Matt Triplett And Mr. Bull -- The Prayer Of A Cowboy

Born in 2008, Professional Bull Riders competition animal Mr. Bull (seen above) weighs 1,500 pounds and is larger than some compact cars. Getting on his back and going for a ride could be considered either incredibly foolhardy or incredibly brave.

But one thing’s for sure, it takes a lot of faith — in oneself, in training, in the strength of an arm and a strap … and even in a higher power.

Last Saturday night (Feb. 7), I was down at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California (home of hockey’s Anaheim Ducks) to watch an event in the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) Built Ford Tough series. It was my first time at a pro bull-riding championship, and it was a wild night. The top ride for the evening came from 23-year-old Matt Triplett of Kalispell, Montana, who was the ultimate winner of the event when it ended on Sunday.

Here’s his winning ride, which put Triplett — who came into the competition already ranked number one — 780 points ahead of three-time PBR World Champion Silvano Alves for the year in the world standings.

This ride, on Mr. Bull, looks remarkably like the ride I saw on Saturday night, with one exception. When Triplett finished his successful ride, he walked right over to where we were sitting to reach out to someone sitting behind us. Then, as he walked away, he dropped briefly to one knee before greeting the rodeo clown.

A look at Triplett’s Twitter account reveals frequent retweets of Bible verses and inspirational Christian messages, so it’s not hard to figure out what he was doing when he knelt.

I noticed, at the beginning of the evening, along with the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner,” there was a heartfelt prayer to our “Father” in heaven, asking for sins to be forgiven, and for His protection to be bestowed on both the bull riders and the livestock. During the prayer, several of the bull riders were down on one knee, heads bowed.

The religiosity of athletes is nothing new, but I was thinking about it on the drive home. Especially in dangerous sports
like football and bull riding, the athletes are acutely aware of physical peril, and how little control they have over the ultimate outcome. That’s true in everything of course — even in less hazardous pursuits, our sense of control may be illusory to some extent — but one gets the feeling these guys know very well that their fate is largely out of their hands, and that one wrong move could mean the end of a career or even a life.

Of course, there are plenty of athletes who aren’t religious, or if they are, are private about it, but when I see a tough, strong man on his knees, in front of a stadium full of people there to see him perform, humbling himself before God, it’s inspiring.

Now, I don’t know that much about how Matt Triplett conducts his personal life, and it’s none of my business. But in an era when public expressions of faith are considered silly or tasteless or even a sign of hostility to others, it may take the willingness of a young man with the courage to strap himself to a bovine whirling dervish to remind us that, even if we’re balancing the books or making dinner or driving to work, we never know when our moment will come.

As Triplett retweeted on Feb. 9, from @Scripture_Truth: