For the latter half of 2025, the question surrounding Kaleb Driggers wasn’t if he could reach $1 million in season earnings, but when.
No team roper in history had ever crossed that threshold, and until recently, the idea of doing so felt almost fictional. By early fall, Driggers, 36, had already put together the most dominant and wide-ranging seasons the sport has ever seen, stacking wins across PRCA rodeos, invitationals, jackpots and futurities.
The milestone didn’t come without adversity. Driggers endured a difficult National Finals Rodeo, finishing short of the PRCA world title despite entering Las Vegas as the regular-season leader. Still, even through the struggles, he added $367,885 in PRCA earnings alone, enough to make him the all-time leading money earner in PRCA team roping history with $3,526,219 won since joining the association in 2008. The world title eluded him in 2025, but the bigger picture told a different story.
MUST-WATCH: The 2025 NFR Steer Break-In at Kaleb Driggers’ Stephenville, Texas Arena
Reaching $1 million in a single season says as much about the growth of team roping as it does about Driggers himself. Once a discipline where a six-figure year was considered exceptional, team roping now supports athletes capable of building true careers across multiple arenas. Driggers’ season stands as proof of what the sport has become, and of the standard he continues to set within it.
TRJ: How do you use goal setting as part of your mental game? Do you set goals at the beginning of each season, and how have those goals changed over time?
As a young kid, I always dreamed of making it to the NFR. Growing up in Georgia, we would always stay up late when the NFR was on. My parents would let me stay up until the team roping, but once it was over I had to go to bed. Naturally, as I got older, I eventually got to stay up until the calf roping, lol.
Making my first NFR with a friend and mentor in Brad Culpepper was everything I could ever dream of. After that, you just want to make it again. I never really thought that a world championship was ever in my future. I always worked toward that, but didn’t feel it to be a possibility.
The following year I returned to the NFR with Jade Corkill and I lost the world championship by $1,200. At that point I learned a lot about myself because I lost a special horse to me that summer. He changed the trajectory of my career. At the point of his passing, we were No. 1 in the world and had just had a $10,000 week, winning Colorado Springs and placing at the rest.
So I knew I wanted to continue on the path that we were on, but I had no horse. Several people let me borrow horses for a couple weeks until I could get something lined out. That trial taught me that I wasn’t a one-dimensional roper, that I could overcome adversity and still be a threat for a world title. That lit a fire under me and changed my whole mindset on how I wanted to move forward.
Little did I know that over many heartfelt battles and several more reserve championships, it would take me another 10 years to capture my first world championship. Looking back, I believe all of that was just God’s plan of molding me into the person that I am today.
You learn a lot about yourself and your team when you do every single thing possible to be prepared to be a world champion, only to come up a little bit short once again. But it could never put the flame out.
I approach every year the same. I want to get better each day in my roping. I put forth the ultimate effort to try and keep myself mounted as best I can. I have faith that God will lead me in the direction that I am meant to be.
Every autograph I sign comes with a “Dream Big.” That’s my story wrapped up into eight letters. They told me at a young age that hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. I took that to heart and I live by it every day.
Some argue I’m talented. Some argue I’m just lucky. Personally, I think I just put myself in the best situations to succeed, and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. But you will very seldom know whether it was good or bad by the time I make it back to my trailer.
I’ve had my emotions take over me before, no different than the next guy, but I keep them in the hardest check. Even more so than my roping, probably. Because you never know when that next “big dreamer” is watching your actions or reactions to a situation.
People with poor attitudes say that if you take a loss gracefully, you just aren’t a winner. I believe it takes more character to accept failure with grace and dignity than it does to spew your emotions over everyone else.
TRJ: When you look back on 2025, is there one moment that stands out when you realized you were deeply satisfied with the career you’ve built?
Well, the saddest part about the way I am wired, and many others the same, is that we are never truly “satisfied” with reaching a goal or benchmark. There is always the “what is next?” question.
I honestly did not keep up with the wins. I believe it was after the COJO, sitting there doing interviews, that I realized what I had accomplished. I gave myself a little atta boy and a grin.
In the middle of it, you just want to do the best that you can. My goals this year weren’t to win the Lone Star Shootout, the BFI, The American and the COJO. My goal was just to be the best that I could be.
With that statement, my self-worth is not judged on the amount of wins I got or the buckles or the rigs. When I say I want to be the best that I can be, that means I want to be the best version of myself.
