I'm really ticked off at the NRS.

I talked myself into being really ticked off at the National Ranking System (NRS). And if your name didn't appear in the Top 100 standings, why you probably are, too.

After all, like many of you, I do keep a record of all my winnings against my entry fees, if for no other reason than to get an accurate idea of whether this sport is costing me more or less than taking up water skiing or bowling.

I also keep receipt records for my year-end tax purposes, and some people I know keep records for their own personal understanding of how they've done, while others simply don't care. Well, I care.

So there I am late in the season comparing my winnings against the "Top 100" list of Amateur's and there I am missing.

So what am I, chopped liver?

Of course, we had enrolled in NRS, but last year being the first year, there were only two groups of people that were highly suspect of what the NRS was setting out to accomplish team penners and team penning promoters. Ooh.

Well there I am studying that list. Some names I had never heard of. Some names I knew quite well. It didn't escape me that this sport of team penning is one of the few "team" sports in the equine world, and your ability to get teamed up at a big penning is based on your historic ability to deliver the goods. So here's my proof, I've got it in my little notebook and nobody else will ever see it. Oooh.

Thanks a bunch, NRS.

Okay, so I forgot one small little detail. Many of the pennings where I pulled checks from this past year were not NRS certified. So my winnings didn't count toward the NRS standings. Ooooh.

And I know that there were quite a few other penners in my backyard who mistrusted the agenda of the NRS ("what, another 'club' to join?"). There were those who did not enroll because they thought that they would never have a chance to mark a spot in the rankings of a national list. Perhaps some declined because they don't travel too far, some declined because they didn't think they would win much. I personally know some underrated penners who prefer that nobody knew how much they won.

When it was all said and done, there are quite a few in my neck of the woods who would have actually ended up quite high in the national rankings of Amateurs or Novices. But their winnings didn't count either. Oooooh.

I'm starting to see a pattern here.

So let me ask some rhetorical questions to see if I'm justified being ticked off at the NRS, or if my frustration is better directed, at say, sour cattle or something equally nasty, say Osama Bin Laden.

From a global perspective, for instance, name one good reason why team penning isn't in the NFR. Uh, because nobody can name the top 15 team penners in the world?  Okay, maybe that's valid.

From a personal perspective, why should a Novice enroll in the NRS?  Or an Amateur?  Uh, because even if you are ranked in the bottom of the top 100 nationally, somebody might see your name and want to team up with you. Oh, you don't think you could ever win enough to show up on that list?  Well why in the world are you even competing?  I guess that's already starting out with a defeatist attitude.

Sort of reminds me of when old Jake the cowboy would pray everyday, "please God, please let me win the lottery. I could do so much good if you would only let me win the lottery."  After many years, Jake is out in the sagebrush gathering cattle and as he pauses for his daily prayer to win the lottery, a dark cloud gathers on an otherwise blue sky day, and from the cloud comes a rumbling and a voice "Jake!"  "Is that you, God?" says Jake.

"Yes Jake, and I want to answer your prayers, but Jake, you've got to help me here son you gotta buy a ticket, first!"

From a promoters perspective, why would a promoter want to certify a big show or a little show (or perhaps even a series of local association shows)?  Well from a financial perspective, that one's a no-brainer. All it takes is one additional competitor who travels to your show and competes, and the promoter is ahead of the game. Put a pencil to it. I finally did. The only reason that I can see a promoter not certifying a show is because a) they don't like change, b) they don't get it, c) they've never done it that way before, or d) they're not required to by law or some other sanctioning authority.

Now why only keep track of money won and not points?  I dunno, ask the PRCA. It seems to work pretty well for them, and if that's their standard (and the standard for the NRHA, NCHA, NBHA shall I keep going?), maybe that's the standard we should be using ourselves, and extract ourselves from that argument altogether.

Statistics are the backbone of any competition. But for some reason, in this sport, nobody has kept any. Sure some associations keep annual records, but if a person pens (or sorts) in multiple association-sanctioned (or unsanctioned) events, nobody sees;  nobody knows.

Take something like baseball. I have it on good authority that there were no statistics before the invention of baseball. Now I love to watch a good baseball game (actually, I love the ballpark experience), but statistics were invented because the scorekeepers were bored. Okay, I'm kidding, but baseball has been accurately defined as a game of statistics.

So statistics can give us a pretty good idea of why someone should be rated as a #1 Novice or a #6 Pro. Uh oh, that's getting into the utilization of this data for the purpose of establishing uniform ratings, and I'm not going to stray into that arena, no matter how useful it might be to have access to this data. I'm supposed to be either justifying my frustration or changing my attitude, right?

So I am to understand that in the near future, NRS will also be able to track winnings of horses, so that when I am either buying (or selling) a horse, I can provide documented winnings of that horse's ability and show record. Hmmm.

Okay, I've seen the information on NRS, but maybe I haven't really understood it completely. What's this something for everybody?  Over $200,000 in year-end cash and awards in its first year?   Something in it for sponsors?  Whoa now that's hitting awfully close to one of my personal hot buttons. You mean it could be a means of the sport "not being our own added money" in the future?

Okay, maybe I am not justified in expressing my indignation toward NRS. Maybe I should jump on the bandwagon and acknowledge that this is the first entity that has stuck their neck out and cut across all political lines to assemble these statistics which will improve the sport of team penning.

Thanks a bunch, NRS.

Written by Tom Britz,
Contributin Writer for USTPA and Arena Talk Magazine