FORT WORTH, TX – In the long, esteemed history of Professional Bull Riders (PBR) legends, Flint Rasmussen is in a league of his own.
The PBR’s exclusive entertainer from 2006-2023, Rasmussen redefined the role of a rodeo clown, turning it into a performance combining singing, dancing, fan interactions, commentary and comedy. Rasmussen did all of those to perfection – including at a stunning 26 PBR World Finals – until his retirement at the 2023 PBR World Finals, leaving indelibly large shoes to fill.
Before joining the PBR full-time, Rasmussen was an eight-time PRCA Clown of the Year and eight-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo barrel man, working most of the major PRCA rodeos in the process.
Rasmussen was inducted Saturday, Nov. 9, into the Rodeo Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, as a member of its class of 2024.
Before he headed to Oklahoma City, Rasmussen sat down with PBR.com and Darci Miller to discuss his legendary career, how retirement is treating him, and what it means to be honored with some of the greatest Western sports has ever seen.
PBR.com: Congratulations, Flint! How are you feeling about being inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame?
Flint Rasmussen: “I’ve always felt like I was younger than what I am, and I feel like I’m not old enough! [laughs] I mean, that’s kind of the lighthearted answer. But when you’re in a career – I think athletes would say this too – you never think, ‘Yeah, I’m going to be in a hall of fame someday.’ I’m in some individual rodeo halls, but to me, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, that’s a big thing. I was honored by other cowboys, and it has made me look back on things and go, ‘You know, I guess I did okay.’ Everybody uses the words ‘honored,’ ‘humbled,’ and you hear them over and over. And then, when it really happens, all of that makes sense. I’m getting something that legends have done the same, and I guess I just never quite put myself there. It’s odd, honestly. I wouldn’t say uncomfortable, but it’s odd. But I will say this – I’m thankful to this hall of fame. I watch a lot of them and it’s like you get put in time out. They’ve got to do this big waiting period. But my parents are still alive and flying down for it. My two brothers, my sister, my daughters. So it’s cool that everyone that really means something is here for it. My parents are 86, and they’re getting on a plane and flying to Oklahoma City.”
PBR.com: That’s so special. What’s it like now that you’re retired, looking back on your career, and what perspective have you gained?
FR: “The perspective thing has kind of hit me. Even up to the last day that I stepped in the arena, whether it was the last World Finals or the very last day in Big Sky, Montana, I never really stepped back and let emotion get to me that much, or maybe didn’t enjoy it as much as I could, because I was still working. I was so honed in on doing a good job on that day that, now that it’s done, I look back and I go, ‘Oh.’ There’s that famous Sally Field moment when she won an Oscar – ‘You like me! You really like me!’ [laughs] But I think the biggest thing is I changed the business a little bit. I changed maybe how colleagues and people in my business are looked at, maybe set the standard a little different, changed the style a little bit, changed with the times. So I think I changed the role and set a different bar for people, and as I’ve looked back, that’s probably the perspective I’ve gained the most, is I really was doing some things – they were just my strengths and my style and what I was passionate about, and it kind of changed things a little bit.”
PBR.com: Absolutely. You say you don’t start out with the thought that you’ll be in a hall of fame someday, but what were your goals when you started?
FR: “When I really first started, one thing that really worked in my favor is that it was fun, and I really kind of did it as, ‘Hey, this’ll be a fun summer job. This’ll be cool. I can go be in front of crowds and travel around the state of Montana. It’ll be fun.’ So I didn’t really have any long-term goals. What that did to me – it accidentally created a patience. I see a lot of guys now that do this job for two years and then they want to be at the biggest rodeos and the biggest PBRs, and frankly, they haven’t honed their craft, to where I traveled around Montana to little rodeos for five, six years, and all of a sudden, I was pretty good at it. Kind of the mid-90s, I started to hear more and more things, realized I was doing well, and then I decided I had a goal of, ‘I want to be influential, not just as a rodeo clown, but in Western sports in general. I want to cross some boundaries.’ Bull riding, rodeo, necessarily isn’t always mainstream, but I wanted to go beyond just that traditional rodeo fan and pull in other people. Ultimately, that played a little bit of a role when I decided to just go to PBR stuff. I’d accomplished everything in rodeo and I went, ‘Well, I could go to these other venues in cities and capture other fans.’ So really, that was kind of a goal. A big-picture goal, anyway.”
PBR.com: When did you realize your career was something special, and potentially hall-of-fame worthy?
