Football
FOX News personality Abby Hornacek grew up dreaming of being just like her favorite sports sideline reporter.
Her inspiration wasn’t someone talking football. Or any other stick and ball sport, even as the daughter of a former NBA all-star.
Hornacek’s fascination was professional bull riding. She aspired to follow in the footsteps of Leah Garcia, PBR’s principal dirt-level commentator from 2003 to 2020.
The Arizona native and USC graduate initially covered sports for ESPN and FOX and co-hosted a live sports show for Stadium in Chicago. Hornacek was FOX Nation’s first on-air hire in 2019, and she made Garcia and the network’s brass proud Saturday night as the voice of “PBR Space Cowboys Countdown Live” – one of the most audacious feats in live sports broadcasting.
The pre-show for the Freedom 250 event wrapping a bull riding into country music concerts was a continuous 30-minute tracking shot snaking through sold-out Falcon Stadium at Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Think the acclaimed British series “Adolescence” where each episode was filmed as one unbroken take or the Goodfellas mobster Henry Hill and his date, Karen, entering the back VIP entrance of the Copacabana and winding through the kitchen and out on to the club floor right by the stage.
During the audacious 30-minute shot, the Fox team was covering significant ground in all senses.
The network wanted to satisfy avid fans by diving deep into one of sport’s most spectacular events while explaining to newbies what the heck they were about to see. Concurrently, they were setting the stage for the nation’s second-largest birthday party following UFC’s fight on the White House lawn a week earlier.
In front of her cameraman slowly backing through the crowded concourse, Hornacek made the case for her love affair with America’s original extreme sport while interviewing insiders, fans and riders for the full half hour without a break.
Formula 1 pioneered “walking the grid” in pre-shows, later adopted by NASCAR. At a bull riding with teams named for units of the Space Force and the bulls taking on monickers like High Orbit, Cloud Cover, Codebreaker, North Star and Master Control, FOX Nation aimed for the stars and rode the format to the stratosphere.
Starting atop the “Launch Pad” – a busy fan zone with food, activations, Monster Energy motocross races, and concerts by Annie Bosko and The Castellows – Hornacek entered through the front gate and slowly circled the stadium, winding up at field level for the first chords of Chris Janson’s concert, also carried on FOX Nation and leading into the all-star team bull riding.
Along the way, she shared her fascination with bulls that get massage therapy and acupuncture, and specialized dirt that’s firm enough to provide the remarkable animal athletes sure footing to produce the high-flying action fans crave and high-scored bull rides, yet with enough flexibility so that cowboys launched like Space Force rockets can walk away from their wrecks.
After four stop-and-chats, she descended Falcon Stadium’s concrete steps, still expanding on the bull-riding primer and greater meaning of the celebration, before meeting PBR’s leader Sean Gleason on the edge of four million pounds of trucked-in dirt.
The roster of interviews included PBR commentator Matt West who choked up expressing the privilege of honoring those protecting our nation; sisters Evelyn Robinson and Cynthia Johnson, uber fans who grew up in Brooklyn, NY, attending nearly 75 PBR events coast to coast; Texan Ezekiel Mitchell who grew up wanting to be a cowboy and learned to ride by watching YouTube videos; US Air Force General Randall Cason who spoke about the unifying strength of teams, and PBR CEO Gleason, humbled at the sight of nearly 31,000 fans coming out to say thank you amid a rip roaring time.
Following a stunning National Anthem flyover by a pair of F-22 Raptors – and a glorious low, loud, bone-rattling, sound-of-freedom return pass – the main event, streaming exclusively on Fox, took center stage.
While nobody can script the bulls, Dirty South paired with native Brazilian Lucas Divino to produce an outcome tailor-made for the faith, family and freedom themes. The affable captain of Team Star Command (STARCOM) knocked down an 88.5-point ride for the PBR Space Cowboys win.
“When I got here (the United States), I had a goal; I wanted to become a citizen,” Divino said on the Fox Nation broadcast. “Later, when God opens the doors for me, I wanted to show the world that God is real, and He’s still alive. If you have a dream, chase it. But don’t forget one thing: Put God in the center. He doesn’t want the corners. Put him in the center of your life.”
PBR Commentator Matt West commented:
“It’s hard to put into words what this means to all of us behind the scenes, because our military men and women do so much that none of us really see. To be able to put together a show that literally just says ‘thank you for what you do for us’ is an honor for every single person at PBR.
“What I’m most excited to see tonight is what I’ve already started seeing: the men and women in uniform, and the smiles on their faces. That’s what I’m most excited to continue to see. I’ll get emotional to look out there and see them, and I hope that they understand what we’re doing and feel appreciated.”
The uberfan sisters Evelyn Robinson and Cynthia Johnson had this to say:
“I was watching TV and saw this cowboy on the back of a bull, and he’s holding on for dear life. The bull’s doing his job, and I thought this has got to be the most insane, craziest, fabulous extreme sport ever. We were off and running from there and have been doing live events since 2013.
“There’s a dance between man and bull, and when it’s done right it’s just poetry in motion. We just love this sport. It’s a family sport, and they honor the military and still say prayer and honor America. We’ve never been to a PBR event that had any fighting. The riders are open to the fans interacting with them and taking pictures. We’ve gotten to know a lot of riders and stock contractors over the years. Every event we go to we think, PBR will not be able to top this. And then they go do something like this.”
Team Star Command’s Ezekiel Mitchell reflected:
“There’s an emotional wear and tear that bull riding brings to your mind and body. Overall, it’s a character-building sport. I love it like nothing else.
“I’ve learned that not everything is the most important thing in the moment. Bull riding is a kind of release for me. All those stresses in life and everything else, they don’t mean anything in the bucking chutes. I also believe in the good Lord, so the good Lord tells me not to worry about anything, either. Bull riding is giving me a closer relationship with God, and I feel like it’s just shaped and molded me into being a better man overall.”
“I’ve learned a lot in 31 years (of service). One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t do it without a team. There’s no one individual; there’s a lot of people who come together and work really hard to train to work together as a team. You’re only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.
This event tonight is significant for the Space Force. This is their signature 250 event for the year, a fantastic way for us to celebrate freedom and independence like the White House has asked us to do. The Space Force contributes so much to joint capabilities, and we have a way to show it off tonight. It’s the youngest of all the services, and I’m hopeful that after tonight, everybody better understands what the Space Force is and how much it delivers for America.”
PBR CEO and Commissioner Sean Gleason talked about the event:
“It’s a little humbling when you get this many people to show up and celebrate Space Force and America’s 250th. Celebrating America in an event like this just doesn’t get any better. We’re so proud and humbled to be a part of it. The Space Force Guardians are cowboys from top to bottom. You pair them with the best bull riders in the world, and it just makes sense. You couldn’t get a better pairing of like-minded individuals. Space is the next great frontier of places that we haven’t explored fully. Cowboys tamed the West, and I think Space Force is going to tame space.”
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