ROCK SPRINGS, Wyo. — The cowboy balances his styrofoam plate stacked with three biscuits submerged with gravy in his right hand and settles in for a story. His timeworn spurs hover just centimeters from the pavement and clang a bit anytime he shuffles those trusted old chestnut boots in anticipation. But first, the national anthem and then a prayer, one that calls for hopeful blessings and safety upon the cowboys and cowgirls set to compete at the Sweetwater Events Complex on this unseasonably crisp overcast morning in southwest Wyoming.
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Some of the top ropers in the Intermountain West along with weekend dream-chasers are here, their eyes closed, hats over hearts, gloves on, steadying their steeds in place. “Amen” is shouted by some and muttered by others. The country music blares on. There are roughly 800 roping teams here for the weekend. It’s just past 9 a.m. on a Saturday in late June, and the cowboy with the plate keeps shuffling his feet. He’s antsy. The woman running concessions here holds court, describing to the cowboy the week she had. Hoo boy, it was a week.
“Well, let me tell you,” she says, arms folded. “I had my gallbladder and a piece of my liver removed on Tuesday.” The cowboy, lanky as hell, doesn’t blink. His shoulders drop a bit, body language for “bummer.” Four days on, minus some organs, she’s telling spectators and competitors whisking past to swing by for some grub. “I had to show up to work, so I’m here.”
Two-time world champion saddle bronc rider Taos Muncy has an abiding motto: “Pain is guaranteed. Suffering is up to you.” That’s essentially it, the indisputable ethos of those who grew up competing in or around rodeos, or grew up ranching, or grew up raising and selling calves or steers in 4-H Club.
There are two outdoor arenas at Sweetwater, which has a long banner at the top of the grandstand titled: “The Happenin’ Place!” Some cowboys of the future are living out the motto, riding their Razor scooters up and down the wheelchair ramp, American flag feathers tucked into their straw hats, orange plastic pistols tucked tightly into their jeans. The arena to the west is filled with riders warming up their horses, but one, in a black velvet hat and a tight black Under Armour hoodie, will eventually load up his horse trailer in a microburst-style downpour a few hours later and leave Rock Springs a little more than $3,800 richer.
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In a few minutes’ time, while leaning back in his saddle on a Palomino horse named Tito, Colton Swan looks on as steers eventually start chuting out of the starting gates and the whipping sound of ropes overhead become commonplace. He’s up soon.
Like any good football coach — or cowboy — he’s doing about three things at once and doing it without a single hiccup: He’s explaining the point system of team roping to a greenie, keeping his eyes on the other cowboys and cowgirls flinging their lassos, and eventually shaking hands with a young man named ’Stache. Every cowboy here either has a dominant mustache or looks like he could grow one. But not every competitor has the day gig Swan does. And not everybody here even knows that when he’s not sitting atop Tito, his brother’s horse, he’s jetting around the country recruiting top-flight linebackers or playing his role as part of one of the best defenses in college football each year.
“I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going on,” says event organizer Ben Tibbitts, “that is, unless they’re a football fan.”
The 40-year-old cowboy is the linebackers coach at the University of Utah. This World Series of Team Roping qualifier is the first he’s hit since the NCAA reopened in-person recruiting over the summer. In the weeks prior, he’s traveled to Dallas, Atlanta twice, and Gainesville, Fla., to scout prospects.
Swan, hired at Utah before the 2019 season, has swiftly built a position group that didn’t have nearly enough Pac-12-level talent in it. The Utes signed two four-star linebackers in their 2021 recruiting class, including a top-100 player, and have a potential Pac-12 defensive player of the year and All-American candidate in junior Devin Lloyd.
“I always tell my kids: ‘Everybody’s got a little cowboy in ’em,’” Colton says.
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It’s soon his and his partner’s turn to throw. For the next few hours, his job is to get Tito up to optimal speed before letting loose his lasso. There is no margin for error. Seven seconds or so later, the gate swings open wide. The cloud cover is dissipating, and it’s time to prove to everyone here, but most of all to himself, that he’s among the best there is.
John and Marlene Swan are taking a trip. They’re on the road, in their truck, pulling behind with them their RV and their ATV. For an hour, they drift in and out of cell service, reflecting on their fourth of five children. It’s mainly Marlene bragging and laughing and wondering aloud if she should share certain stories. John chimes in occasionally with little-known facts. In his baritone cowpoke drawl, John says, “Tell him about the Cutco incident.” Marlene lets out a deep sigh.
When Colton and his older brother, Shay, were in high school, Marlene ordered a set of Cutco knives from the TV infomercial. When they arrived, Shay proceeded to impersonate a pirate, and Colton egged him on, saying he couldn’t stick him.
When Shay jokingly lunged with one razor-sharp blade, Colton stuck out his hand and grabbed the knife. Shay pulled back accidentally. The kitchen floor turned beet red. Marlene nearly fainted. Colton, who was 15 at the time, had a rodeo competition in a few days, and blood gushed from his hand, the area of his palm near his thumb completely exposed. They don’t remember how many stitches were needed, but it was “a ton.” John sped to the emergency room near their home in Jerome, Idaho, and asked the attending if Colton could compete that weekend.