FR: “I really got rolling in rodeo in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. I did the National Finals Rodeo for the first time in 1998. I got voted to do the NFR. It’s all voting. And that was cool, and I thought, ‘Wow.’ I got to do it once. And then I did it again. And then I did it again. And when I hit three times in a row, I started to go, ‘I think I’m onto something here.’ And I did the NFR eight times in a row and was voted Clown of the Year in pro rodeo eight times in a row and got the Coors award they give seven of eight years. Honestly, that’s when I started looking around and going, ‘I can keep doing this.’ I felt like I was getting better, actually. I had fanbases at certain rodeos. I’d go to Cheyenne, the Pendleton Roundup, Ellensburg, Washington, and I had an actual fanbase. I’d walk out into the arena, and they’d cheer. It was odd, but I just took it and ran with it. As I decided to go from rodeo into just exclusive PBR, I knew that, if I would’ve stayed in rodeo, I could’ve kept succeeding and winning awards. I really felt that. And then, even in my last year with the PBR, even though physically I really didn’t feel very good – my legs were hurting, I wasn’t as emotionally committed – I remember telling a friend, ‘You give me four minutes of something broke down or a commercial break, and they say to go fill four minutes, I think I was the best one at it.’ To the final day I was in the arena, I felt like I was better than anybody else. That’s not arrogance, that’s just what I developed through the years. I just really felt like that.”
PBR.com: Do you ever miss it, ever get an itch to get back out there on the dirt?
FR: “That’s a tough one, because I get asked at every event I go to, ‘Do you miss it?’ And when I say no, people then go, ‘Liar! Come on!’ like that’s not the answer they want. [laughs] I’m a pretty good compartmentalizer in my career. When I quit going to the National Finals Rodeo, I never really felt like I missed it because I think I moved on. I gave everything I had to this job, and I think I would really miss it if, physically and emotionally, I was still at a point where I could just step out there and do it. I think that would drive me crazy. But I know I can’t. I mean, I can barely jog across the street now. Legs aren’t great. I have little things that hurt here and there from all the years of jumping up and down and jumping off things. And I just felt like I was done. I left it all out there. So, I mean, sure, there’s elements I miss. I miss being that guy. I miss bringing people joy, and I miss looking up in the crowd and knowing they’re having fun partly because of what I’m bringing them. Physically, the act of doing it – that last year or so, it was tough. It really was. I was starting to think, in the middle of the day, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to go do this tonight. I don’t want to do it.’ I loved the locker room, and every athlete always says, ‘I’ll miss the locker room.’ People don’t get it. But I think I was just done.”
PBR.com: That’s probably a good thing!
FR: “I think it has to be. If you’re physically good and you’re mentally good but you just think you should retire, then no. And I went through that a few years before. Sean Gleason talks about how four years ago we had this talk, because I just felt like I never want to wear out my welcome. I never wanted to be the guy that people said, ‘Ugh, I wish he’d retire,’ or, ‘He used to be good.’ And I just never really felt like I got to that point. And as I started feeling that, that’s when it became reality. I went through it for a long time, thinking I should just retire, but I was still good.”
PBR.com: You’re now the PBR’s Senior Vice President of Fan Engagement. How are you enjoying this next stage of your career?
FR: “I feel like I’m learning a lot. I get a lot of people saying, ‘Oh, going into the office, is that driving you crazy?’ Well, I like that. I was a schoolteacher for a couple years, so I like the interaction. I like a nice office atmosphere. I like dealing with people. I always was very interested in what we were doing as a company, even when I was in the arena. So I’m not coming in completely cold. But yeah, I do like it. Like I said, it’s hard not being that guy, but I hope I have some input. My job is a little abstract, almost consulting on things, and I’m proud to still kind of be a face of the company a little. What I always want to tell people is there’s a lot going on in this company. It’s a big deal. We’re a huge, influential sport company in the Western sports world, and if I can influence a little and make sure we’re wearing our cowboy hats right… [laughs] I’ve always looked at things pretty deeply, so I hope that that helps. I would like to be an influence somehow.”
PBR.com: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
FR: “When you ask about what it feels like or what my thoughts are, I think I forget to say I’m just very appreciative of everyone that was involved in my career, and everyone who voted me, thinks enough of me to do this. My parents, two of my brothers and sister, my girls. Actually, she’s my ex-wife now, but she ran our business for years. I will say this: it is a hard business, and I think when people look from the outside, they go, ‘Oh my god, what a great career. You got to travel all over, and you made a good living.’ But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in this business who doesn’t have regrets about the path their life took or decisions made. It was hard. It was hard on my family. My marriage ended, and that’s a huge regret, something I still struggle with. I don’t know how to say it, but there’s more to this business, and if you can get through it and come out on the other end with some big honors and your family behind you, that’s a big accomplishment. [laughs] It’s not all glamour. It’s a lot of being away from home and missing a lot of my kids’ stuff. Luckily, I’m still very close with them, and I’m pretty close with their mom. So yeah – there’s been some struggles, for sure.”
