Rodeo, the sport of epic legends. Cowboys and cowgirls use brain 
and brawn to contend for prizes and placement, but more often 
than not, it is the prestige of honorable competition that spurs 
them on. College Rodeo covers the history of the sport on college
campuses from the first organized contest in 1920 to the national
championship of 2003.

    In the early years of the twentieth century, a growing number
of kids from farms and ranches attended college, many choosing
the land grant institutions that allowed them to prepare for
agricultural careers back home. They brought with them a love for
the skills, challenges, and competition they had known—a taste
for rodeo. The first-ever college rodeo was held in 1920 at the
Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, as Texas A&M was
then known. It offered bronco busting, goat roping, saddle racing,
polo, a greased pig contest, and country music. The rodeo was a
fund-raising effort that grew enormously popular; by its third year,
the rodeo at Texas A&M drew some fifteen hundred people. The
idea spread to other campuses, and in 1939, the first intercollegiate
rodeo with eleven colleges and universities competing was held at
the ranch arena of an entrepreneur near Victorville, California.

    Since that time, college rodeo has thrived on campuses 
throughout the West. Sylvia Gann Mahoney now presents the
first history of the sport, tracing its growth parallel to that of 
professional rodeo and the development of the organizational 
structure that today governs college rodeo. She draws on 
personal interviews as well as the archives of the National 
Intercollegiate Rodeo Association and newspaper accounts from 
participating schools and their hometowns.

    Mahoney chronicles the events, profiles winners, highlights 
outstanding individuals, and analyzes the organizational efforts 
that have contributed to the colorful history of college rodeo. 
She traces the changing role of women and notes their victories, 
which were ignored by much of the contemporary press in the 
early days of the sport.

    College Rodeo gives credit to the pioneers of college rodeo 
and includes rare photographs of rodeo teams, champions, and 
rodeo queens, blended with the true-to-life details of sweat and 
tears that make intercollegiate rodeo such a popular sport.

_________________________________________________________

SYLVIA GANN MAHONEY is a former college rodeo coach and a 
founder of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association Alumni.
She lives in Vernon, Texas.



What people are saying about this book

". . . this book brings back the excitement, skill, color, and stories 
of college rodeo careers, successes and failures, and occasionally 
one of those rare cowboy stories of glory, defeat, or coincidence."
—East Texas Historical Association, July 2005

"[Mahoney] has provided a great service to the sport of rodeo as 
well as the world of rodeo. . . . Once you start reading this book
you will not want to put it down until you have finished."—John
J. Smith, National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association Commissioner