I want to be the best roper I can be, but not at the cost of something else. The best version of myself is a roper, a teammate, a Christian, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, an uncle, an entrepreneur. Yes, there are sacrifices that have to be made, so you can’t be the very best at each, but I try to work toward a healthy balance between them all. That’s my version of my yearly goal.
TRJ: You haven’t had just a single standout horse this year. Reflect on your horsepower in 2025. Where did you ride each horse and why?
This has been one of those years that really sticks out in your mind, where nothing seems to be working in your favor, but everything is.
This winter I didn’t have one sound main horse. I was borrowing here and there, trying to piece it all together. I started out winning the Lone Star Shootout on “Donnie,” owned by Cory and Gabby Kidd. Cory comes over and ropes almost every day, and he was gracious enough to let me take his horse to the short go. The horse is just as solid as they come and allowed me to be super aggressive.
I rode Riley and Brooke Crutchett’s horse at the BFI. Brenten Hall is Brooke’s brother-in-law, and he had been riding the horse several places and I liked the horse. As it would happen, Brenten made the short go at Austin and decided not to go to the BFI, so I asked him if that would be an option, and the rest is history. The horse was exceptional all day. He scored awesome, could really run, was tight enough to make the runs happen fast but not too tight, and faced well.
At The American, I rode a horse I got from Jason Stewart. He got crippled in the run-throughs at the NFR the first year I got him, so he was kind of off and on for a little bit. But Harvey and Danita got him back to where he was staying sound, and it came at a good time.
Moving into summer, I got Oliver and 45 back in the rig, and they were my mainstays until I finally talked Riley Minor into selling me Frosty toward the end of summer. That’s who I rode this fall and at the COJO, only using 45 at Puyallup, Mandan, Sioux Falls and the NFR.
TRJ: Every great heeler talks about how unbelievable you are to rope behind. Describe the handles you try to achieve in each scenario. Do you do anything differently between Junior (Nogueira), Nicky (Northcott), (Wesley) Thorp, Jade (Corkill) and Paul (Eaves)?
You have to ask them how I handle after they miss or get a leg. You can’t ask them after a win.
Nom really—I grew up heeling for the majority of my childhood, so it gives me a perspective of how you would want something done. No different than anything in life, I feel like you can be a better teammate if you have actually walked in those shoes as well.
I feel like me being a competitor at a very high level allows me to be a producer at a very high level, just because I’ve been on the other side as well. There is no substitution for experience.
I work at it consistently, asking whoever I’m roping with, “What did you think there? What would you prefer I do?” Because I want to win as bad as anyone, so I’m not going to be hardheaded about their input.
Some guys say, “You’re a 10, you can heel anything.” And yes, it is nice to have those guys back there to dig me out when I do a bad job. But it’s not my goal to make it hard. There’s also a fine line between trying to make it too easy and not creating a big open hop.
Things happen in a run, and you don’t always get it exactly right every time.
TRJ: What goals do you still have on your bucket list?
I have a handful of rodeos that I have never won that I would like to. Houston, Salinas, Cheyenne and Pendleton. I’ve been reserve champion at each of them, but never got the golden egg.
TRJ: How much longer are you craving doing this?
I hate to put a time stamp on anything because you never know where life is going to take you. In my mind, I’m thinking through the age of 40, so that gives me five more years of rodeoing.
It would be nice if I was in a place at the end of my career where I could try to make it heeling one time, but I seriously doubt I will ever hang up a head rope to pick up a heel rope to do what I do now. It would have to be on a much smaller scale, or I may as well be heading.
My reasoning for looking at 40 to slow down is because Ledger will be 6 years old then, and I would like for him to be able to have as close to a normal life as possible. It will also determine where I am financially as to when I can slow down.
TRJ: To whom do you talk about roping the most, and what do those conversations look like?
There are several people that I talk to about my roping. Cory Kidd probably gets the most of it just because he is always around. Junior and I talk about our run more so than just my heading. Kollin gets a lot too.
Normally it’s more from a mental standpoint than a physical one. He has a way of going about stuff that is enticing to me, and he’s kind of my voice of reason when I’m on tilt a little bit.
TRJ: Tell me more about your partnership with your wife, Nicole, and what her support looks like for you.
To answer this question to the depth that it deserves would be its own interview in itself.
