JEROME ROBINSON

A Hall of Famer Who Knows His Way Around the Arena Inside and Out

By Kelly B. Robbins

Jerome Robinson has quite a “notable” history in the rodeo game. He is the arena director for the PBR and has been since its beginning 25 years ago. He has been a bull rider, a stock contractor, and a rodeo producer. He has served as a member of the PRCA Board of Directors and owned a bull riding school. In fact, his involvement is so “notable”, he is being inducted as a “notable” into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs on August 3, 2019. The dictionary defines “notable” as: worthy of attention or notice; remarkable. A famous or important person. As for the PBR and the “toughest sport on dirt”, Jerome is a very remarkable, very important person.

“I feel pretty humbled by this honor,” Jerome disclosed. “I wasn’t expecting it. It is very gratifying, very unexpected. I am looking forward to it. As for my role in the PBR, I’m sort of the arena director. I do a lot of stuff behind the scenes. At each event, I figure out how to build the arena and find a place for the bulls, and then help to keep the bulls in the proper order. I have a crew of 10 to 15 who build the arena. We set it up and then we tear it down. I’m more like a logistics coordinator.”

Jerome’s bull riding career is “notable” as well. He spent 16 years riding bulls professionally in the PRCA and made 11 trips to the PRCA National Finals Rodeo. In 1975 and 1976, Jerome finished fourth in the national finals in Oklahoma City. He was leading in the PRCA when he was involved in a car accident in West Texas in 1982 and had to have the middle and index fingers of his right hand amputated. He left the hospital to go ride bulls that weekend but injured his leg and had to have surgery. After a lengthy recovery period, he came back to ride later that season. “When I came back,” Jerome said, “I rode just real average, and I didn’t qualify for the Finals. I decided to retire.”

He owns Western Trails Rodeo, a rodeo production company. He has produced rodeos in Costa Rica, Japan, Finland, France, Italy, Venezuela, Oman, Canada and Mexico. “I still own Western Trails Rodeo, but the PBR keeps me real busy. 2018 was the first year since 1987 that I didn’t underwrite an event. I’d say taking the rodeos to foreign countries ranks in my top ten life experiences,” Jerome admitted. “The challenges faced and overcome were tremendous. I am one of the luckiest individuals in the world. Even when things went bad, they always seemed to turn out to my advantage.”

Jerome grew up on a wheat farm in the small western Nebraska town of Brandon. His dad, Grady, was a livestock auctioneer, and Jerome developed a love of animals at an early age. “When I was a kid of five years old, I used to play with a little panel truck. I would load the back of the truck with little plastic animals and haul them from room to room, setting them up for a sale. Then my grandmother took me to a stock show in Denver. I came away telling everyone I wanted to grow up to be a bull rider.”

“I’ve been on a lot of calves, steers and even cows since I was five years old,” Jerome revealed. “I got on my first bull when I was 14 years old at a Little Britches Rodeo in North Platte, Nebraska. When the chute opened, I remember thinking that it wasn’t too bad for the first couple of seconds. Then the next moment I was laying on the ground and saw the bull spinning over the top of me!”

“There weren’t a lot of high school rodeos back then,” Jerome recalled. “but I went to a few in my sophomore and junior years. In 1965, I went to college at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. I didn’t make the rodeo team until later in the year, when many of the bull riders were hurt. I didn’t ride very well at first, but I got a lot of practice and got better and better. I started riding decent by the end of my sophomore year. As a junior, I won the region. I started rodeoing in the summers and got my PRCA card in 1967.”

Jerome attended a bull riding school back in the summer of 1967. “It was a seven-day bull riding school,” Jerome shared. “I learned a lot and rode 31 head! I learned how to set my rope and I developed a chute routine. You don’t learn reflexes, you develop them.”

He later started his own bull riding school. “I started a 3-day bull riding school. It was half the time and I charged half the price. My school was successful. One of my first students in 1970 was Wally Badgett. He won the college championship in 1971. I had three students in a row from Montana that went on to win the college championship.”

“Bull riders today have it tough,” Jerome continued. “There are so many good bulls today. Back in my day, there were a lot of bulls anybody could ride. It gave a rider the opportunity to develop his reflexes. Bull riding is a reflex sport. The only way to get better is to ride a lot of practice bulls. Bulls that you can stay on long enough to develop those reflexes.”

“Getting to ride bulls is the favorite highlight of my career,” Jerome said. “There are not many jobs where you can work for eight seconds and people clap! As a little kid, bull riding was always the most intriguing of the rodeo events. It is such an adrenaline rush. Like skiers going down a hill. The more you do it, the more you want to do it.”

“Back in 1979, I attended a three-day seminar held by Bruce Lehrke of the Longhorn Rodeo Company,” Jerome shared. “I learned about how to put on a rodeo. When I was hurt, I bought the college rodeo and gave them a guarantee that they would not lose money if they let me put it on. I learned a lot about what not to do.”

“After I retired from bull riding, I went to work for Steve Gander,” Jerome continued. “I was his arena director for three years. In 1986, I bought livestock and produced rodeos for Steve. I started doing my own shows in 1987.”

Jerome was also the production coordinator for the Winston ProRodeo Tour, starting in the fall of 1985. “The tour only lasted two years,” Jerome said, “but the Winston Tour was actually the forerunner of the PBR. The things that the Winston ProRodeo Tour were built on were what made the PBR work. The best cowboys on the best stock, major corporate sponsorship, television coverage and big money paid to contestants. They also required the guys to sign contracts. And the timing was just right for the PBR with the development of cable TV coverage. It was just not developed enough in the mid-80’s.”

Jerome discusses options with Michael Lane at a PBR event.

Photo provided courtesy of Bull Stock Media.

The PBR began in 1994. Tuff Hedeman and Cody Lambert asked Jerome’s production company to provide all the chutes and panels and do the set up for each event. “I hired the announcers, the bull fighters and the bands,” Jerome offered. “I paid the bills and they paid me back.”

“The PBR hired Randy Bernard by the second PBR World Finals,” Jerome said. “They bought some chutes. The bigger they got, the less I provided. Eventually I was just the arena director.”

It is interesting to note that they haul in 600 yards of dirt for each PBR event. That is about eight inches of dirt covering the arena floor. “I use Randy Spraggins Special-T-Tracks out of Akron, Ohio to haul and spread the dirt for all the televised events,” Jerome shared. “I have used him since 1989.”

Jerome lives with his wife, Dorya, in Fort Collins, Colorado.

He has made Fort Collins his home since his college days. He chuckled as he said, “As I think about the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, I remember that I was on the research and development committee that recommended to build the hall. Ken Stemler was a visionary and was the one who was pushing it. He was one of the smartest men in rodeo. Ken Stemler had more to do with where rodeo is today than anyone I know. I was actually one of the hardest ones to convince that the ProRodeo Hall of Fame needed to be built. And now, I’m going to be inducted into it.”

Jerome has certainly made his mark on the rodeo world and especially bull riding. Throughout his storied career, he has stayed close to bull riding and impacted the sport he loves. We tip our hats to you Jerome! Congratulations on your ProRodeo Hall of Fame induction.

Photos provided courtesy of Jerome Robinson.

Jerome Robinson was also an inductee for the Class of 2019 to The Bull Riding Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.