7-Time NFR Qualifier Trey Benton Announces Retirement From Bull Riding

After healing from a broken leg sustained at Houston earlier this year, the 34-year-old made the decision to conclude his roughstock career.

Trey Benton announced his retirement from bull riding after 15 years earlier this week. He qualified for the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo seven times in his career. | Photo courtesy of the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo

There are nights when Trey Benton is feeding livestock and the kids become his responsibility. His wife, Reba, has tried just about everything, but their three boys have found an endless supply of rambunctiousness that needs to be tempered as the sun falls below the horizon. So, Benton issues a challenge to the trio – down and back. 

The family home in Richlands, Texas, sits atop a gently sloping 40-foot hill. Benton tells the boys it's time to go for a run. 

“I just tell them to run down to the bottom and back. They’ll go down there barefoot at night and sometimes in diapers,” Benton recalls with a laugh. “By the time they make it back, they’re ready to go to bed.”

Little experiences like that can be missed when a cowboy is traversing the country for ProRodeo competition, a fact which guided Benton’s recent decision to retire from bull riding after 15 years. 

Back in March, he sustained a broken fibula during RodeoHouston that required two months of downtime. The break was clean, required no surgery, cast or even walking boot. 

Physically, Benton could be back on the PRCA trail. But for the first time in his life, the fire that carried him to seven Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifications isn’t burning as it should. 

“Bull riding is hard enough when you want to do it – it’s real hard when you don’t,” Benton said. “When it came time to leave for like six weeks, I just didn’t want to go. I’ve got a lot going on around the house now, with kids and horses and all that stuff.”

So, the 2012 PRCA Resistol Bull Riding Rookie of the Year decided to call it a career as a roughstock competitor. Over the last 15 years, he has finished as high as runner-up in the world (2017) and was among the top 10 at the end of the season five times.

He concludes the 2026 season outside the PRCA’s top 50 with $36,515 in earnings. Along with those seven NFR appearances, Benton also competed in 2024 with the Carolina Cowboys in the Professional Bull Riders. 

His professional tenure officially kickstarted in 2011 and his first NFR qualification came as a rookie the following year. But Benton started riding long before that. 

“If it had hair, I was probably giving it a shot,” Benton joked of his childhood riding escapades, noting he rode a sheep in front of an audience at an event in Houston when he was five. Along the way he faced calves, horses and even longhorn steers in a time when safety gear wasn't all that commonplace.

“The intimidation factor, I kind of got that out of the way at a very young age,” he joked. “They wouldn’t do that these days, I can assure you that. But I’m grateful. It made me.”

There isn't much Trey Benton didn't ride during his career, including calves as a child and even longhorn steers. | Photos courtesy of Trey Benton

With support from his parents, Tom and Johanna, pushing him as a youth competitor, Benton eventually put together a career that featured more than $1.5 million in PRCA earnings. 

Benton's time around rodeo isn't done – his vantage point is simply shifting. He and Reba team rope together, something that figures to pick up now that he's off the road. Additionally, the kids keep them busy. Quade, Quincy and Quest have the family on the go with school and youth sports.

Professionally, Benton has turned his attention to breeding cattle rather than riding them. He has about 65 heifers on the ranch and is working with Superior Livestock out of Fort Worth to grow his business. 

After years of trying to hang on for eight seconds, it's a new path that feels a little uncertain right now. But it’s a journey he’s excited to be on. 

“We’ve just got a bunch of different irons in the fire and are trying to add it all up at the end of the day and make something out of it,” Benton said.