Davis, a 1962 graduate of Western Montana College (WMC) with a Bachelor of Science in secondary education, was born in Butte, Montana and raised on a ranch outside of Whitehall, Montana.
When Davis stepped on the WMC campus, rodeo was a club activity, not a varsity sport like it is now. The Western rodeo club team competed in the Rocky Mountain Region. In his collegiate career, Davis won three national titles and helped the Western Montana club team to two, third-place national finishes.
He was elected as rodeo club president and was selected to Who’s Who at the end of his collegiate career. What a lot of folks didn’t know, Davis was a champion Golden Gloves boxer. He was also named Montana’s Athlete of the Year.
Instead of a career in the classroom as a teacher, he pursued a professional rodeo career and it wasn’t long before he won his first of three world titles. In 1965, he set the single-season saddle bronc earnings record to win the first gold buckle award.Â
He had a little bump in his rodeo career when he broke his back in a rodeo in Thompson Falls, Mont. in 1969. After 13 months of intensive therapy and personal discipline, Davis returned to competition and in his first rodeo back, he won the saddle bronc event. Davis qualified to the National Finals Rodeo (NFR) five more times before he retired at age 48. In all, he qualified for the NFR 12 times.
Davis retired as general manager of the NFR in 2019. He began his G.M. duties in 1986 and under his leadership, the NFR moved from Oklahoma City to Las Vegas and is now one of the hottest and most hard-to-get tickets in all genres of entertainment.
So, not only did the NFR move, with the help of Las Vegas businessman Benny Binion, to Las Vegas, but the NFR that left Oklahoma did not appear in Vegas. A brand-new, slimmed down version is the one that now fills the Thomas & Mack Arena each December and entertains rodeo fans around the world via live television broadcasts.
Davis coached rodeo for 29 years at the College of Southern Idaho (CSI) in Twin Falls, Idaho. When he took over the program, the resources for a rodeo program were slim. He turned to his rodeo network and through a series of fundraising events, was able to raise the monies that began what is now a very successful college rodeo program. Remember his Golden Glove days, well some of his more successful CSI fundraisers paired boxing and rodeo.
He was also in the brain-trust that moved the college national finals (CNFR) to the status it is now and helped generate corporate dollars for scholarships for the student-athletes competing in college rodeo.
Davis served as president of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) and on the PRCA board. He was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 1979 and is the recipient of the 2011 ProRodeo Hall of Fame and Museum of the American Cowboy’s Legend of ProRodeo award. He is listed as one of the Wrangler NFR 60 Greatest of All Time.
Davis is actively involved as a trainer. And of course, traveling with wife Jeanna to visit and stay in touch with family.
