Life On The Rodeo Road: Man, That's Your Nut Hanging Loose

By Paul Knight Thu., Mar. 5 2009 at 9:10 AM

Categories: Rodeo

Photo by Paul Knight

Clint Cannon

Rodeo cowboys basically live on the road, traveling with a herd of men and women crazy enough to ride, rope and wrestle live animals for a paycheck. Each day, Hair Balls is asking a different cowboy to tell us a little bit about himself and his wildest story from a life of rodeo. In the end, we hope, we'll have a collection of stories that re-enforce our Texan ideals that rodeo cowboys still like to raise hell.

Name: Clint Cannon
Age: 30
Hometown: Houston
Event: Bareback Riding

I got into rodeo because I got done playing college football and I didn't want a job. I grew up around rodeo. My dad did it for 15 years professionally, but I had never rodeoed until that first day when I got on - 23 years old - and from there on it's been like a drug.

If I didn't rodeo, I would either be in the Marine Corps or some type of law enforcement, probably like a Game Warden or hunting or something fun.

I'm on the road for a lot of late night drives. Somebody's tried to carjack me before in Florida. They followed us out of the gas station and pulled up beside us with a shotgun hanging out the window. I left a rodeo once and hit a horse on the interstate and it about killed me. Random deal in the middle of nowhere.

The worst injury I've had was when I was getting off my [bucking] horse onto the pick-up man, and I leaned over and got on, but he didn't pull away quick enough. The [bucking] horse kicked back, hit me and launched me, and I hit the ground. I got up and when I got back behind the chutes, I felt this big ole' lump down here, and I was like, 'What the hell is that?' So I went to our sports medicine guy, and he feels down there and says, 'Holy shit, your fucking nut's hanging out.' He went and got the doctor and they stitched it up right there, and I went on to the next rodeo.

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