09/03/2026
His NFL signing bonus wasn't cash. It was a two-horse trailer. Because Walt Garrison had one condition before he'd put on a Dallas Cowboys uniform — he wasn't giving up rodeo for anybody.
Garrison grew up in Lewisville, Texas, riding horses and steers before he ever picked up a football. In high school he competed in ba****ck riding, bull riding, calf roping and steer wrestling — all four events, because why pick one. He earned a scholarship to Oklahoma State, led the Big Eight in rushing in 1964 — beating out Gale Sayers to do it — and spent a year with the OSU rodeo team once his football eligibility ran out.
Then in 1966 the Dallas Cowboys drafted him in the fifth round. He made sure the horse trailer clause made it into his contract before he signed anything.
As a rookie, Garrison was mostly a special teams player, so he'd finish team meetings, drive to a nearby rodeo to steer wrestle, and be back at the hotel before curfew. Coach Tom Landry found out and shut it down during the season. Landry even warned him his contract had a clause voiding it if he got hurt doing another sport. Garrison's answer was simple — "I said, 'OK.' I didn't think rodeo was that dangerous."
Then the offseasons became his. He rodeoed every year he played, becoming one of only two cowboys — alongside two-time world champion bull rider Larry Mahan — to ever ride the notorious bull Oscar to the whistle.
His football career kept climbing anyway. Two Super Bowl appearances with Dallas. A win in Super Bowl VI. A 1972 Pro Bowl season with 784 yards and seven touchdowns — earned days after he'd torn his face open steer wrestling. He still ranks in the Cowboys' all-time top ten for rushing yards decades later.
Then in 1975, a knee injury in an exhibition steer wrestling run ended the football career for good. Garrison didn't hesitate about which sport he'd lost. He said flatly that if the money in rodeo had ever matched football's, he'd have chosen the arena over the gridiron every time — "Yeah, that was my first love."
He spent the next twenty years raising over $4 million for multiple sclerosis research through his own All Star Rodeos, and became a ProRodeo and Texas Cowboy Hall of Famer for a career most men would've had to choose between.
His NFL signing bonus wasn't cash. It was a horse trailer. And Walt Garrison never once let anyone forget which cowboy he really was.
Walt Garrison 🤠🏈
