2014 PFR Nightly Go Round Winner: Brandon Bowers
Okie Hunch:
If you’re an avid rodeo fan who plays Pro Fantasy Rodeo, you may ask “How do I win that shiny new Ranger?” Well, maybe your name needs to be “Brandon” or maybe you need to tell your wife that you need Polaris Ranger for the place or maybe you just need to enter the Pro Fantasy Rodeo Daily Game during the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas each December. Why? The 2014 Pro Fantasy Rodeo Daily Game winner of the 2014 Polaris Ranger, Brandon Bowers, 41 of Haskell, Okla., had remarked to his wife Dena that he’d like a Ranger—just as PFR Daily Game Winner Brandon Ivy had done in 2011 when he won. Bower’s 5th round daily pick amassed earnings of $116,772.82 which was the highest money-winning daily team throughout the 10 rounds of Daily games.
Bowers related that he had been playing the Main PFR game (fantasy team must be chosen before Round 1 of WNFR with the winner receiving a Ram Truck) for several years and usually both he and his wife picked a team, but recently he also began playing the Daily game to win the Polaris just by picking the highest money winning team one single night during the 10 days of competition.
Laughing, Bowers said he almost didn’t get the team entered. In Las Vegas for the first five nights of the WNFR, he and his wife had picked a daily team for Round 4, with intentions of buying one for Round 5. “We almost didn’t get our team that night,” Bowers said. “We were headed to the performance when we remembered we hadn’t entered the team, so there I was stopping as soon as we got out of the elevator, clicking away on my phone and trying to enter my credit card before we left the hotel. That night 4 of the eight contestants on our team won the round and all of our picks won money so I knew we had a good chance, but of course, we didn’t know for sure until after the end of Round 10 if we’d picked the best daily winner.”
Asked about his strategy in picking Pro Fantasy Rodeo Daily Game winners, Bowers said he studied the results each night and tried to pick who was building momentum throughout the competition while picking different players for each Daily Game although he admitted he tended to pick those from his home state of Oklahoma! Brandon thanks his wife Dena for her pick in the bull riding, “I would have picked Sage because he’s from Oklahoma but that would have taken up so much of the salary cap money, we would have likely had to drop Sundell for somebody cheaper which could have proved lethal for our 5th round team! Thanks to Dena for picking Joe Frost (Panhandle State University Goodwell, OK) or the second round winners may have been riding around on ‘Our’ Ranger!”
For the 5th round his picks of bareback rider, Justin McDaniel, steer wrestler, Luke Branquinho, team roping header, Coleman Proctor, heeler, Jake Long, saddle bronc rider, Wade Sundell, tie-down roper, Cody Ohl, barrel racer, Fallon Taylor and bull rider, Joe Frost amassed winnings of $116,772.82 with the closest winning team in the daily game at $90,261 from Round 2.
In addition to the 2014 Polaris Ranger, Bowers received the Pendleton Whisky Fire Pit and the Pendleton Prize Package and a Rodeo Vegas leather jacket.
“It’s a super value,” says Bowers. For $15 you get a chance at a $15,000 prize and that’s pretty good odds—better than some of the other raffles I entered. For example, at another booth in Vegas I bought 10 chances on a $3,000 prize which was $200 compared to $150 (10 PFR daily games at $15) for a $15,000 prize. I would even play the daily game for $20 and I think those I know who play it would agree.”
Brandon and his wife Dena and daughter Brynlee live in Haskell, OK where they have raised AQHA performance horses for the past 15 years so that’s their connection to rodeo. Bowers said they had a special connection to the 2014 WNFR, and that was to cheer on Jake Long who was riding a full brother to a Palomino mare they own and show in Heeling and Tie Down Roping in the AQHA.
When questioned about their use of the Ranger, Bowers said, “I don’t know, now, how we got along without it. It’s so much easier to utilize than a big truck, less of an imprint on the pastures and much easier to get in and out of. Because I travel quite a bit, my wife does the majority of the feeding, etc. Just the other day she grabbed it to run and break the ice on a pond. We really like it! I’ll probably use it deer hunting and trail riding in the mountains, too. I’d seen them advertised on TV and had recently said to my wife that we ought to get one. Here we are now with our own, thanks to Pro Fantasy Rodeo!”
Bowers continued, “I learned about Pro Fantasy Rodeo several years ago when I saw Tuf Cooper promoting it on U-Tube and I’ve been playing ever since. I’m a numbers kind of guy who watches stats and results and figures all the angles and I can tell you Pro Fantasy Rodeo is a bargain. My cousins and I have competed against each other with it—sort of for the “bragging rights” and we’ve had a lot of fun over the years. I recommend everyone play it but especially the daily game. I’d like to stress that you only need to have the highest money winners for a single night—not for all 10 nights—and a lot of people don’t understand that. You could luck out and buy a team for only one night for $15 and win it all. Just do it!”