Flint Rasmussen, the official entertainer of PBR since 2006, has announced he will retire from his on-the-dirt role at the end of the 2023 Unleash The Beast season.
Rasmussen will join the sport’s television broadcast as a commentator for the PBR Team Series season that begins later this year.
Rasmussen, one of the most recognizable and enduring personalities across professional sports even while not competing in the events, is credited with reinventing and modernizing the role of “rodeo clown” into a multi-hyphenate entertainer combining singing, dancing, fan interactions, off-the-cuff commentary, and impromptu comedy.
After embarking on a farewell tour during the remaining 14 events of the Unleash The Beast regular season, Rasmussen’s final elite-series performances will be at the PBR World Finals in Fort Worth, Texas, May 12-21.
A special “retirement party” will be held for Rasmussen in conjunction with PBR’s “Dirty 30 Anniversary Celebration” on May 17 in Fort Worth during the PBR World Finals.
Fans can then expect to see him in roles both in front of and behind the camera, including PBR Team Series coverage on CBS Television Network, CBS Sports Network, and Pluto TV later this year.
“I am a blessed man,” Rasmussen said. “I have had an amazing career in rodeo and continued to find my identity with the opportunities afforded me by the PBR. I worked my first World Finals in 1997, so I do not take this decision lightly, nor am I making it without being completely sure. But physically and emotionally, it is time to move on. Making the decision now gives me time to weigh all my future career opportunities, including joining the television broadcast of the PBR Team Series later this year. My goal is to continue to be a strong influence in the growth and preservation of our Western lifestyle.”
With a string of markets important to Rasmussen’s career coming up on the PBR Unleash The Beast schedule, including Sacramento in Northern California this weekend (Feb. 3-5), the award-winning entertainer wanted to announce his plans now to acknowledge and thank the fans for their supportive role in his legendary career.
“More than anything, on behalf of the entire Western sports industry, I want to thank Flint for bringing joy to millions of fans, for always being a thoughtful advocate of our brand, and for his countless contributions to our sport, inside and outside of the arena,” said PBR Commissioner and CEO Sean Gleason. “He is leaving the dirt but not our sport. We are fortunate to be able to continue to experience Flint’s love of our sport, his passion for entertaining fans, and his inimitable point of view, which is part of the soul of PBR, on future CBS broadcasts.”
In addition to his role at PBR, Flint is an eight-time PRCA Clown of the Year and eight-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo barrel man.
Since 2006, Rasmussen has been the master of ceremonies, on-dirt quarterback, sultan of sarcasm, and chief instigator of both the mischief and the unfiltered musings playing out across PBR events. The former schoolteacher done up in clown makeup has been patrolling the dirt as if it’s the maple wood stage floor of Carnegie Hall and making jokes that sound like Eddie Murphy crossed with Larry the Cable Guy.
Before he joined the gold standard for entertainment in Western sports, Rasmussen had always been funny. But unlike so many bull riders who knew exactly what they wanted to be from the time they could walk, he didn’t grow up planning for life clowning in the rodeo, let alone reinventing the role.
As recounted in Rasmussen’s full story in the PBR book Love & Try, in his hometown of Choteau, Montana, he wasn’t a show-off or the class clown, but he liked to have fun and get a reaction. A collection of his mother Tootie’s old Christmas letters sent out annually in the late 1970s has a recurring theme: “Flint still entertains us.”
He was a regular in school plays and sang in the choir, getting a taste of adulation from an appreciative audience and feeling a constant “pull” to be performing in front of crowds. Growing up in the Western culture, there was always a place drawing crowds eager to be entertained – rodeo.
When Rasmussen was 19, during the summer, first on a dare, he began working amateur rodeos in Montana, getting nervous like he did as an all-state high school football player but having an absolute ball in making people smile and laugh.
He was no longer an athlete. But being out on the dirt performing in front of people during a rodeo competition was scratching an itch. It felt good. It was fun.
Rasmussen treated rodeo like a summer job; the plan was to get through college and then teach. After graduating from the University of Montana Western, he landed a job teaching high school math and history.
But he kept getting phone calls. Rodeo organizers who had caught his act saw potential. Promoters know their crowds, and he was busting them up. This Flint Rasmussen character just might make a name for himself if he gave it a chance, they said.
He quit teaching school at 25 and began performing at professional rodeos.
During one slow period in the fall, a rodeo in Hibbing, Minnesota, called. Their regular rodeo clown couldn’t make the event because his trailer caught fire on the highway. Could Rasmussen come?
Flint did his thing, impressing one of the stock contractors, who recommended him to legendary rodeo promoter Jerome Robinson, who happened to be planning a few winter shows. Robinson was producing PBR’s first events in the 1990s and used Rasmussen there as well.
One man’s very unlucky trailer fire lit the fuse, so to speak, for Rasmussen’s rise.
But truth be told, with the simmering powder already in place, it’s hard to imagine he would not have been discovered to play much bigger stages.
Rasmussen’s next stage will be the television cameras beaming an international broadcast of a sport he continues to love for fans he’ll continue to entertain.
Photo courtesy of Josh Homer/Bull Stock Media
