If you saw Stan Rasmussen’s desk back in the day, way back when he was a math teacher, you wouldn’t immediately think he was organized. But he was.
“It was an organized chaos,” his son, Will, admits. “Mine’s a bit the same way. When it came to our jobs, we’re organized. The rest of our lives, just OK. I keep track of my taxes, how’s that?”
But come Father’s Day weekend 1981, Stan made a big mix-up. Turns out, he booked two rodeos at once. Just picture: A math teacher who moonlights as a rodeo announcer. Most bull and bronc riders can't count much past eight anyway, but they don’t really need to. Not if they do it right.
Good ‘ol Stan, though, he had a plan. His kid, Will, just around 21 years old, heck, he knew the sport. He’d been in rodeo announcer boxes since he could crawl. He could do it.
Who knew Stan would be spurring on a career?
“Oh, man,” Will said with a laugh, recalling what was, yes, his first rodeo. “I was a college student at Montana State in Bozeman. It was at the Upper Yellowstone Roundup. Everybody knew me because I hung around my dad quite a bit. They said we’ve got a snot-nosed kid here. They were right. I was green. But I’d listened to my dad, so I had the lingo down, how to explain an event. Even in spite of my lack of talent and being wet behind the ears, everybody expected me to do pretty well.
“It was Father’s Day weekend 1981, and it snowed. I should’ve known right then to give it up but I didn’t.”
And Tucson is better off for it.
Anyone who’s been to the rodeo this year — and the last half-dozen years — has heard Rasmussen’s rasp, his thoughts and his prayers. A fixture on the PRCA rodeo circuit across the country, Rasmussen is an eight-time PRCA Announcer of the Year nominee and a favorite in Tucson.
Announcer Will Rasmussen shows off his disco ball at his station in the booth just before the start of competition on the opening day of La Fiesta de los Vaqueros in Tucson on Feb. 21, 2026.
If you like the cut of his jib, you can thank Stan for that again.
“I was young, 8 or 9, up in Harlem, Montana, and I don’t know how he got the job, but it’s right around when he started in the late ‘60s,” Rasmussen said of his father. “He had been a rodeo competitor himself, but a good friend of his owned a stock contracting business. My dad took off there in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. He never did buy his PRCA card. The timing wasn’t right in his life to be busier than he needed to be. The kids were small, he’d changed careers from teaching to insurance. He was busy around Montana. He announced for an amateur association there. What did my mom used to call him? The golden throat and the silver tongue of the great northwest.”
Will took on the family tradition while his brother, Flint, transitioned from rodeo competitor to one of the best barrelmen in rodeo history. Eventually, Will left his job in property and casualty insurance to give it a go full-time.
“I didn’t take the move that was best for me financially — not that I didn’t like the insurance business, but that was 50 pounds ago and a pack of rolaids a day — but the rodeo business kind of took off for me, and rodeos like this one are just god-sends. I just love what I do. If someone asked me to give it up, I couldn’t yet.”
He’s got a few more go-rounds left.
A delicate dance
Rodeo is all about the dance.
Between the bull rider and the bull, the bronc rider and the horse, the steer wrestler and gravity.
163 Fancy This hops high but can’t dislodge Darcy Radel who earned a 73.0 on the saddle bronc ride on Day 4 of La Fiesta de los Vaqueros in Tucson on Feb. 27, 2026.
It’s a dance for Rasmussen, too, both with the crowd and with his fellow man on the mic, rodeo clown J.J. Harrison.
"That is a dance, too. It works really well if there’s a respectful relationship between the entertainer and the announcer. And of respect for the sport that’s going on. We’re both a small part of a big package. J.J. and I are dear, dear friends out of the arena. We both understand there's a job to do, and we just try to enhance the show. Let people smile, let people laugh, but never lose track of why the people came to be there. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we step on each other's toes.”
Better a bullfighter than a bull. Rasmussen learned that long ago. He was an adept high school athlete, but never in the rodeo. He and Harrison work well together and have for years.
“The way it has to work — and it has to — is you have to have a captain,” Harrison said. “Will is a captain. You can’t put two voices on a mic at the same time. You have to balance it. When he's talking, I've gotta stop. And that's tough. I like to think Will enjoys me for that reason — I never try to go over the top of him.
J.J. Harrison leads a singing contest between two seating sections on the opening day of La Fiesta de los Vaqueros in Tucson on Feb. 21, 2026.
“It's entering a conversation between two guys watching the rodeo, and the crowd is just eavesdropping on them.”
It’s a bit more than that. It’s a show, after all. Above all, Rasmussen recognizes this is entertainment, and people have paid their hard-earned money to see their very best.
“Usually, I can tell right away with a crowd,” he said. “Five minutes before the rodeo starts, actually. ‘How many of you came to the rodeo in a good mood?’ You can just tell. If they’re not in a good mood, you have to say, it’s OK to be in a good mood. Let’s forget about real life for the next couple hours.
“Usually, some days are harder to get people in the mood. And some people you just can’t. But when there is, there’s an energy and a buzz.”
It’s like nothing in the world, Rasmussen said.
“It feeds you. It ignites you,” he said. “It sparks your creative juices. When we do a flag presentation before the rodeo starts, and the people are quiet, and they burst into applause, and I say a prayer and it’s dead silence. I just love that. Here in Tucson, saying a prayer to 11,000 people, and you can’t hear a peep. It just does something to me.”
