NFR Is More Than Just Sport: ‘Rodeo Is Not What We Do. It’s Who We Are’
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
They held their numbers, those National Finals Rodeo numbers that will be pinned to the back of their shirts during rodeo events like team roping, barrel racing and bareback riding.
For these two NFR contestants, their specialty is a rodeo event called, “tie-down roping,” and they stood side-by-side amid the red lights and smoke on a stage in South Point Hotel’s grand ballroom. They were Shad Mayfield, holding his number 72, from Clovis, New Mexico who is the 2019 National high School tie-down roper champ. And next to him was Cooper Martin, who will be number 84, from Alma, Kansas.
Mayfield and Martin, the M & M cowboys, were among the 120 NFR contestants Tuesday evening introduced like basketball players before an NBA championship game. Their names were announced by an emcee and all 120 clutched those numbers — the badges of rodeo honor that are part of six decades of NFR lore passed from generation to generation.
The NFR starts Thursday when 17,000 diehard rodeo fans will pack Thomas & Mack Center for the 61st Super Bowl of rodeos. It’s the first night of 10 evenings of rodeo competition that runs through Dec. 14. Fifteen of the top money-makers in seven rodeo categories qualified for NFR. The top money-maker in each category can make $146,000 in steer wrestling a year or $182,000 in bareback riding or $130,000 in steer roping.
That’s the top annual earnings, which might not seem a lot compared to the million-dollar annual contracts in the NBA or Major League Baseball. But a friendly rodeo organizer from Estes Park, Colorado told me to multiply those number by “three to five times” to find out the total salaries because the cowboys make that amount in endorsements and sponsorships.
Before the 120 contestants walked on stage before their friends and families and the officials with the NFR’s sanctioning body, Colorado Springs, Colorado-based Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), a black-and-white video played on big screens scattered across the giant ballroom.
The folks in Wrangler jeans, cowboy hats, boots and big buckles looked up to the old-time rodeo scenes on the video and heard the narrator say, “If we’re going to do a rodeo, it will be on our terms . . . We came as strangers and we left as heroes. Our work means something.”
When the cowboys talk about “respect, pride and passion,” as mentioned on the rodeo video, those words do not ring as cliches.
“We represent a heritage,” the video narrator said. “Rodeo is not what we do. It’s who we are.”
Here’s a scene from Tuesday evening’s welcome reception.
South Point Hotel was a natural home for the welcome reception. The hotel south of the Strip is owned by 76-year-0ld Michael Gaughan, who was instrumental in the Las Vegas Events/LVCVA and the PRCA reaching a 10-year deal in 2015 to keep the prized NFR in Las Vegas through 2024. The deal gives $10 million to the professional rodeo organization to dole out in prize money to the NFR cowboys this month.
The hotel staged a modest “gold carpet” event before the reception to allow photographers and fans to snap photos of the contestants. Siri Stevens, owner of The Rodeo News, came up with the idea of cowboys walking a short carpet three years ago when a well-known cowboy arrived in a snazzy sports car at South Point for the reception.
South Point plays a major role during NFR. In fact, South Point General Manager Ryan Growney said the hotel’s 2,163 rooms are already booked for the 2020 NFR. He estimated 25,000 people are passing through the hotel and 13,000 meals are served a day.
The contestants passing through the carpet for photos look so young. Indeed they are. Some are 19-year-olds, mere teenagers but veterans at riding horses for years.
“Rodeo,” Growney observed, “is not a sport for us old guys.”
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