Story by Simone Del Rosario

NMSU Rodeo Coach Jim Dewey Brown picks up a bucking horse after a student athlete gets thrown off during Aggie rodeo practice. (Photo by Darrel Pehr)

Sitting on the back of a John Deere Gator, New Mexico State University Rodeo Coach Jim Dewey Brown is dressed in his everyday uniform – a NMSU Rodeo T-shirt, jeans and a cowboy hat. Parked by the tack room and surrounded by college rodeo students, horses and a farrier, it is one of the few places everyone can get out of the hot Las Cruces summer sun at the rodeo grounds.

Since taking the position as NMSU’s rodeo coach in 2002, Brown has made many improvements to the rodeo grounds and the team itself, but it was not long ago that he stood in the same boots as the athletes he now coaches.

Growing up on his father’s ranch in San Antonio, N.M., Brown team roped as a kid. As a junior in high school, he followed in his father’s footsteps and started riding saddle bronc at high school rodeos. After graduating from high school, though, college was not Brown’s priority.

“I didn’t want to go to school, but Dad told me that if I didn’t go to college, I’d get to build fence for the rest of my life,” he recalled. “So I decided to go to school!”

Brown headed off to Tarleton State University in Texas on an academic scholarship his first year, and Bob Doty, the rodeo coach, offered him a rodeo scholarship his second year. After two years of hard luck – he broke his collarbone the first year and hit a slump the second – Brown came back to qualify for the College National Finals Rodeo in saddle bronc his junior and senior years.

Along with college rodeos, he was also competing at the amateur and professional level. He said his best year for professional rodeo was 1999, when he won Prescott Frontier Days and placed second behind five-time world champion Billy Etbauer at Dodge City. In all, Brown won around $40,000 in 1999 while going to school full-time.

Rodeoing throughout college for a great coach like Bob Doty had everything to do with Brown’s decision to become a college rodeo coach.

Coaching

“I met a lot of people (in college rodeo) that influenced my career path, and a lot of people I call friends today helped me throughout my growth as a coach,” Brown said.

Coach Brown competes in saddle bronc at the Dodge National Circuit Finals Rodeo in 2004. (Photo by Dan Hubbell)

Brown was offered the coaching position at NMSU in 2002 after graduating with a master’s degree in agriculture from Tarleton. With barely any funding, a rodeo grounds in shambles, and only 24 students on the team, he had a lot of work cut out for him. At 24, Brown was the youngest rodeo coach in the nation at the time.

“2003 was kind of a tough year,” he said. “It was my first full year as a head coach, and I was trying to juggle a career, a family and a professional rodeo career at the same time.”

He juggled quite nicely until 2007 when he said goodbye once and for all to his own professional rodeo career after earning more than $1 million.

“El Paso was my last rodeo,” he said. “I got on one of the best horses there and got bucked off. I tipped my hat to him, and haven’t been on one since. No regrets.”

Since then Brown has continued to pour all of his energy into his team, which now ranges between 60-90 students each year and has multiple individual national championships. “Build a nice program and the talent will come” was Brown’s motto, and college athletes did – from all over the country.

His efforts and success have not gone unnoticed. Brown was voted National Coach of the Year in 2007, a great honor in college rodeo. What made it even more special was his former college coach Bob Doty had won it just the year before.

“One of my last goals is to win a championship, a team championship,” Brown said. “We’ve had individual national championships, but we’ve never had a championship team. That’s the only thing left.”

For Coach Jim Dewey Brown, his hopes for a national championship team will be decided at the CNFR in Casper, Wyoming, June 13-19 of 2010.