Staging A Long-Running Production Jerome Robinson Lives A Dream Every Time He Sets Up A Rodeo

Once Jerome Robinson decided what he wanted to do in life, he went back to doing what every 3-year-old farm boy does.

He played in the dirt.

He made corrals and used his toy trucks to move plastic cattle around.

Almost 50 years later, Robinson is doing the same thing, except the trucks are bigger, the cattle are real and the pens are in some of the largest arenas in the world.

Robinson produces rodeos, including the Wrangler Pro Rodeo Classic at the Arena this weekend. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

It was a natural thing for Robinson to do after he fulfilled his life dream of riding bulls for a living.

“As a 3-year-old, I remember watching the bull riding (at the stock show in Denver) and seeing a bull leave the arena,” Robinson, 52, said. “I said that’s what I want to do.”

He did it quite well, too. Robinson made the National Finals Rodeo 11 times in 12 years, a record at the time, before retiring in 1982.

He moved into the production end of rodeo, a smooth transition that led him to say, “I’ve spent my whole life doing what I want to do. I’ve probably been about as fortunate as anybody I know.”

Standing in a near-empty arena, supervising the construction of chutes and pens for a rodeo, Robinson sometimes can’t believe his good fortune.

“It gives you a sense of accomplishment that a farm kid from Nebraska … (is) doing my whole adult life what I was doing as a kid,” Robinson said, recalling his feelings in Paris, or maybe Helsinki or Kumanto, Japan, some years back. “It’s overwhelming. Sometimes you get in awe of your surroundings. A lot of times, I’ll go into a building, see this cavernous building with no people in it, and realize this is my apartment for a week.”

Actually, a week’s stay is rare these days.

This week alone, Robinson has his hands in rodeos in Denver, Pueblo, Colo., Columbus, Ga., Spokane and Cincinnati.

Just to catch Robinson, it took a well-placed telephone call as he traveled from Indianapolis to Boston, the two cities where his Ft. Collins, Colo.-based Western Trails Rodeo Company had obligations last weekend.

Robinson is used to that kind of life.

“When I rodeoed, that was my style,” he said. “It wasn’t uncommon to go to seven to 10 rodeos a week back then. Everybody thought we were crazy. But that’s what I wanted to do. When I rodeoed for a living, I thought that any day I wasn’t at a rodeo, I was out of a job.”

He figures today’s cowboys are doing the same thing, although times have changed.

“I think it’s probably easier with all the communications,” he said. “If it isn’t, it should be.”

This is a man who lives with a cell phone at his ear, a man who has accepted technology and grown with it.

“The cell phone gives me a sense of security that I can be in contact all the time,” Robinson said. “I have no idea how to do business without a cell phone.”

The rodeo he knew as a competitor was a quaint reminder of the Old West. There were lots of cowgirls carrying flags, the Star Spangled Banner, some clowns and some trick ropers and riders.

Today, Robinson produces rodeos filled with laser lights, pulsating modern music and pyrotechnics.

Nowhere is that kind of showbiz glitz more apparent than in the fast-growing world of the Professional Bull Riding. Recently the PBR inducted a 52-year-old farmboy from Brandon, Neb., into its Ring of Honor.

Robinson concentrates on indoor rodeos.

“I’m not real sure what the key is. Marketing and dates, probably more dates than marketing,” he said. “I’ve been in the business on my own since 1987 and I’ve had three, I believe, that made money outside of January, February or March. Every time I do one outside those dates, I end up losing money.”

Spokane is a good example.

Several rodeos failed over the years before the Wrangler Pro Rodeo Classic arrived in 1993.

“I always wanted to come to Spokane,” said Robinson, who produced the Winston Tour team rodeo in Spokane in 1985. “They always had rodeo there… . I felt during the right dates, Spokane would be a good market. I called year after year but I couldn’t get dates. They always had high school basketball and they didn’t think rodeo would work, because it never had before.”

Finally, the old Coliseum found a weekend, when Robinson agreed to pay for a different site for a night of Greater Spokane League basketball.

The result was three big crowds, including a Saturday sellout. The rodeo came six straight years, missed last year for a PBR date produced by Robinson, and returned this year.

Rodeo has changed more than on the production end. Today, anyone remotely interested in the sport knows the best cowboys can make more than $100,000 if they make it to the NFR in Las Vegas.

Robert Bowers, a young bull rider Robinson has befriended, rode four of 10 bulls at the recent NFR and earned just under $44,000, pushing his season total to $107,000.

“He didn’t have a very good Finals, he hurt his hand,” Robinson said. “He probably won twice as much as I did in the 11 years I qualified for the Finals. By the same token, there are football players who couldn’t carry Walt Garrison’s jockstrap and he made $27,000.”

One season, Robinson rode 61 of 111 bulls, an excellent average, but he always came up just short of winning a world championship.

“At the time, I thought I was doing it as hard and good as I possibility could,” he said. “Looking back, I could have done things differently that might have resulted in a championship.

“I’m disappointed in myself for not accomplishing that, but it didn’t ruin my life.”

FAST FACTS Ride ‘em cowboy The Wrangler Pro Rodeo Classic takes place Friday through Sunday at the Arena. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, 8 p.m. Sunday, 2 p.m. Tickets: Arena box office, or call 325-SEAT.