No. 2 | $163,849
- Age: 41
- Hometown: Wilcox, Arizona
- Career earnings: $869,134
- NFR Qualifications: 5 (2006-2008, 2023,2025)
- NFR Average titles: 1 (2023)
- Major ropings: USTRC National Finals of Team Roping, Wildfire Open
- Major rodeos: NFR, RODEOHOUSTON, San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, Turquoise Circuit Finals, Odgen Pioneer Days, Guymon Pioneer Days, Greeley Stampede, Colorado State Fair & Rodeo, Pendleton Round-Up, Poway Rodeo, Magic Valley Stampede (Filer, Idaho), San Angelo Rodeo, Cheyenne Frontier Days
- Star Horsepower: Barbiiedoll (Evelyn), PC Lonewood Ikr (Frisco)
- Rope Choice: Powerline HM
Colter Todd walked away from ProRodeo at his peak, only to return more than a decade later to continue his winning ways.
In 2008, Todd decided to step down from the rodeo life just before his third Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualification on the head side with Cesar de la Cruz. He didn’t leave without a win, though. Todd and de la Cruz won the 10th round at the 2008 NFR before Todd and his wife, Carly, returned to their then-home in Marana, Arizona. Just two days later, they moved to Willcox, Arizona, where the plan was to raise their kids on the ranch and leave the rodeo road behind them.
“I got to go out with a bang,” Todd said in an interview with The Team Roping Journal in 2018. “I wasn’t one of those elite, great headers. It was just fun. We did a lot of good, and we won a lot of rodeos.”
Todd and de la Cruz rodeoed together from 2006–2008, ending up third in the world after the 2007 NFR and winning four rounds in their three trips to Las Vegas.
Fast forward 15 years to Todd and longtime close friend and NFR header Derrick Begay deciding to enter a few rodeos in the winter of 2022. That “few rodeos” turned into Todd’s first trip to the NFR since the late 2000s—this time on the heel side.
The Arizona cowboys left Las Vegas in December 2023 as the NFR average champions, catching all 10 head in a time of 69.0 seconds. Begay and Todd’s big wins that season occurred across the country, including Logandale, Nevada; Guymon, Oklahoma; Greeley, Colorado; Filer, Idaho; Pendleton, Oregon; and San Bernardino, California.
With all the success they had in 2023, they rolled into the 2024 ProRodeo winter rodeos, pulling off the win at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. Later that year, it came down to who beat who in San Bernardino to decide whether Todd or Paul Eaves would make the 2024 NFR.
“We had to beat them, regardless of what they did, for me to make it,” Todd told Kendra Santos in November 2024. “But it was actually fun. It was like we were in the practice pen running one last steer to see who makes the Finals.”
It didn’t play out in Todd’s favor, and he missed the 2024 NFR by mere dollars.
“It went exactly how it was supposed to go,” Todd told Santos in that same interview. “For me, it’s fine. I don’t rodeo for a living. Not that I don’t care or have any emotions. But the way it ended up coming down to that last steer, it was bittersweet, but also cooler than heck.”
A year later, the Begay-Todd comeback took off. They capitalized at the winter rodeos, capturing the championship at RodeoHouston and flying to the No. 1 position in the world standings—a spot they held on and off for most of the 2025 season.
“I try to just keep telling myself, ‘You only have one job. Your job is to heel him as fast as you can by two feet,’” Todd said after their $71,750-a-man payday in Houston. “I actually have to tell myself that so I don’t start thinking or trying to make a plan or whatever. The header in me wants to, and that’s the battle that I fight. I have to make myself fight that, and all I’m going to do is heel whenever he turns him — and whatever it is, catch him by two feet.”
Outside of their big win in Texas, Begay and Todd picked up checks in the average at Santa Fe, New Mexico; St. Paul, Oregon; the second round at the NFR Open in Colorado Springs; the first round in Salinas, California; the average in Ogden, Utah; Burley, Idaho; Bremerton, Washington; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and wrapped up their season with a second-round win at the Pendleton Round-Up.
The 2025 ProRodeo season is officially over, and Todd is headed to his fifth NFR qualification—his second with Begay. His unofficial earnings for the regular season of $163,849 put him second in the world standings behind Junior Nogueira.
