Tough Draw Tuesday: Trey benton III — A Cowboy Between Eras

There comes a point in every bull rider's career when the question changes from whether he can get on another one to if he still wants to.

For Trey Benton III, known throughout professional bull riding simply as TB3, that answer recently became clear.

“As most of y'all know I stepped away from riding bulls,” Benton shared in a recent Facebook post. “The fire wasn't there, and I felt like my family needed me more. There comes a time for everyone to walk away from a sport as rough as bull riding. I felt like mine was up.”

There was no elaborate retirement announcement, farewell tour, or attempt to make the moment bigger than it needed to be. Benton acknowledged that he'd had a great career, made a lot of money, and “had a heck of a time doing it,” before spending most of the rest of the post talking about helping ranchers market cattle through his next venture.

In a lot of ways, that's about as fitting an ending to the bull riding chapter of TB3's story as there could be.

After seven trips to the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo (NFR), a Resistol Rookie of the Year title, success across multiple bull riding organizations, and more than a decade spent matching up against some of the greatest bulls and bull riders of his generation, Benton is moving on to whatever comes next.

Still around cattle. Still involved in agriculture. Still very much a cowboy.

One of the Best

His résumé provides plenty of evidence for the kind of career TB3 put together.

After being named the 2012 Resistol Rookie of the Year, Benton ultimately qualified for seven trips to the NFR. In 2017, he finished second in both the Championship Bull Riding (CBR) and Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) World Standings, establishing himself firmly among the elite bull riders of his generation.

But résumés have a way of reducing careers to numbers, and numbers don't completely explain what made TB3 the kind of bull rider people stopped what they were doing to watch.

Benton could ride the rank ones.

When TB3 drew one everybody knew could really buck, there was never a feeling that the matchup was too much for him. If anything, those were the moments when he seemed to rise to the occasion.

Throughout his career, that ability earned him the respect of his peers, stock contractors, and the staff producing bull riding events. When TB3 was matched with a rank one, everyone knew that both bull and rider were going to have a chance to show just how good they were.

The other side of that career, and perhaps the part that says even more about Benton, was how often he had to fight his way back.

Injuries weren't an occasional interruption. They were part of the reality in nearly every season he competed. Looking back, Benton remembers how often they seemed to arrive just as he had something going.

“Every year I had something going for me, I got hurt,” Benton recalled.

The injuries and uncertainty made Benton even more thankful for his wife, Reba, and her unwavering support through the good years and the difficult ones. Even when another injury meant another recovery and another climb back, she never told him it was time to find a new career. Instead, she continuously supported his belief that there was still more bull riding ahead of him.

With a strong support system behind him, Benton found a way to heal, climb back over the chutes, and put himself among the best again  in a sport where simply staying healthy can be nearly impossible. Seven NFR qualifications tell part of that story, but they don't show all the times between them when his body forced him to start over, or the mental toll of convincing himself to get back on another bull after the last one put him on the sidelines.

That's where much of Benton's pride in his career originates to this day.

“Bull riding is probably, in my eyes, the most difficult thing to do in the world,” Benton revealed. “You're talking yourself into getting on a 2,000-pound bull a day when you're rodeoing, and what it showed me that I was mentally capable of is something you can't put on paper.”

For all the rides, NFR qualifications, and years spent among the best in the world, what bull riding ultimately proved to Benton was something deeper than his physical ability. He learned he could endure more than he thought possible when he started. He could get hurt, work his way back, and believe in his ability to nod his head again.

When asked how he hopes the people he shared that career with remember him, his answer didn't need much explanation.

“They're gonna say I was one tough cowboy that never quit,” Benton stated.

After watching the injuries, comebacks, and rank matchups pile up over more than a decade, it's difficult to come up with a better description.

A Cowboy Between Eras

Part of what makes Benton's career so interesting is how much professional bull riding evolved throughout his nearly 15-year career.

He competed in the CBR, rode extensively in the PRCA, and watched the PBR continue to grow and expand. Prize money increased, opportunities multiplied, organizations and leagues came and went, and eventually PBR Teams introduced an entirely different concept to a sport historically built around individual competition.

As the sport grew, the animal athletes improved, too.

“The animals got tougher,” Benton shared. “Ain't nothing badder than what guys are getting on today.”

Faced with increasingly difficult stock, the cowboys learned to hone their skill. Benton remembers coming into a sport with a very different culture around preparation, while today's bull riders increasingly approach their careers as professional athletes, paying attention to training, nutrition, recovery, and everything required to compete against extremely athletic livestock.

“Now, you're an athlete,” Benton explained. “You train for this. You eat right.”

TB3 lived through all of it. He was old-school enough to come from a version of rodeo that looked and operated differently than it does today, but good enough and adaptable enough to continue competing as the sport became more specialized, athletic, and professional.

Long before bull riding became his primary competitive focus, he also roped calves. That part of his background matters because there has always been a distinction between Benton the professional bull rider and TB3 the cowboy. Bull riding became the arena where most people knew him, but being a cowboy was never dependent on whether he was getting on bulls.

Then, late in his career, the sport gave him something he hadn't experienced in a long time: something new.

After more than a decade of rodeoing, PBR Teams introduced different people, training methods, and goals into a routine Benton had lived for years.

