By the early 1990s, NFR prize money neared three million dollars. Rodeo is popular and big business from Pendleton, Oregon to Paris and Tokyo. Murray became the PRCA's youngest all-around champion in 1989 at age twenty. And not every rider has a winning season. You had to learn to travel without a car, borrow clothes, and put up with ten men in a motel room.
Contestants pay a fee to compete and earn no salary.
On a bad day, a rider end up several hundred dollars poorer. Rodeo has millions of fans, but the sport also has its detractors. Man reenacts the taming of west through his mastery over wild animals. As Lawrence points out, however, rodeo people strongly identify with the livestock. Famous rodeo animals share the spotlight with humans at the Prorodeo Hall of Champions.