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You don’t get many opportunities in your life, especially when you’re 50, to start something new again and utilize everything you’ve learned. It’s pretty exciting to be a part of this.
Watch the first season of The Ride on Amazon Prime
See if the Austin Gamblers are coming to your city this season
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By Micah Mertes
After more than 30 years in the world of baseball — first as a college player, then as a minor league general manager and executive — Creighton alum JJ Gottsch has pivoted to a whole new arena: professional bull riding.
Gottsch, a former Creighton shortstop and member of the 1991 College World Series team, is now the CEO of the Austin Gamblers, one of eight Professional Bull Riders (PBR) teams.
Last summer, the PBR launched the first season of the Team Series, reframing a famously individual sport — one rider, one bull, eight seconds — as a team contest. It’s still one rider and one bull at a time, but now each team member’s scores are added up; each rider is accountable to every other.
The Gamblers, whose home arena is the University of Texas’s Moody Center, had a tremendous first season, with the best record of any team. Their inaugural ride was marked by triumph and tragedy alike, and every moment was captured for the new Amazon Prime documentary series The Ride. (Gottsch is in all eight episodes of the series.)
The Ride — which follows riders from the Gamblers and other PBR teams over the course of the first season — is already a hit. Within the first week of its May premiere, it was ranked ninth overall on Prime Video and seventh in Prime TV shows.
The Ride’s tagline (“Team up. Hang on.”) is one Gottsch can relate to, even if in his sport, the “bull pen” carries a slightly different meaning.
After playing for Creighton’s baseball team (and Texas Christian University after), Gottsch went on to start two Minor League Baseball franchises: the Round Rock Express and the Corpus Christi Hooks. Before joining the PBR, he worked for Nolan Ryan’s Texas-based Ryan Sanders Sports & Entertainment for 24 years, playing such roles as executive vice president and COO. He remains the chairman of the Austin Sports Commission.
Gottsch’s move from baseball to bull riding might seem unexpected at first. But the key word here is team. To start the Team Series, the PBR wanted people who could, straight out the chute, wrangle a group of individuals together as one. As a man who’s spent his whole career building and leading teams — and who was, in fact, a member of one of the most celebrated teams in Creighton Athletics’ history — Gottsch fit the bill.
Ahead of the PBR Team Series’ second season, starting July 24, we spoke with Gottsch about The Ride, the Gamblers’ first season and how his time as a Creighton baseball player forged a bond he’ll never buck.
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How does a baseball player who grew up in Omaha go on to become the CEO of a professional bull riding team in Austin, Texas?
So the owners of the Austin Gamblers franchise were looking for a couple different things. One, because bull riding is primarily an individual sport and this was now going to be a team series, they wanted someone who had experience running a team in a league format, which I’d done for 24 years with two minor league baseball teams. I also had more than 20 years of experience building a network in Austin, and I’m the president of the Austin Sports Commission. But really, it was just kind of … right place, right time.
You don’t get many opportunities in your life, especially when you’re 50, to start something new again and utilize everything you’ve learned. It’s pretty exciting to be a part of this.
Prior to joining the Gamblers, what was your interest in bull riding as a sport?
Interestingly enough, it started in Omaha. My birthday is in the third week of September, the same time the rodeo used to take place at Ak-Sar-Ben. Every year around the time of my birthday, we’d go to the Ak-Sar-Ben rodeo. Also, our extended family were farmers and cattle ranchers in Nebraska, so I grew up somewhat close to the ag life.
Fast forward some 40-odd years later, and I’m in Round Rock, Texas, with the Round Rock Express baseball team. The Austin rodeo was getting ready to go for 17 days of performances, they’d already built the infrastructure and accrued the expenses. Then COVID hit, and the world shut down. We asked the rodeo organizers, “Hey, is there an opportunity for us to work with you to bring bull riding to the ballpark in an outdoor environment where everyone can social distance?”
That led to us creating an event called Bulls in the Ballpark, which now takes place at the Express’ home stadium, Dell Diamond, every year. That’s not why I got the job with the Austin Gamblers, but it was a nice coincidence.
With bull riding being such an individual sport, how did the idea for the Professional Bull Riders Team Series come about?
