RODEO OF THE OZARKS : Bareback rider toughing it out
Posted on Wednesday, July 5, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/159635/
SPRINGDALE — Clint Cannon has never lacked toughness as a Lumberjack or a cowboy.
Cannon spent four seasons playing college football for the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks. Now, with his days as a punishing blocking fullback behind him, the 27-year-old Texan is a professional rodeo cowboy.
“Football is probably the second-most physical sport I’ve ever done,” Cannon said Tuesday before participating in the bareback riding event at the Rodeo of the Ozarks at Parsons Stadium.
Cannon hopes to make himself into a star on the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association circuit, but he keeps getting derailed.
It’s been either personal setbacks — last week after returning from Paris, where he’d competed in a rodeo, he and his fiancee broke up after five years of dating — or medical mishaps.
“Luck just ain’t on my side,” Cannon said. “You know how all the country songs go ? When you’re down on your luck, it’s just not right.”
Cannon was the 2003 bareback rookie of the year, but in 2004 he went down with two serious injuries on successive rides. First in Monte Vista, Colo., a horse named Dippin’ Artie Mercer fell onto Cannon, breaking four of the rider’s ribs, puncturing a lung and bruising his liver and kidney. He was sidelined for three agonizing months.
Finally fit again to ride, Cannon returned to the tour in Waco, Texas. But on his comeback bareback ride, the horse bucked him into a fence — “He and the fence didn’t get along,” Cannon said — and broke his right arm.
The Colorado incident scared Cannon since the wind was knocked out of him, and the ribs made breathing difficult. A tube had to be fitted into his lung to ensure proper breathing.
He had a different emotional swing in Waco.
“That hurt pretty bad, but I got up and walked away,” Cannon said. “I was just mad.”
Cannon’s rookie season was so promising that it justified the end of his football career. A star high school player in Waller, Texas, near Houston, Cannon was recruited by several Division I-A schools like Boise State, South Florida and Texas Tech.
He opted for Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, a Division I-AA power. The Lumberjacks were talented. One of the tailbacks he blocked for, 1, 000-yard rusher Derrick Blaylock, has played five seasons in the NFL. It didn’t matter that Cannon, then a bowling ball-sized 5-9, 228 pounds, had all of six carries one season. He never complained about his lack of touches and instead proved his worth as one of the most rugged players on the team.
“My freshman year, Jeremiah Trotter [now a Pro Bowl linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles ] was there, and we were doing one-on-one drills,” Cannon said. “The coaches said, ‘Cannon, get in there. Trotter, get in there’. We got at it, and we got into a little fight.
“ I let him know quick that I wasn’t going to play around.”
A knee injury during his senior season effectively ended football for Cannon. That’s when he began to consider a rodeo career.
Cannon’s father Jay was a pro bareback rider for nearly two decades. Cannon asked him for advice, and Jay told him to lose weight. So Cannon shed 55 pounds and now rides between 170-180.
With no previous experience, Cannon spent two years in college rodeo at Prairie View A&M. He earned his degree in agricultural human resources but is giving pro rodeo a full-time shot to try and achieve what his father couldn’t — qualifying for the National Finals Rodeo.
So inspiring was his weight loss that he now gives advice to travel partners and fellow competitors about fitness and proper diet, the two intangibles that allowed him to get in rodeo shape.
“Most of these guys are tremendous athletes, tough, but they don’t know about physical training,” Cannon said. “They’re all just cowboys. All they care about is raising hell and riding bucking horses and bulls.”
Make no mistake, Cannon is proud to be called a cowboy too. His football days are long over, but he’s made believers out of former football teammates like Scott Fabian of Stephen F. Austin. He’s now a strength coach for Portland State.
“He went to the rodeo with us and got so excited. He said he was shaking and nervous standing behind the chute watching the horses growling and kicking the chute,” Cannon said. “He said, ‘I’m not going to get on, but I understand why you can’t quit’.
“ You can’t top it.”