Ep. 113 - NFR 2022 Recap & Conclusion of Season 4
It’s been a wild 2022 and we are so grateful for everyone that has joined our show as a guest, field reporter or an avid listener! Thank you to all of you and we look forward to an exciting 2023!
Bareback
“To be honest, I thought Jess Pope should have won the world a few years ago,” says Joe Harper. “There’s just no way that he was going to give any ground if at all possible. Also in there is Leighton Barry and Cole Franks… who wasn’t talked about enough at this NFR with how good he was riding and how consistent he was staying with everything.”
R.C. Landingham was another one that was staying quiet in regards to attention received this year but rode fantastic. Orin Larson got knocked out of the finals with a broken thumb. There were quite a few little upsets up and down through the standings. Tim O’Connell dropped down a lot more than you really expected to see, as well as Tilden Hooper that we thought would do more. Rocker Steiner won a little bit of money but we really saw him drop a bit in the finals. A lot of people were expecting him to come in and dominate here in the finals.
It’s early for Rocker though. He’s young and very talented.
“Jess Pope has ridden thirty for thirty in NFR’s,” says Katie. Going over the final stats, Jess won the 860 points on 10 heads, averaging at 86 points per horse, with a 10 point spread between top and bottom to prove his consistency. Right behind that is Cole Franks with an 85.2 point average on 10 heads. Cole Franks is riding outstanding and we need to be paying attention to him in this next year that is heading towards the world title. He was out for a lot of 2022 as well.
The name of the game is consistency in the bareback riding. Realistically, at this level, it’s harder to get bucked off a bareback horse so you’re looking for the consistency, the factor of the horse scores, and act as horsemen to really turn loose on the horses that they get to show the best that they can of that horse. It’s a testament for the skill of the contestants.
Predictions for 2023 is that there are a lot of great bareback riders coming up and one we haven’t talked about yet because he doesn’t even has his PRCA card bought is Keenan Hayes. In 2022 he broke the permit earnings record this year - absolutely blew it away. If he would have bought his card, he would have made the finals no problem.
There is a lot of strategy that goes into buying permits and cards in heading towards the Rookie of the Year title. It’s really important that your Rookie Year is a good one. In Joe’s opinion, you need to be out of college, focused entirely on making the NFR, and rodeoing full time. That comes from his own experience of working, family, classes and finals, plus college rodeo as well. It means you can’t put the focus you need to get to it. That’s the reason behind why Keenan is doing what he’s doing. You can fill your permit and ride on it for three years more if you are in college. If you don’t fill it, you can go on indefinitely.
“Keenan Hayes is being extremely intelligent about this,” says Joe. "You have Keenan Hayes winning $108,000 plus on his permits and a lot of rodeos wouldn’t even take him because he was on his permit.”
Steer Wrestling
There was such crazy camaraderie behind the guys after the craziest round 10 we’ve seen in years where Stetson Jorgensen missed his steer for the world title and Will Lummus broke the barrier and moved Tyler Waguespack into his next title. A big shoutout to Dirk Tavenner who battled injuries throughout the entire NFR but really started to find his stride. In fact, he found out after the NFR that a third-party sponsor named him the toughest competitor of the NFR.
Kyle Irwin of Alabama wrestled ten head of steers in 46.1 seconds, average 4.61 seconds with Jesse Brown at 4.81 seconds.
“Did you just leap frog me?” was the best part when Will asked Tyler about what just happened. You could see all of them doing math trying to figure out what was happening. The Cowboy Channel, on the production side, waited until after the commercial break because everyone was trying to calculate it. Hypothetically speaking, at some point, those guys had had that conversation of what would have had to happen. There’s a lot of times that if we think there is an idea on something, then there is an outlier that is going to disrupt everything.
At no point during the NFR did Tyler Waguespack lead the projected race but he ended up in first at the end. You could tell that he almost felt bad about bumping Will who is his friend and hauling partner. They’re definitely good friends and they, plus Ty Erickson, talked a lot this NFR about what their wives were doing to keep their horses going. It’s definitely a family affair when it comes to rodeo.
Team Roping
Tanner Tomlinson and Patrick Smith won the average in a very impressive performance. They were the only pair to go clean in ten out of ten rounds. They were almost as fast as the steer wrestlers, average 5.3 second on ten-head; they were faster than the 3rd place average in the steer wrestling. Tanner was at his first NFR, Patrick has been there for over two decades.
Kalebs Drigger and Junior Noguiera were our definite winners which we knew by about round three that that was going to happen. Kaleb broke the $2 million dollar mark this year in earnings that wasn’t talked about too much.
The Minor brothers from Washington were very quiet this NFR. They got one check and then got a $50K in the average money. They are always super consistent and are one that surprises Katie that they don’t have a world title yet. In the Team Roping over the past few years, the go-round wins are what solidify a lot of the world titles - not so much the average as it can be in the other events. If you can win 2-3 rounds and then place at some point in the average, you’re going to win.
If you weren’t one through four or one through three, you needed to go fast and get round money. That is what Rhen Richard and Jeremy Buhler maybe tried to do and it didn’t work well for them at all. You have to go every day and make that event a rodeo.
Saddle Bronc
First and foremost, Joe has to give a shoutout to Sage Newman who had the roughest rodeo. He didn’t draw like he needed to and when he did, he lost his rein in round 3 or 4 and his neck got snapped. “I didn’t want to say anything during the rodeo, but when that snapped his neck it tears the muscles up in your neck so bad that you can’t keep your chin down. That’s so important in saddle bronc to have your chin down and have a great ride,” says Joe. “He kept going every ride, he didn’t let it show, and I know how much of a pin in the neck - pun intended - that that can be.”