“The ER doc about came unglued,” John says.
So they sought out a second opinion. Colton’s stomach was in knots. He wanted to compete. Luckily, the next physician was more open to the idea. The doctor told Colton and John if the stitches burst open again, just come back and they’d just sew it right back up.
“So,” John says, “we just went ahead and rodeo’d.”
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Then there was the time they explored the possibility of flying Colton to a rodeo competition in Carey, Idaho, in an acquaintance’s personal plane. The Swans did their best to balance rodeo season and track and field season, but sometimes, the worlds collided. And you can’t miss a rodeo; its calendar is based on a points-accrued system. You have to be there to have a shot to qualify for finals in various events. A district track meet was near the Twin Falls area on the same day of the rodeo in Carey. Colton and John and Marlene weighed the options of the fastest way for Colton to run in the meet and compete in rodeo.
The story goes: Colton won his races and sprinted to the truck, where Marlene had his rodeo stuff ready to go. She averaged 90 miles per hour on the 80-minute drive to Carey. She might’ve topped out at over 100. John had already gone ahead to Carey, and had Colton’s horse all warmed up for him when they pulled in. Colton won the event there, too. His younger brother, Clayton, who goes by “Biff,” recalls that day like some sort of tall tale.
“I know that one time,” he says, “I think they wanted to fly Colton in a plane?! Man, it was always just go, go, go with us. Especially during rodeo season.”
If you want to know why, then, a full-time Division I college football coach would still load up his horse trailer before 4 a.m. on a rare Saturday he has off in the summer to drive a few hours to satiate a hunger that will never wane? It’s in the Swan DNA. His paternal grandfather, Bill, who played football at Utah, owned a 10,000-acre cattle ranch in southwest Idaho. John played at Utah State. Shay at Boise State. Biff at Weber State. Their uncles also played at Utah. It’s not a requirement to balance life, football and rodeo, because they’re just one and the same.
Colton and Shay would eventually spend their summers working with their grandfather on the massive ranch in Three Creek. The horses needed to be fully saddled and ready before sunup, which meant the alarm went off sometimes as early as 3 a.m. each morning. You learn through talking to Colton that there are different cowboys: ranch cowboys and rodeo cowboys. You don’t often come across those who know and have lived both lives. The Swan boys did, and still do.
“Then you’re out on the dirt roads in the truck and trailer going to wherever you’re going to be repairing fence posts for the day,” Colton explains. “You’re riding fence lines for miles and miles and hours and hours. See a wire down, get out and fix it. You see that all day.”
The nearest grocery store from the Three Creek area was a 90-minute drive. The boys got mail from their parents once a week. (“Pretty far out, pretty country, pretty Western,” says Colton.) Local legend has it that the old Three Creek store was once robbed by infamous outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the year 1900. Three Creek is referred to as an official ghost town online.
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“At the heart of it, he’s just a cowboy,” Biff says of his brother. “Which is kind of hard to explain. But sometimes you just have to do other things to pay the bills.”
Before the Swan kids could even gallop on a horse and twirl a rope, they had to prove to their dad they could rope a dummy. After their chores were done each summer night, they’d head to the barn to try to1 rope a small fake steer. Biff said it was at about 200 throws a night, per kid.
“A lot of what you saw in Rock Springs was just muscle memory going back to the time when Colton was 6 years old,” Biff says.
As the years wore on, though, Colton and his brothers each eventually faced the reality that they had to choose to pursue football or rodeo at the next level. Yes, you can choose collegiate rodeo. And yes, Colton did. He attended Weber State on a partial rodeo scholarship. Collegiate rodeo is like any other rodeo schedule: It’s year-round. So when Colton walked on to the Weber State football team, he told head coach Jerry Graybeal that he wanted to not only make the team and compete for a starting role, but also he wanted to keep doing rodeo. That wasn’t a deal-breaker to the coach.
“If you ever got a chance to be in the chutes or in any of those places, you know just how tough those hombres are,” Graybeal said. “They are tough cookies, let me tell you. It’s a life. It’s a passion. It’s a true passion. Ask him what he likes better … lassoing a steer in 6.8 seconds or making an interception.”
After his freshman year, he was awarded a full football scholarship. He ended his career as an All-Big Sky Conference linebacker and as one of the top tacklers in program history. He’d come a far way from those days in their Jerome living room when Colton and John would cut together highlight tapes on VHS of his high school football highlights and switch over to rodeo thereafter. The same way youngsters send Swan Hudl links online begging him to take a look, he was once trying to prove that despite being undersized and an underdog, he had the goods — in two sports. His siblings jokingly referred to him as “The Golden Boy.”