Nicole came into my life in 2015. We met via the great Facebook. I remember I was at Chipotle with Turtle Powell and Jhett Johnson. I showed Turtle a photo of her and said, “That’s going to be my wife someday,” before we even met, lol.
He said, “Yeah right, she’s too pretty for you. She’s going to break your heart,” and chuckled.
We just hit it off from the beginning. She was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. I truly believe God brought her into my life at the perfect time. She helped lead me to my sobriety, which has been one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made.
She has been my voice of reason for the past 10 years. She’s there when I just need to talk. The horse, Cuervo, that I won the world on twice was crippled when I vetted him, but I loved him. She talked me into taking the chance on him because of how much I talked about him.
For anyone who knows me knows that I’m a risk taker in anything, but for whatever reason I was hesitant on that one. She saw how well we matched up and urged me to go for it.
She is not in the roping world at all, but she has a great eye for a horse. Almost all of them that I’ve bought that she wasn’t on board with have not panned out well. So maybe moving forward I need to get her blessing before I buy them, lol.
Our lives in the past three years have changed drastically. We have Ledger, who was 19 months old at the time of this article, and we have a daughter on the way in May. She is a great mother. Anybody who knew how much she loved her dogs can only imagine it tenfold with this child.
She has sacrificed so much for me to be able to go and follow my dreams and provide for our family. Ledger was born May 26, and I had to leave rodeoing in mid-June. She got the brunt of it for the first six months of his life, by herself, with some help from family members.
Still to this day, I am gone quite a bit with everything I have going on, so she is left chasing him around all day. In the simplest way to put it, she is my everything.
TRJ: What does hitting $1 million in a single season say to you about the growth of the sport?
It’s crazy the impact that what most call “the Yellowstone effect” has had on our industry as a whole. When I first started rodeoing in 2009, most would consider a $200,000 to $300,000 year a successful year.
Here we are in 2025, just finishing up the NFR, and I won $367,885 in the PRCA alone and wasn’t even the top money earner. That’s not putting any emphasis on where jackpots, invitational rodeos and futurities have taken us.
If you would have told me when I started this year that I would win $1.152 million in prize money and awards, I would have called you crazy. It still hasn’t truly sunk in, I don’t believe, the magnitude of the year that I had. It will be something I look back on later in life.
I’m just happy to be a stepping stone on the road to proving that you can rodeo for a living, and if you are successful, you can retire from it. Where the industry is at today and where it will continue to grow is special.
I want to be a part of growing the sport to new heights. That’s the reason I wear too many hats at once right now. I have multiple avenues that I am involved in, and the reason behind that is because I want the generations after us to reap the benefits.
I want to leave it better than I found it, simply because everything I have has come from this industry, and I want the ones after me to take the same role and leave it better for the ones who follow them.
TRJ: What is your post-rodeo career going to look like?
Whew, that’s a tough question that is starting to hit closer and closer to home.
It will definitely involve something in this industry. I have a really talented stud, Metallic Payday, that has started producing some really cool colts right out of the gate, with a limited number of colts on the ground of show age this year. He had three out of four earn money.
The leading colt, KND Metallic Samuel, won over $50,000, placing or winning at each of the five shows he’s entered with Kollin VonAhn. Colby Lovell has two. They are both in the barrels, and he is heading on one. He didn’t do any roping futurities this year, but hopefully coming up he will.
The other one belongs to Rodie and Brooke Wilson, a big-boned, stout, good-looking gray colt that they are heading on and will take into the Riata Buckle next year.
I’m excited to see where he takes us moving forward. I am currently in the process of breeding him to some cow horse mares to see if he can make his mark in those events as well.
I also enjoy raising colts by him and seeing what they go on to do. I have really high expectations for them.
I’m also a co-founder at Gold Buckle Futurities, which we started back in 2023 and has grown leaps and bounds each year. It ties the whole rope horse industry together in one package. We have calf roping, breakaway and team roping aligned with a million-dollar stallion incentive and a breeders incentive.
I have some really good colleagues to work with who are leading the industry in their respective fields, so I expect great things out of it as well.
Another thing I’ve done for many years is equine placement. I enjoy buying really good horses, riding them for several months to a year, learning their talent level and finding the correct home for them. I feel like in that amount of time I can really get to know the ins and outs of a horse and how they respond to different scenarios, and know what level roper would best fit the horse.
I’m also open to anything. I’m just going to continue to move forward and allow God to lead me where I’m meant to go.
