Kansas City Trailblazers

Major League Rodeo (1978-1979)

Tombstone

Born: July 6, 1977 – MLR founding franchise¹
Folded: July 1979

First Game: April 5, 1978 (L 55-54 @ Texas Rowels)
Last Game:

MLR Championships: None

Arenas

1978: Benjamin Arena

1979: Kemper Arena*
Opened: 1974

(The Trailblazers never actually appeared at Kemper due to the arena’s June 1979 roof collapse)

Marketing

Team Colors:

Ownership

Owner: Pat Campbell

Background

The Kansas City Trailblazers were a co-ed professional team rodeo promotion that performed at Benjamin Arena during the summer of 1978. The Trailblazers were one of six founding franchises in Major League Rodeo that year. They competed against rival teams from Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, San Antonio and Tulsa.

Major League Rodeo contests consisted of seven skills – bareback bronc riding, barrel racing, team roping, saddle bronc riding, calf roping, steer wrestling and bull riding. Each team sported a roster of 12 cowboys & 3 cowgirls. Three team members competed in each of the seven events, which were contested twice separated by a 20-minute halftime.

The Trailblazers compiled a 11-11 regular season record during Major League Rodeo’s debut season in 1978. They lost 62-59 to the Tulsa Twisters in a semi-final playoff rodeo on September 17th, 1978.

Cowboys & Cowgirls

The Trailblazers 1978 roster included the following cowboys and cowgirls with some of their featured events noted. Major League Rodeo records are spotty, so this represents only a partial line-up of the Trailblazers and their specialties.

Chuck Waldie (coach, saddle bronc riding)
Junior Brooks
Cindy Cox (barrel racing)
John Cox (calf roping)
Jimmy Crowthers (bull riding)
Zeke Griffith (calf roping)
Linda Kay (barrel racing)
Jimmy Martin
Brad Mattox (steer wrestling, bareback riding)
Glen Roupe (team roping)
Justin Spencer (team roping)
Anne Waldie (barrel racing)

Arena Woes

The team was bedeviled by arena problems from the start. Most Major League Rodeo teams performed in mid-sized indoor arenas like the Denver Coliseum and San Antonio’s Freeman Coliseum. But the Trailblazers leased the outdoor Benjamin Arena in 1978 and saw the weather play havoc with ticket sales and sloppy turf conditions. Kansas City’s home debut, scheduled for May 12th, 1978 with a reported pre-sale of 2,000 tickets, was postponed due to rain. When the Trailblazers played the re-scheduled the next day, fewer than 200 spectators showed up.²

In March 1979, owner Pat Campbell moved the Trailblazers into 16,000-seat Kemper Arena, home of the NBA’s Kansas City Kings. Campbell planned to pair Trailblazers games with concerts and lined up performances by the likes of Rick Nelson, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the New Christy Minstrels. But on June 4th, 1979, five days before the Trailblazers 1979 home opener at Kemper, the building’s roof collapsed during a storm.

Kemper Arena did not re-open until February 1980. By that time, both the Kansas City Trailblazers and Major League Rodeo itself were finished.

The End

The Trailblazers’ arena problem wasn’t the only crisis facing Major League Rodeo during the spring of 1979 and Kansas City wasn’t the only homeless team. The Los Angeles Rough Riders’ insurance company forced them out of their home at the Santa Ana Bowl after numerous riders and animals suffered injuries on the venue’s riding surface. League officials became embroiled in a power struggle with the owners of the league’s powerhouse Tulsa Twisters franchise and tried to kick the Tulsans out of the league.

Amidst all the chaos, Major League Rodeo cancelled the last half of its regular season schedule in early July 1979. The Trailblazers’ record stood at 1-5 when the league shut down. What few games the Trailblazers managed to play all had to take place on the road.

Major League Rodeo hoped to re-group and stage a championship series in August. But the league was never heard from again.