GLENDALE – The dirt moves before the crowd stirs. A low tremor rolls beneath the chutes as a 1,500-pound bull slams its shoulder into steel, dust lifting in thin sheets under the desert lights.
Cowboys lean quietly along the arena rails. Leather creaks. Rosin snaps. One rider bows his head in prayer. Another tests the flex in his glove. Eight seconds at a time, a sport once rooted in ranch work now unfolds beneath LED scoreboards, national TV cameras and sold-out crowds – and Arizona has become one of its brightest stages.
“Arizona has a deep history in Western sports,” said Casey Lane, general manager of the Arizona Ridge Riders, one of 10 city-based teams in the Professional Bull Riders’ rapidly growing league. “It’s a place where all the cultures that contribute to bull riding come together.”…