BY BRETT NIERENGARTEN
Louisiana cowboy Jacob Talley enters his third Wrangler NFR in 2020 in better position for a Gold Buckle than ever before.
Thanks to big wins at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo and ProRodeo Tour Finale, Talley sits No. 2 in the bulldogging standings behind only Matt Reeves.
Talley won the rodeo in Fort Worth back in February and collected more than $15,000 along the way. His final three runs were all 4.2 seconds or better and he saved the best for last by stopping the clock at 4 seconds flat in the Championship Round to win $10,120.
“That kind of had to happen for me because I didn’t get into any of the big building rodeos in the winter,” Talley, who was coming off a torn pectoral muscle in 2019, said of his Fort Worth performance. “For me to have a good winter was really huge.”
JACOB TALLEY - 4.0 IN FORT WORTH
His other big win was in Rapid City when he was victorious among the best 24 bulldoggers in the world at the ProRodeo Tour Finale in September. There, Talley was the fastest cowboy in both performances with times of 3.7 and 3.6 seconds. He won $8,500 for less than 8 seconds of competition.
JACOB TALLEY - 3.6 AT TOUR FINALE
“It was kind of a goal of mine when I left to go up there, to finish the season strong, to get me as close to first place as possible,” he said. “I wanted to win as much as I could up there just to set me up heading into the NFR.”
Even though Talley has two previous NFR qualifications, he has never been as good as he was in 2020. This season, his average time was 5.49 seconds beating his previous career best by almost a full second.
Talley says he knows how to throw steers down, so heading into Arlington he is focusing on fine-tuning things to make sure every run is perfect.
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