Bradlee Miller knows the pressure of riding for a chance to compete at AT&T Stadium, the 80,000-seat arena that is home to the Dallas Cowboys football team and RFD-TV’s The American Rodeo, and in 2020 will also host The Cowboy Channel Jr. National Finals Rodeo for the first time ever.
Few rodeo competitors, professional or otherwise, can make that claim, but at just 16 years old, Miller has already delivered on that opportunity twice — prior to recently competing in the preliminary rounds of the Jr. NFR at Will Rogers Coliseum.
His first opportunity to ride at AT&T came back when Miller was still riding sheep, although it didn’t take him inside the famed arena.
“They had a 10-round sheep riding and if you won first in the round you got to go inside, so they took 10 kids in,” laughs Miller as he recalls the event. “It was $100 a round [to enter] and my dad entered me in the first one and I ended up second.
“Then, he entered me in the second one. I ended up second. In the 10th round, the final round, I ended up winning first and I got to go inside.”
A few years later, the Huntsville, Texas, cowboy again found himself outside AT&T, this time riding miniature bulls in the Fan Zone of a Pro Bull Riders’ event.
“I won the rodeo outside and winded up bucking off my bull inside. It was a draft and I picked the rankest one they had and he got me down,” he notes. “But we’re going to change up this luck we have in AT&T Stadium next weekend.”
After delivering another clutch performance in a sudden death format during the Jr. NFR opening rounds and placing third in the two-head average of the bareback riding, Miller now gets a third chance to compete at the massive stadium, this time in the arena.
Miller earned fifth in the opening round, scoring 74.5 points on a horse named Pete. With just the top six in the two-horse average moving on to the Finals, Miller was right on the edge and trailing the top competitor, Brayze Schill, by eight points.
He really delivered in his second performance, earning 81 points on Judge Judy, the third best score of round two and the fifth best of the whole competition. With a total of 155.5 points on two horses, Miller finished just several points ahead of the cowboy in the sixth and final qualifying hole, Ty Pope.
It’s unlikely any of the 54 other Jr. NFR Finalists will have as much experience at AT&T as Miller does. Riding live on The Cowboy Channel prior to RFD-TV’s The American on Saturday, the Jr. NFR champions in the nine disciplines—bareback riding, saddle bronc riding, bull riding, tie down roping, steer wrestling, team roping (heading and heeling), girls barrel racing and girls breakaway roping—will each earn a check worth $10,000.
“Hopefully the nerves won’t be as bad as they were last time,” says Miller with a laugh. “It’s an exciting experience.”
The hardest part for the most of the 18 rough stock finalists could be the weeklong wait between the final qualifying round on Feb. 29 and the Finals on March 7.
But for Miller, it won’t be a problem. He is one busy teenager. He made a quick break from Fort Worth to get home in time to go hog hunting with a friend, fellow Jr. NFR competitor Chris Villanueva. And, of course, there’s school to consider—he is home schooled through Liberty University On-Line Academy—and practice for the multi-event cowboy, who also competes in bull riding, tie down roping, and team roping.
“Got to do school all week and I’ll probably rope some and still get on the training machines. We’ll be tuned up and ready to go,” he says.
Competing in four events, Miller makes the most of practice opportunities and the help and coaching he receives from his father.
His dad, Bubba Miller, is the head coach of the highly decorated Sam Houston State University Rodeo team and has led his teams to the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association’s National team championship on two different occasions.
“My dad rode bareback horses so that’s a plus, he can teach me a thing or two,” jokes the affable Miller. “It’s somebody that I can knock on his bedroom door and he can tell what I did wrong at the rodeo.
“He’s always had practice stock for me to get on every weekend. We practice one to two days a week, every week. We have all different kinds of spur boards and dummies that we use to get on.”
Due to the grueling nature of bareback riding, Miller limits his live practice, taking advantage of technology that allows cowboys to hone their skills without taking a beating physically.
“If you’re getting on a horse every day, it takes a lot of a man to be able to hold up very long,” he says. “So, we get on these different machines that they’ve made, designed for bareback riders to be able to get on every day to perfect what they know.”
Even just five years into his bareback riding career, Miller has already learned to deal with injuries. At the National High School Finals Rodeo in July 2019, Miller injured his neck, an injury that nagged at him for several months.
“I was making an outstanding bareback ride and my hand blew out of my rigging and I kind of did a high flying back flip and landed on the back of my head,” said Miller. “It had messed with me until right before Las Vegas, at the Junior World Finals in December. That’s when I finally got it feeling good.” In fact, Miller earned the Novice Bareback Riding championship in Las Vegas, his sixth championship at the event in four years in both bareback and bull riding.
Miller relied on visits to the sports medicine program at Sam Houston and a faithful workout program that includes daily visits to the gym to aid his recovery.
“I get on bulls and bucking horses two to three days a week. I get on a lot more bulls then I do bucking horses because the bucking horse riding is so rough on your body so I try to save that energy and those muscles for the rodeos that I go to.
“I try to compete every weekend,” adds Miller, who competes in high school rodeos, as well as open regional associations, “so I guess my practice [for bareback riding] is at the rodeo.”
Miller nearly qualified for the Jr. NFR Finals in two events. He finished eighth in the bull riding at Will Rogers, just two points shy of advancing in what he says is his favorite event.
“I get the opportunity to rope more than I have the opportunity to ride bulls and bucking horses because it’s not as hard on your body,” he explains. “But the bull riding is my favorite. I love getting on bareback horses, but I just cannot compare it to the bull riding.”
Miller got on his first calf at age three, and his first bareback horse eight years later. He was instantly hooked on the adrenaline rush. As for the bareback riding, he loves the competitive nature of the event, man versus beast.
“It feels like a fight, the better the horse is, it feels like a huge fight,” he says. “They’re trying to knock you back and throw you off the back of them and you have to send your feet right back to them.The better you ride them, the better they feel. So, if you’re doing everything right on a bucking horse, it feels great.”
Miller will be joined in the Jr. NFR Bareback Riding Finals by Brayze Schill, Trevor Lattin, Keenan Hayes, Mason Stuller, and Kolt Dement. The six finalists will get on one more horse in a sudden death battle for the title of Jr. NFR Champion, which will air live on The Cowboy Channel from AT&T Stadium March 7 at 4:30 PM ET.
Timed event competitors will get their turn in the arena beginning March 5 when preliminary rounds begin at Will Rogers Memorial Center.