PRORODEO Sports News - March 21, 2025

RodeoHouston has become a spectacle as the PRCA ’ s largest regular season rodeo. ( PRCA Photo by Mallory Beinborn )

there. Of the 96 Cinch Playoff qualifiers in 2024, 82 went on to compete at NFR. “Obviously, I don’t know that anybody can duplicate the NFR experience, but I’ve been to that rodeo too. The Governor’s Cup is just a hands down very well run production,” longtime team roper Kollin VonAhn said after he and teammate Andrew Ward won the event last September. “Honestly, I’m at the age now where I’m grateful for the opportunities that I get, and I was just glad to be there and experience it. But it was a first-class event, just unbelievable. If you never got to go to the NFR but you got to go to the Governor’s Cup, you got a pretty damn good taste of what some of the best rodeo in the world is like.” What happens in Sioux Falls during the final week of the regular season is a reflection of how the entire sport has changed in recent years. While there are still plenty of rodeos who follow

the traditional format of a single go or multiple goes with an average championship, many of the bigger events have pivoted to tournament style brackets where competitors must do well enough in initial rounds for the opportunity to keep competing. These changes have made it easier for fans to track who is still alive and who is in the running for a championship. It’s also made things a bit more lucrative. “What’s really important and really helped drive the sponsorships is if you look around at all the rodeos that are growing, one it’s either a new facility and or it is the format change,” Vick said. “I know the contestants don’t like to embrace the format changes that have happened, but they have to stop and look at the correlation between format change and the payout.”

THE NUMBERS GAME To be fair, Vick has lined up behind the barrier. A former steer wrestler who qualified for a pair of NFRs over the course of his two-decade career, the Colorado native knows what it takes to be among the best in PRORODEO. Albeit his run was at a slightly different point in history. Not that long ago, a rodeo competitor had a good shot at securing a qualifying spot at NFR with around $50,000 in earnings over the course of an entire season. Now, there are opportunities to earn that same amount from one rodeo in a span of days. “I come out of the rodeo world. I won Cheyenne. I won Houston. I won under $15,000 at both of those rodeos when I won them. Which, hey, I’m not knocking them. That was a lot of money, and it still is,” Vick said. “But today, you end up winning those rodeos and you’re going

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PRORODEO Sports News April 2025