If it wasn’t for the WCRA’s “challenge system,” Tyler Pearson may not have walked away with the check for $50,000 from the Windy City Roundup in Chicago. It’s hard to say what could have happened without the system in place, but Pearson is certainly happy that it was.

“I just kind of got a funny gate when I nodded, he just kind of double-clutched and I knew I had a bad gate but I wanted to go ahead and jump him and make sure,” explained the 2017 world champion. “I threw the challenge flag and they went over it and knew it was a mistake, so they let me have another one."

Without the system in place, Pearson would have been required to pull up his horse and not jump the steer in order to have a chance at a rerun—but that call is still left up to the discretion of the judges, without the luxury of checking a replay again to make sure. When these things can happen in a split second, the simple blink of an eye can be the difference between a correct call, and that ever-unavoidable variable of human error.

“To get another shot at a wrongdoing, it’s amazing,” said Pearson. “We go so many miles, and sometimes they’re just telling us ‘no, you messed up,’ if they don’t do this at every rodeo from now on, they’re crazy.”

Wyatt Denny and Kaycee Feild wait to hear final scores near the replay judge at Windy City Roundup in Chicago.

This may have just been one example at one event, but multiply that by all of the rodeos a competitor hits in a season and it could change their entire year and potentially their career.

“I think it’s great, [the judges] can just be like, ‘Well, let’s go take a look and we’ll let the replay sort it out,'” said Pearson. “Why don’t we do that? We’re the ones driving the miles and paying the fees, so I think this has got to be the future of rodeo.”

What do you think? 

Should more rodeos adopt the challenge system and give competitors the ability to call for an instant replay when they don’t agree with a call? Or should rodeo stay the way it has always has been?