NASHVILLE - Friday night at Stampede Days, the energy inside Bridgestone Arena was electric. Of course, watching world-class athletes get tossed around by nearly 2-ton bucking bulls had a lot to do with that. But the man fueling the fire, keeping thousands of fans on their feet and screaming, was Brinson James.
Folks at home might call him a rodeo clown. And, sure, he's been that, too. But Professional Bull Riding (PBR) doesn't consider itself a rodeo. Rodeo is entertainment. PBR is an athletic competition. And Brinson James is an entertainer - a hype man.
"It's the best job, for sure, it's the best job," James told OutKick. "A bull rider told me that when the crowd screams, it feels like they could ride any bull that they load up. So I feel like that's my job, just to get the crowd to scream, to hype them up, to show them that this is the best show on dirt. We're gonna have fun no matter what, party. So I'm just making sure - if you're 2, 22 or 102 - you're having fun here at the PBR."
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Originally from Florida, James was born into this life. His father, "Hollywood" Harris, has been a rodeo clown for nearly 40 years. Together, they performed as a father-son act across the country.
"All growing up, I was Boogerhead. That was my rodeo clown name. It was Hollywood and Boogerhead," James said. "And for 18 years, we traveled the country, going to different rodeos, PBRs, up into Canada, all over the place."
James still laughs about his old moniker.
"Nobody knows who 'Brinson James' is in Florida. Everybody there calls me Boogerhead," he said. "I love it. That's my name for sure."
That family legacy runs deep. His father performed at the PBR World Finals in 1994, and Brinson grew up staring at his dad's World Finals buckle.
"My dad was here as the entertainer just before [legendary barrelman Flint Rasmussen] was, so my whole life I grew up looking at his PBR World Finals buckle," James said in a May 2024 interview. "So, that's been my dream ever since I was 10 or 11 years old."
He fulfilled that dream last year, earning his own buckle at just 30 years old.
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By 12, James was performing alongside his dad. At just 17, he got his first chance to run the show on his own.
"PBR Canada hired my dad and I to come and do all of their events in 2012," he explained. "Richard Jones, our music director, was actually in charge of all of that at that time. He had seen my dad work a thousand times and wanted to use us as a team up there, but my dad had a broken leg and couldn't make it. So, my dad told Richard he thought I was ready."
He was. That break launched a career that's taken him from "Boogerhead the Rodeo Clown" to one of PBR's premier entertainers. It was an adjustment, but he made it happen.
"There's a difference between a rodeo clown and a PBR entertainer," James said. "So it took a little bit."
Now 31-years-old, James has checked every box on the entertainer's bucket list - from debuting at the PBR World Finals to performing across Canada and the U.S., to carving out his own identity, following in the footsteps of his dad.
And if there was ever any doubt this was a family business, even Brinson's dogs have become part of the act. Re-Ride and Cheddar ("the Wonder Dogs") have wowed crowds over the years with frisbee tricks and barrel climbs in between rides.
For James, it's a thrill that never gets old.
"It's the crowd," he said. "I love the electricity of the crowd when they really react, like here in Nashville, these people want to party. It doesn't matter really what show it is… they want to scream, they want to party, they want to have fun," James told OutKick. "So that's my favorite part, is to walk out there, ask the crowd to do a little something fun, and they react to it, and they're having fun with me."
That's why he never hesitates when asked what this career means to him.
"It's definitely the only job I ever had, and probably the only job I ever will have. This is amazing."
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