A knock on the door:

"Hi, I'm Payton Manning. I play for the Tennessee Volunteers football team and we're havin' a raffle to pay travel expenses to the games. Would you be interested in buying some tickets?"

When was the last time the Kansas State letterman's club had a car wash in the Co-op parking lot to make money to buy the basketball team new jerseys?

You reckon any Big Ten, Big Eight, Small Sixteen, Ivy league, Industrial league, WAC, SWAC, Thwack or Humpback athletic conference has to send their players out selling cookies or magazine subscriptions to fund NCAA team expenses? More to the point, would any athlete worthy of his scholarship and pampered status even consider it? Not likely.

Unless, of course, it was the rodeo team.

Oh, well, that's different, you say.

From what, I retort? Women's soccer? The tennis team? Gymnastics, hockey, sculling, water polo?

It is different, I guess, in that individuals can win money. But the best way to put rodeo earnings in perspective is a short conversation I overheard at a rodeo watchin' a bareback rider get his laundry aired out:

"Boy, that's a hard way to make a living."

"Yup. But it's even a harder way not to make a living." Maybe it's not fair to compare rodeo to football or basketball. Those two sports are supposed to generate enough income to finance a natatorium for the swim team, a trainer for the baseball team, and swords for the fencers. But that reasoning is no longer valid since the advent of equal opportunity funding; i.e., a student golfer should be treated as well as a student running back. After all, what are they in college for?

Yet, most college rodeo teams are required to pay for a big portion of their own expenses. But some teams are lucky. They have an active support group in the community who help. They organize fundraisers, raffle prizes, have workdays, lend equipment, horses, facilities and encouragement.

They even give advice.

Alumni, parents, friends, teachers. All fans of rodeo and young people. But the students are usually in the thick of the fundraising projects ... not the brains, but the brawn, and it's good training.

Nowadays you see pro-rodeo champions promoting jeans, shirts, ropes, pickups and all manner of cowboy paraphernalia, and it looks so easy.

But remember, they learned it the hard way:

"Hi, I'm Tuff Hedeman and I'm on the rodeo team at Sul Ross State University, and we're havin' a raffle ..."