I believe it was the idea of Sean Gleason, the CEO of PBR. He had a business plan for it for a number of years, basing it on the success of team sports in other American leagues. But it wasn’t until COVID hit and turned over the apple cart that they had the time to reset some things and begin to implement the plan. From a timing standpoint, it was the kind of thing that maybe couldn’t work until everything else got screwed up.
How did people take to the format in the Team Series’ first season?
Those of us with team and league experience were wildly bullish, pun intended, on what we thought this thing could be. The two most skeptical groups were the fans and the riders. Because, you know, these guys not only compete in an individual sport. A lot of them grew up on ranches and really rural areas. They maybe didn’t play little league baseball or youth football or high school basketball. They weren’t on a track team.
To change the mindset you’ve had your entire career is a huge shift. To be a part of a team and know that not only are you counting on other people to pull the rope; they’re counting on you, too. The general managers on all the teams knew they needed to attack that head-on. Every team did a good job of creating that culture, and they all did it a little bit differently.
How did the Gamblers turn the individual riders into a team?
Personally, I was really nervous about it at first. You know, how were these guys going to take to a baseball guy telling them what it takes to be a team member? I’ve never put my hand in a bull rope, and I don’t know what it means to risk my life in the sport I’m participating in. The Gamblers coach (Michael Gaffney) and I talked a long time about finding the right model of a group that exemplifies team culture. We landed on the perfect example: the Navy SEALs.
There are a lot of former SEALs in the Austin area, and we were able to bring in several of them to talk to the riders about the importance of creating that team environment. Of course, being a rider and being a SEAL are very different things. But it’s true in both cases that if you don’t work together as a team, people can die.
That approach seems to have worked out for the Gamblers.
We had a really good first season. We were the regular season champions. And I think what the guys found out is, while it’s always great to win, it’s a lot more fun when you win together.
It was an interesting season. We didn’t start out doing great, then went on an eight-game winning streak. Some incredible highs and lows. But we went through it all together. The guys are proud to be a part of this team, and we’re all excited for this new season starting in July.
I want to talk about The Ride TV show, but first I’ve got to ask you the big Creighton question. How did being on Creighton’s 1991 College World Series team shape you as someone who would go on to help lead multiple teams?
Well, it’s a bond that never breaks, right? So I’m on two different texting threads. One is with the guys I played with at Creighton; the other is with the guys I played with at TCU. We don’t just talk during baseball season and the College World Series. We talk all year round, about fun stuff, about serious stuff, about the good and bad things, getting older, seeing our parents pass away. This great support system you have as a team can become a blessing that stays with you for the rest of your life.
I’ve only seen the first episode of The Ride so far, but it already seems like some of these riders are making that same kind of bond.
These guys come from some wildly different backgrounds. The Gamblers had guys from Canada, Brazil and the United States. Our team had one of the only African American riders on the tour, and one of the only Native American riders on the tour. They came at the start of the season with little in common besides riding bulls. By the end of the year, these guys were a band of brothers.
The docuseries does a really good job of showing the relationships our riders formed with each other. All of them have known each other for a long time. But riding in the same arena is one thing. Riding on the same team is another.
At the start of The Ride, you see Gamblers teammates Jose Vitor Leme and Ezekiel Mitchell already becoming two of the series’ main characters.
There are basically seven main characters in the series. Two from the Carolina Cowboys. Two from the Oklahoma Freedom. And three from the Gamblers. Pretty soon you’re going to meet Dakota Louis. We follow these seven guys around, and it gets pretty heavy. There are more than 150 riders who participated in the Team Series league last year, and of these seven riders the show follows, two of them had some wildly tragic events happen during filming.
I think the show does a great job of appealing to people who aren’t necessarily even interested in bull riding. I had no prior interest in the sport before watching The Ride, but I was hooked after one episode. You get invested in these guys’ lives pretty fast.
Wait until you see the next few episodes.
The second season of the PBR Team Series starts in July. Do you know if they’re going to shoot a new season of The Ride for Amazon Prime?
I believe they’re in negotiations as we speak.
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The Ride trailer
Watch the first season of The Ride on Amazon Prime
See if the Austin Gamblers are coming to your city this season
