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Y O U R O T H E R L I F E Coach Cowboy |
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Photo by John Davis |
Robert Chesney, defensive coordinator of the Johns Hopkins
football team, had long been
intrigued by the cowboy way of life. "I have a lot of
respect for cowboys, for their hard-working, blue-collar
lifestyle," he says. So he jumped at the chance to spend
three weeks riding bulls, wrestling steers, and herding
cattle on a Colorado ranch last summer on the cable-TV
reality show Cowboy U.As one of eight contestants on the show, which aired on Country Music Television beginning in January, Chesney learned to ride, shoot at targets from a horse-drawn wagon, wrangle chickens, and administer a pregnancy test to a cow. There was also some manure shoveling, some pig feeding, some cooking over an open fire. Perhaps his silliest task was "calf dressing," which entailed tackling a 200-pound calf, moving him to center ring, and fitting him into a mammoth pair of men's tighty whiteys. "It was harder than I thought," says Chesney, who was in first place going into the show's final rodeo, but lost by six-tenths of a second on the final bull ride. A graphic artist from Chicago took home the first-place $25,000 prize.
As it turns out, being a cowboy isn't all that different
from being a college football coach, Chesney says. "You
have to be strong to be a cowboy. You have to be tough. And
you can't be sick as a cowboy and have a day off. That
correlates to being a football coach during football season
— there are no days off." — Maria Blackburn |
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The Johns Hopkins Magazine |
901 S. Bond St. | Suite 540 |
Baltimore, MD 21231Phone 443-287-9900 | Fax 443-287-9898 | E-mail jhmagazine@jhu.edu |
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