Rodeo depends on community support
The Utah State Rodeo Club is one of the most community-supported rodeo clubs in the region.
“Last year, we probably had 1,000 to 1,500 people in the stands for our home rodeo,” said Rodeo Coach Jeff Hall. “The only two rodeos that probably have better attendance than ours is the College of Southern Idaho and Utah State University at Uintah Basin.”
But despite the support from the community, the Rodeo Club still struggles to get the funding they need each year.
Hall said that the rodeo club’s working budget for the 2004-05 season is approximately $65,000. The school usually pays for about $5,000. The students will usually pay about $38,000 out of their own pockets and the club has to raise the remaining money on their own.
“The last two years have been real tough as far a fundraising and sponsorships and stuff like that because the economy has been bad,” Hall said. “Local businesses don’t chip in as much and it makes it tough.”
The students can earn back some, if not all, of the money they put in, Hall said.
In rodeo, there is not the discrepancy between pro rodeo and amateur rodeo, so the students are allowed to win money for winning different events.
“I had a student last year who won close to $700 in a weekend,” Hall said. “Now, granted, that’s nowhere near what you would win in a pro rodeo, but it’s still prize money that the students can win if they do very well.”
Hall said that most of the time the students put the money they earn toward either their horse-care costs, the travel costs or some of the other expenses associated with rodeo.
The collegiate rodeo prize money comes from the entry fees that the students must pay for each event they participate in. The first event they enter costs $38. Every event after that costs $33. Most of the $38,000 a year students pay is in entry fees.
The students can potentially win those entry fees back, Hall said.
“But you think, of 70 teams [in an event], you have to place in the top four to see any of that money.”
USU Campus Recreation, which is over club sports, can only do so much to help the team financially, due to limited funds.
“We’re hoping for additional funding next year,” said Sport Club Coordinator Lindsay Skidmore.
Campus Recreation has five tiers of club sports, based on funding. Rodeo, hockey, and men’s lacrosse are the only clubs on the highest tier, so they receive the most money.
A lot of it is based on what the clubs require, Skidmore said. But a lot also has to do with the organization and competitiveness of the clubs.
“The funding is set up in a duel-break system where there’s two sets of funding that come from the university,” Hall said. “The first set is provided to the club up front. The second set is called matching money. In other words, the club has to generate at least that much money on its own.”
Hall said at the USU home rodeo, the club generally gets about $4,000-$5,000 from sponsorships from the community and generally get about $1,000 from the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association in stock charges to help pay the cost of the stock.
The club also collects money on its own through tickets sales and concessions.
“Our biggest fundraiser each year is our home rodeo,” Hall said. “We’ve got to get people to the rodeo.”
Hall said that attendance on Saturdays over the past two years has been down because the football team was playing at home at the same time.
The club’s home rodeo is the last weekend in September this year. Tickets are $3 for students who buy them in advance and $5 for everyone at the gate.
There is no home football game that weekend.
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu