Isn't Rodeo supposed to be fair and unbiased?

I had a beef this weekend with a judge at a church rodeo that I attended. The rules were that you had to catch your calf "bell collar" which means that the rope has to be snug around the neck when it breaks off the saddle horn. I roped my calf and was 2.3 which was winning the round by 3 tenths of a second. As I was following my calf out of the arena the judge waved me out and said I had a no time. I asked him what I had done and he said that I had roped a front leg, which according to the rules is illegal. At first I just said ok because it has happened to me before even though I am pretty good at noticing when I roped a leg and didn't think I did it this time. When I rode to the chutes to get my rope I asked the guys taking ropes off if the rope was around the calves leg. They looked puzzled and said no it was a clean catch. Three different men said this to me. I went straight to the judge and told him what the men had said and he said "Well, it was around the leg when it broke off". That would be a legitimate answer except it is difficult for a rope to come off a leg when it has been roped and come up tight around the neck by the time the calf gets to the end of the arena.

My beef with this whole episode is that I was at a church roping. I was almost expecting something of this nature to happen, as I had problems with the family who ran the roping and was worried that something underhanded may happen. Turns out I was right. What makes it worse is that this was a CHURCh roping, where there is supposed to be less bias and greediness than is usually present at this roping. Another problem I had at this roping was the rules were if you came to the church service in the morning you go to rope fro free. I had no problem with that as it saved me money. My problem is that I saw at least 5 people that got to rope and were not at the church service. One of the participants was a particular friend of the family running the roping which struck me as biased behavior. If I had to go to a church service (and I particularly don't like them) then everyone should have had to go. It's not fair to the rest of us who waited around for 7 hours to rope in the heat.

This is a problem I have had with rodeo for a while. It is supposed to a very unbiased sport, with luck playing a large part in how people do. I love the sport for that reason. But when people do things like this it makes me said for the sport and angry that people feel the need to cheat so that they can win. What's worse in my opinion is that this sort of thing happened at a CHURCH roping, where just a few hours earlier they were preaching that material things are not necessary and that we should all love each other and help each other out.

Hypocritical bull$h!t if you ask me.