. Enough is enough. They’ve tried to cut back on everything to make it worthwhile. They give better trophies, more money and everything else, and pretty quick you don’t have to be a roper or horseman to qualify.
J: Nope. And I think the professionalism in roping, if they keep doing this, is gonna go down. It ought’a go back to where…You know, I remember years ago that roping were HP and that jerk from Vasalia, or some place, won that roping?
L: Ya.
J: You know it was two horns and two feet. If you didn’t catch two horns or you didn’t catch two feet you went out. You were through. It was a no-time. A broken barrier was a no-time and that was—sh*%, that had to be twenty years ago. If they had just stayed with their guns right then; we seen it coming. If they would have stayed with their guns…I mean…what kind of good ropers we would have had today.
L: Ya.
J: I mean TWO HORNS, TWO FEET!... Broken barrier? that’s it. You’re out!
L: And that seems like the American way. Get better or go home! Instead of making the basket lower, or the course hole bigger, or trying to change the integrity of each sport, you know,
J: Uh-huh
L: the idea is to keep the challenge and raise the skill, not change the challenge and lower the skill. Work and get better at it.
J: Yep.
L: What happen to that idea?
J: Well, I don’t know, what’s next week gonna be? Put magnets on the steers’ ears and magnets on their ropes so they can guarantee two feet, or what? What’s it gonna come to?
L: I think it’s coming to put’n the ropes on. I predict the header’s gonna be able to put his rope on and go out there and turn him just like we do when we’re training them young horses.
J: Ya.
L: And a…that’s all they’ll have to do. The only roping skill that’s gonna be involved is, a…NONE. Just take a loop and throw it at the hind-end and if you catch something, you got it. You’re straight time. It’ll be like spear chucking rather than roping.
J: Well, like you said, I don’t know who keeps coming up with these gaw-dam rules, but they don’t seem to be making any sense. It’s taking the professionalism out of roping, as far as I can tell.
L: Well, not even the professionalism. It’s taken the whole idea out of it. I can’t find a better comparison than taking a game of golf and suggesting we put a bucket down there for a hole in place of the regulation size. Like saying, “We’re gonna change the game of golf cuz we’ve got a lot of golfers involved who get irritated with the challenge of a putt. Since they support this course financially what we’re gonna do is make that little hole in the green the size of a bucket. That way we’ll get more hole-in-ones and everybody will have fun. And we understand there are a lot of guys out there who want to play but don’t have the ability, so we’ll make the challenges easier for them so they’ll patronize us.”
J: (Laughing) Ya and that way, those guys, when they chip they can make it, and when they tee off on the par 3s they can make it.
L: Ya, now they can make a put from 40 feet away cuz the hole’s as big as a bucket. They won’t have to read the greens or nothing. Just ping it down there. What would that do to the professional golfers? They couldn’t do that for the professional golfers. That would change golf so bad, that you know…what are we doing? And that’s just an example of what they’re doing to team roping. What happened to the integrity of the sport?
J: aaaaa….
L: I’d sure like to find out who the team roping gods are that are changing the rules, and what their idea is for changing them and question where in the hell they think it’s going; because it seems to me like it’s going downhill or going to the dump rather than being progressive. I’m sure that if you were competing at the National Finals Rodeo and just caught a steer any which way you could with all these new pu#$%-rules the people wouldn’t appreciate that challenge.
J: That’s for sure.