“It really freshened me up,” Benton said. “When you’ve been doing 14 years of the same routine, change is a grind.”

That chapter also coincided with another evolution in a relationship that had begun years earlier behind the CBR chutes. By then, Tough Draw Sports was taking shape, and conversations with Benton about working together had already started. One of the more memorable came at the Lazy E, shortly after TB3 had gone 90-plus points on the late World Champion bucking bull Ridin' Solo—another one of those rank matchups that had become synonymous with watching him compete.

The following year, as Benton entered the PBR Teams process, he decided to put Tough Draw Sports in his corner as he navigated a new version of professional bull riding. At the same time, Teams gave an established veteran different goals to chase and a new environment to experience after 14 years of the same grind.

“I feel like I'd have been done rodeoing even sooner if it wouldn't have been for something like that to freshen it up,” Benton revealed.

It also gave his family another way to experience the ride alongside him. His boys got to travel, see different places, and experience a piece of their dad's career firsthand. That makes one line from his retirement announcement particularly meaningful.

“The fire wasn't there, and I felt like my family needed me more.”

There isn't regret in that statement, and there isn't much ceremony either. There is simply a man who spent a large part of his life believing completely in his ability to ride bulls and who now seems equally comfortable recognizing that it's time to move on from that phase of his life.

What His Boys Will See

When Benton talks about what he hopes his boys take from his career, he doesn't start with seven NFRs, the money he won, or where he finished in the standings. He talks about work ethic.

“I wasn't set up my whole life. It wasn't laid out for me,” Benton explained. “I had to work for everything I got. I'm self-made. Everything I have now came from bull riding. It's because I had a mindset that I was going to get it.”

That doesn't mean he made the journey alone. Benton is quick to credit his dad, who hauled him anywhere he wanted to go growing up and never hesitated to enter him at a rodeo. Long before bull riding became a career capable of providing for his own family, there was a father willing to put in the miles and give his son every opportunity to find out just how far he could take it.

That's what Benton hopes his boys understand as well.

Not that they have to ride bulls. He's not pushing them toward the sport—or away from it. Much like his own dad gave him the opportunity to chase what he wanted, whatever his boys choose, Benton wants them to understand that doing something halfway isn't how their family is going to approach it.

“Whatever we do, we're going to be all in,” he shared. “You've got to give it 110 percent, just as if we were riding bulls, to be successful at anything in this world.”

There's another piece of that legacy that Benton recognizes his boys have access to in a way he never did growing up: they can watch it.

When Benton was young, preserving every ride on video wasn't a given. His mother gave him a video camera when he was 14 years old, and he realizes now that without it, many of those early rides might exist only in memory. He didn't have the opportunity to go back and watch many of the bull riders he admired.

His boys have something different in today’s technology-focused world. They watch videos of their dad at the NFR, see the big scores and rank matchups, and watch the riding style Benton describes as taking it “to the horn every time.”

So when he tells them about working for what they want, being all in. and refusing to quit when something gets difficult, they don't have to simply take his word for it. They can watch him do it.

Still a Cowboy

There is one other realization Benton has had since announcing that he'd stepped away. For all the confidence he carried into the arena, he may not have completely understood the significance of his own career while he was living it.

“I never really thought I was a very big deal my whole career,” Benton revealed. 

Then the messages started flooding in.

Bull riders, friends, fans and people from across the sport reached out after his retirement announcement, and somewhere in that response Benton began allowing himself to see the career a little differently.

“I wish I would've known how good I really was,” he shared.

It's an interesting admission from someone who always seemed so confident in his ability. But there's an important distinction between believing in his ability to ride a bull and understanding the impact of his career for everyone who witnessed it.

As he navigates retirement, Benton is just now coming to terms with the second part.

“Man, I was one of the best of my time,” Benton shared, with humility in his voice.

Coming from TB3, that doesn't feel like bragging. If anything, it feels like a cowboy finally allowing himself to acknowledge what the response to his retirement has shown him.

And perhaps that's one of the more meaningful measures of a career. The standings preserve what someone accomplished, but reputation is what remains with the people who were there to see it.

Among his peers, event producers, stock contractors, and the people who spent years around him, TB3 has long carried the respect of a fierce competitor, a consummate professional and, in his own words, “one tough cowboy that never quit.”

Now, instead of worrying about the next bull on the daysheet, he's helping ranchers market cattle, spending more time with his family, and looking toward whatever comes next.

Bull riding was something Benton did exceptionally well, but being a cowboy has always been bigger than that.

So maybe this isn't really the end of the TB3 story. It's simply the end of the bull riding chapter. After nearly 15 years and one hell of a ride, there's plenty of story left to tell about whatever comes next.

Continue the Conversation

For more than a decade, Trey Benton III competed among the best bull riders in professional rodeo while building a reputation that extended far beyond his accomplishments in the arena. As he closes the bull riding chapter of his career, Tough Draw is proud to celebrate seven NFR qualifications, countless memorable rides, and, even more importantly, the husband, father, competitor, and cowboy behind them.

What's your favorite TB3 ride or memory from over the years? We'd love to hear it.

Every Tuesday, Tough Draw shares stories, conversations and observations from across the Western community, exploring the athletes, brands, businesses and relationships that continue to shape its future.