Only three guys rodeo 10 horses for 10 qualified rides and they were Zeke Thurston, Brody Cress, and Logan Hayes. We didn’t know who the world champion was going to be until the end because Zeke could have fallen off or missed a mark out.
We only had four 90 plus rides all week, but Joe said that for the most part, he would say that for the most part, the judging was pretty darn good in the bronc riding this year. There are some different thoughts on this but he felt like everything was working really well and they had done a good job. Overall one of the best judged saddle bronc NFR’s.
Breakaway
“Thank you everyone who wrote in on my controversial bull riding thoughts,” says Katie with a laugh about removing the last 10 bull riders and put in the breakaway ropers. Joe threw in that he heard the argument that “why do we have a pre-show” when it comes to the NFR when we want to put in the breakaway roping. Katie will argue the opposite of that for giggles. The catch is that that will be an artist performing and a specialty act. If you remove it, you’l remove the entire contract act opportunity. That’s also the time when people are trying to make their seats so no one will be in their seats. The third part is that for sponsorship activation, they are probably working with casinos to have an artist play that will be at their casino later. It probably doesn’t cost them money to have that pre show, but they’re making money in the sponsorship activation so that is actually funding the purses. Fourth, adds Rachel, is that they want people shopping at teh convention center longer.
“In my opinion,” says Joe. “Make it a little bit longer, if they want to include breakaway in the rodeo itself, they need to make it longer… The Cowboy Channel allows us to set up our own time bracket.” With the Cowboy Channel being entirely dedicated to rodeo. There’s a lot of people and a lot of sponsors that would like to have it added in. We can run through the breakaway on it.
Is rodeo not being on mainstream sports a big deal? We don’t have the virality that we were having on ESPN when in 2019 Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson shared the Hailey Kinsel video that he stumbled on when she set the arena record. Katie’s theory is that we should still contract out our Friday & Saturday night performances of the NFR to those channels as well as The Cowboy Channel. Joe’s counter argument is that that doesn’t build us a dedicated audience - in fact, Yellowstone the TV Series is doing a good job of building longevity of dedicated fans instead of flash fans.
Tie Down Roping
Caleb Smidt came to win and that’s exactly what he did but the real question is “did Caleb win the finals, or did Pockets win?” Keep in mind, he ran two calves in practice, his only practice, on Pockets which was the first time in ten years he had ran any for no money on Pockets. That casual confidence is what helped keep him calm and quiet.
Shad Mayfield, per usual, had an off NFR which is what he’s consistently done. But he comes in with such a big lead that he still managed to get the reserve World Title. He won about $50,000 plus in round money. It’s crazy when you look at it that way. We will see John Douch come back in the future. There are a lot of young guys coming up in Macon Murphy and Riley Webb, plus many others, that will continue to do well and mature.
Caleb Smidt, on ten calves, was 8.2 seconds per head. The number 2 spot was Cory Solomon was 9.2 seconds. If you’re a calf roper, you do make more money if you are married. Overall, married people dominated every event. The only one would be bull riding but that also factors in the age as well.
Barrel Racing
Hailey Kinsel gets another world title which wasn’t as exciting after the drama that popped up after Round 9. Stevi Hillman’s horse took a hard stumble going around the first barrel and then, that night during the go-round buckle presentation at the South Point, Hailey was asked about the ground. Hailey’s response was that there were rodeo horses and jack pot horses and that rodeo horses handle the ground. She later said she wasn’t referencing the fall of Stevi’s horse, because, at the time, she was unaware that Stevi’s horse had fallen. She did not mean it as any shade that Stevi’s mare, Sandy, that had fallen twice had never been to a rodeo - she was a futurity horse.
Interestingly, none of the leaders won the average in the barrel racing. Shelley Morgan won it at 13.36 seconds with Bayleigh Choate, the Rookie right behind her, Lisa Lockhart, etc. Hailey Kinsel slipped into the last hole of the average payout and won herself five rounds! That’s $125,000 won on those.
Look at Shelley Morgan, she made $75,000 and if she had won two rounds, she would have won the world or would have made the same amount of money that Hailey had won with the round wins and the average slot she got. The consistency factor versus just winning rounds is insane. The rounds that Hailey didn’t win, she made some money in some while knocking in others. Shelley came in sixth, was consistent, won the average, but that didn’t matter without getting those round moneys.
There were a lot of knocked barrels this year with only two coming down to having ten clean rounds. You could have knocked two barrels and still placed in the average. It happens!
In the past, there was a big emphasis on trying to make the NFR in as few of rodeos as possible and so this year Leslie had half the number of rodeos as Jordan Briggs. Leslie made a joke about not exactly trying to make the NFR. But not going to more rodeos and winning more money, it’s putting to great of a distance to make up between 1 through 15.
In the world of futurities taking off, we may see contestants aim for the NFR and bring big name futurity horses in. Stevi Hillman’s horse Sandy was futurity, but both Kassie Mowry and Jordan Briggs are futurity riders. The ERA/WCRA with Ashley Schaffer is an incredibly popular futurity rider and so now you wonder if she’s going to start going to some local rodeos. There is a lot of talent in the futurity world, do we know if that pool will start coming over?
The NFR is very like a futurity. With the potential drama of Sandy and the NFR ground, it’s very like futurity ground. Is there a chance that we will see NFR speciality cadillacs of horses that have excelled in futurities. The conversation says that the futurity horses are 100% full send because they trust the ground. Rodeo horses will test the ground on the run in and make the decision on it’s run on that first barrel. The futurity horses are trained to go balls to the wall and go for it.
Bull Riding
Was there any doubt that Stetson Wright was going to win? Probably not but you have to admire just how flat out gritty Josh Frost is! It’s one of those deals that we see Stetson so dominant, that you want to cheer for the underdog. When they rode, they were over 85 points.