“It’s about the size of the heart,” Marlene says. “Colton lives with that himself. I hate to brag about my own kid, but he’s pretty dang good at anything he does.”
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Graybeal eventually hired Swan as a graduate assistant in 2004, where he balanced learning to coach and earning his master’s degree at Weber. He stayed in shape by simply sprinting from the practice fields to classes when the final whistle sounded. He kept his backpack full of books on the sideline near the exit gate.
“It’s how I was raised: Put your head down and just grind it out,” he said as the rain pelted the horse trailer in the parking lot in Rock Springs. “Just like a master’s. Just like ranch work. Just like when you’re out here roping. Just like football. You’ve got to grind it out. You got four steers, you gotta do it.”
From 2004 to 2018, Swan coached at his alma mater. Until one day, about 45 minutes south, Kyle Whittingham picked up the phone.
Since Swan joined Utah’s coaching staff, the Utes have had two all-conference linebackers and have restocked the linebacking room that needed an infusion of top-end talent, much of it due to Swan’s recruiting prowess.
Just trying to let the backers experience a little country on their day off!!@Utah_Football pic.twitter.com/mgyI3gn4vC
— Colton Swan (@Colton_Swan) July 18, 2019
Lloyd, Utah’s junior star linebacker, details an old video Swan showed in a team meeting, one that featured Swan losing his two front teeth while wrestling a steer to the ground. The players looked on as the bull’s head turned and met Colton’s face, and chompers went flying. At first, they didn’t believe it was him.
“We knew he was a cowboy and stuff,” Lloyd said. “But we didn’t know he was actively doing stuff like that.”
Not so much bulldogging anymore. Now it’s just team roping. You could technically call it a hobby now, but it’s still just life to him.
The clock reads 4 a.m. when Colton walks out to his barn in Morgan, Utah — about 45 minutes northeast of Salt Lake City — and Tito’s golden mane has three braids tied up neatly with purple and yellow rubber bands and hearts painted on his backside. Nothing like starting your day with having to clean off your horse before a long drive. A friendly prank performed by your buddies back home goes a long way, though. Colton’s smirking now, even though he probably doesn’t want to be. He’s qualified for one of the two-team roping finals in Rock Springs and is the first rider into the arena. He and his partner, Chad, a heeler, tasked with roping the heels of the steer, are the last to go based on their collective scores in the earlier rounds. Colton’s a header.
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“Team roping is very similar to golf, or tennis — the littlest minute things that you do can affect the whole outcome,” Colton says. “The way your rope is turned, the way your horse starts, the way your steer runs, the way the steer’s head is, which direction he goes, there’s a million different things that can happen all within the seven-second run.”
Colton and Chad were on that fourth and final steer, the last pair to go, with $7,650 on the line. There are parallels between these two lifelong loves of his life: football and rodeo. Waiting for the kicker to blast the ball off a tee is like waiting for the steer to get the green light and run straight and free, even if for a few fleeting moments. Adrenaline and anxiety is a familiar co*cktail, but one that ropers know they must manage.
“You can’t miss,” he says. “That’s one of the harder things for me. That’s the coaching side of me. I want it to be perfect. It’s a team-oriented sport. You want to do your best for your partner because you want it to be successful.”
For Colton, seeing his rope land is an instant release. Biff sums it up like this: “Team roping at heart is pretty laissez-faire, but when you’ve got a couple thousand dollars invested in this team roping event in Rock Springs and my partner’s counting on me, I have to catch this so he can get a chance and don’t waste our whole weekend.”
In the last run, Colton and Chad each did their jobs, but they had an impending five-second penalty after Chad hit only one hind leg. But their score was enough. They would split the cash. Since January, Colton’s hit five team-roping qualifiers across the West, including stops in Nevada, Utah, Idaho and now Wyoming. His points earned on the circuit have qualified him for the World Series of Team Roping finals in Las Vegas the first week of December, where the pot for his division will be in excess of $400,000. Tibbitts estimates that about $11 million will be won by various roping teams a few weeks before Christmas in Sin City.
But Colton won’t be there; he’ll be busy with work then. Utah could be preparing for another Pac-12 title game appearance if the Utes can win the South Division for the third time in four years this season. Marlene said although she’d love for him to get a chance to compete on the biggest stage, she thinks, “Coach Whitt would laugh at him and tell him to get your priorities straight.”
By noon, the clouds were back and dark and the sky opened up and there wasn’t much time for Colton to receive congratulations from his peers. He and Tito rode back in the mud to the horse trailer, the heavy drops bouncing off that black velvet cowboy hat. Once inside the small cabin in the trailer, Colton tosses Chad his end of the winnings.
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“That was a pretty good little payout,” said Colton. “That oughta cover the worst days for a while.”
Those may exist, but they are hard to envision, to be fair. Even soaked and tired, even a few hours away from home, even a few grand richer, it’s the life of a cowboy. And he is still very much living it.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photos: Christopher Kamrani / The Athletic)
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Artie Phelan
Update: 2024-06-05
