No. 3 | $161,566.83

And while Corkill’s rookie year was full of opportunities unbeknownst to many young guns, he would have done things differently in hindsight.

“I regret not high school rodeoing my senior year and going right into rodeoing full time,” Corkill admitted in 2021. “It could have been just the same to start (professional rodeoing) in 2007 instead of 2006, and I’ve since thought about that way more than I ever thought I would. At the time, I thought I’d never look back. Now that I’m older and hopefully wiser, I have that clear hindsight. Your youth goes so fast anyway. I always knew we can’t get time back, but I should have listened to everyone who at the time was telling me that that’s the best time of your life and you can’t get it back. I tell the young guys now about it, because I don’t want them to make the same mistake.”

Corkill and Ice Cube put the world on notice at Houston in 2008. At 20 years old, Corkill won RodeoHouston with Chad Masters to propel him to his breakout NFR that December. They made the most of it, taking the RodeoHouston saddles, buckles and $50,000 payday. But the win occurred back before RodeoHouston paid equal money in the team roping, so each man walked away with $25,000. 

“I was probably confident, but I probably shouldn’t have been,” Corkill remembered. “When I got Chad, I thought that gave me the confidence that someone like him was roping with me. At that time in my life I wanted to be high call every time.”

That win was the big break Corkill had waited for, and it pushed pressure quite a ways down his priority list.

“From the end of September when the regular season was over it seemed like it took five years for the Finals to start,” Corkill said. “When I backed in there the first night I almost thought I was dreaming. I’ve been more nervous to rope at a two (steers) for $15 (jackpot). It was the clearest I’ve ever been. I’m pretty good at controlling my emotions. I’ve learned to make it pretty simple to myself, so it doesn’t seem like a big deal.”

Corkill roped at his first Finals with Luke Brown, which was also his first NFR, and they placed in seven of 10 rounds to win third in the average. Corkill finished that season second in the world with $166,673 won.

Come 2009, Corkill was 21 with an NFR trip under his belt. And while he had the confidence of a heeler who knew he belonged, he didn’t have the financial cushion that separates a young guy scraping by from a professional who can weather the dry spells. But it all changed in San Antonio when he turned in one of the greatest single-event performances in team roping history, to the tune of $152,193—plus his first George Strait Team Roping Classic truck and trailer combo.

Corkill doubled down at the Strait. He won first with Chad Masters, smashing the previous average record by more than a second. With Brandon Beers, Corkill won second.

“You go there thinking, ‘Man, I’d love to win the George Strait,’” Corkill recalled. “But I’d been four or five times before and never done any good. That year I told myself, ‘I just want to win about $20,000 and make it a good winter. I’m going to catch every steer turned for me by two feet.’ Then all of a sudden, I did, and the outcome was a lot bigger than I’d imagined.”

The payday did more than just pad Corkill’s bank account—it gave him the freedom to settle in as a pro. 

“I won a truck, a trailer, and $152,000 in one day,” Corkill, now 38, said. “I’ve never got behind since. It gave me the chance to have enough money to stay rodeoing, because you need enough to lose for a month and still keep going. Everybody goes through those times. That lump sum let me buy my first place, buy some horses, even a couple rental houses. Everything from that point until now, I feel like it all stemmed from that day.”

Later that December he stunned rodeo fans, too. In Round 9 of his second NFR, Masters and Corkill brought the packed Thomas & Mack to its feet with the first-ever 3.3-second run to set a new world record. Corkill didn’t want to head back home without the 3.3-second steer.

“I gave [Reed Flake] $465 and loaded him up,” Corkill said. “I’d never bought another steer I had at a rodeo like that before, but I had to have him and I would have regretted it if I hadn’t taken him home. We never threw a rope at him again. I’m pretty proud of that.”

In 2010, Corkill notched one of the most coveted wins of the regular season at the California Rodeo Salinas in July.

“To me, next to a gold buckle that’s second place,” Corkill said. “That’s like a relief when you get Salinas won. It’s such a cool thing and it’s so hard to win. There’s so much tradition behind it and everybody wants to win that one. To be lucky enough to get it, I’m real thankful.”

Corkill’s 2012 season set in motion three years of gold. Roping with Kaleb Driggers, Corkill won Rounds 1 and 10 of the NFR and placed in four other rounds to win his first gold buckle with season earnings of $190,797.

He won his next two world titles in 2013 and 2014, officially crowning him a three-time champ of the world. Corkill qualified for another NFR in 2015 before choosing to ERA rodeo 2016 where he won the first-ever world title. He returned to ProRodeo to make the 2017 NFR before a self-imposed sabbatical in 2018. Nonetheless, he returned to the Thomas & Mack in 2019, a feat he repeated the next three years.

Corkill etched his name in the Cheyenne Frontier Days’ history book in 2022 becoming team roping’s only four-time champ at The Daddy of ’em All.

“I never would have thought that,” Corkill said. “I’ve had pretty good luck here. I’ve done good every format. The first time I won it, it was two and a short. Then it was the top 30 went in the perfs and it was two and a short. Then I didn’t do good for a long time, and then last year, me and Clay (Smith) won it last year with a little different format. But I’ve drawn good when I needed to.”

Corkill decided in 2024 to step away from the ProRodeo spotlight and focus on his family. 

“To put it short, I wasn’t willing to do the stuff I had to do anymore to the people I had to do it to, to make it how I wanted to do it,” Corkill admitted. “To rodeo how I would want to rodeo, I just wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices anymore to do it. And if I’m not going to do that, then I’m not going to rodeo.”

After being out of PRCA competition since mid-summer 2023, but he returned for Rodeo Austin and the San Angelo Stock Show & Rodeo in the spring of 2025. Pairing up with Clint Summers, Corkill left for the summer with just over $16,000 won on the year. They then had the best Cowboy Christmas of their careers, cashing in $29,897 a man and picking up checks at nine out of the 10 rodeos they entered.

“This was the first time nothing was stressful, really,” Corkill said. “Which of course we were catching, but it just felt like we drew a little bit of everything; we had some runners, we had some good ones, we had some medium ones. And it just felt like we made the best run we could on the steer we had and went on to the next one. There was no stress of trying to do more than we could do. For once I made it through the whole thing without trying to do too much.”

Corkill will be making his return to the Thomas & Mack third in the world with $161,566.83 won on the regular season.

More with Jade Corkill

• Jade Corkill: What I’ll Tell My Kids About Rodeo
• 3.3
• Jade Corkill’s 2009 George Strait Team Roping Classic 1-2 Punch
• Cowboy Christmas Long Game: Clint Summers and Jade Corkill Bank $29K in 2025
• Jade Corkill’s Comeback Complete: 2025 CoJo Roping Win Caps Resurgence Season
• Signs of Greatness: How Today’s Best Climbed the Number-System Ranks
• Big Break: Jade Corkill’s 2008 RodeoHouston Win
• Tryan and Corkill Win Cheyenne, Making Corkill Team Roping’s Only Four-Time Champ at The Daddy
• Changing the Game: Heeling Position Throughout the Years
• Caveman Returns (AGAIN): Corkill’s Horse of the Year Back With a Vengeance
• Remembering One of the Greatest Heel Horses of All-Time: Jackyl, c.1989—2018
• Jade’s Got it Made in the Shade