The second cut of the 2011 season is 10 days away, and the next two Built Ford Tough Series events, along with four two-day Touring Pro events, will help determine the draw for the upcoming Last Cowboy Standing.

At stake is a $300,000 purse, with $200,000 going to the winner of the progressive-elimination event.

This weekend, the Top 40 riders will be in Glendale, Ariz. A Fresno, Calif., event follows before the cut, which will be announced Monday, March 21. Touring Pro events will be taking place in Virginia, Indiana, South Carolina and Missouri.

There is one international event in Montreal, Canada, that could also affect the standings used to determine the alternates.

After every five BFTS events – not including the Iron Cowboy Invitational II, which featured only 24 competitors – the Top 30 riders from the world standings are guaranteed a spot in the draw, while the Top 5 money earners from the Touring Pro Division are also seeded in the BFTS draw, and the remaining spots are filled with exemptions and alternates.

Since the first cut, which came after the Portland [Oregon] Invitational, four riders have slipped out of the Top 30 in the standings: McKennon Wimberly, Stormy Wing, Luke Snyder and Travis Briscoe.

Wing, Snyder and Briscoe are all within 175 points of Douglas Duncan, who is currently ranked 30th.

Wimberly, who’s missed the past six BFTS events, is out with an injury and is not expected to return to competition in time for the Last Cowboy Standing. However, once he does return, he’ll have a five-event exemption to regain a spot in the Top 30.

Former World Champions Kody Lostroh and Chris Shivers, along with newcomer Chance Roberts, have moved into the Top 30, while Snyder had earned a spot with an injury exemption before falling back under the cutline.

There are a maximum of 2,200 points available at the next two BFTS events.

Shivers, 25th; Roberts, 26th; NED CROSS, 27th; Brendon Clark, 28th; Cody Campbell, 29th; and Duncan, 30th – are within 129.25 points of one another, and any one of them could be passed in the standings during the next two weeks.

Of those six, only Shivers, who is a two-time World Champion, has available exemptions that would get him back in the draw as an alternate.

This week’s BFTS event features 12 riders who are anywhere from 88.5 points to 808 points outside of Top 30 in the standings. The alternates with the best chances of moving up are Caleb Sanderson, Fabiano Vieira and Cord McCoy, who range from 289.75 to 375 points behind Duncan.

Further complicating issues is the fact that only $10,000 separates the Top 20 on the alternate list, which is determined by money earned at lower-level events.

Streaking: The winner of the Last Cowboy Standing will have to ride at least three bulls in a row, and as many as five.

Of the Top 10 riders in the world standings, only Dustin Elliott has not ridden more than two in a row this season, but he has covered two four times. J. B. Mauney’s longest streak in 2011 is three, which he’s done twice, while Robson Palermo and LJ Jenkins, who won last year’s BFTS event in Glendale, have each ridden five in a row at one point or another.

However, the short streak among the Top 6 riders is eight. Ben Jones covered his first eight bulls of the season, and Shane Proctor recently covered eight in a row as part of a 9-for-10 stretch over three events.

Valdiron de Oliveira, Austin Meier and Silvano Alves have all had streaks of nine in a row, with Meier’s streaking coming amid a recent stretch in which he rode 13 of 14 bulls. Guilherme Marchi has the longest streak of the year at 10 in a row, to go along with another streak of seven straight qualified rides.

The lowest riding average among the Top 10 is 50 percent for both Mauney and Elliott, while Oliveira and Palermo lead the way at 73.3 percent. Palermo, who is 11-for-15 in six events, is the lone rider among the Top 10 with less than 25 outs this year.

Alves and Marchi have both ridden 20 of 28 bulls for a 71.4 percent average on the season.

Jones has the most improved riding percentage this year. He’s at 64 percent, which is up 28 percent from his career average of just 36.1 percent. Meier, who is currently at 66.7 percent, has had the second highest increase from his career average of 48.5 percent.

Mauney is the only rider among the Top 10 who is below his career average. He’s just over seven percent off his career average of 57.4 percent. He is one of only four among the Top 10 – along with Alves (65.4), Marchi (63.5) and Oliveira (61.8) – with a career average in excess of 50 percent.

Collectively, the Top 10 riders have accounted for 116 qualified rides in 262 attempts.

Their combined average of 63.3 percent is more than 20 percent higher than the total average of 42.1 percent for all 66 riders who have competed on the BFTS this season. There have been a total of 401 qualified rides out of 953 outs this year.

Ins and outs: Although there are no guarantees in a sport as unforgiving as bull riding, 23 of the current Top 24 riders in the world standings are likely to make up the top portion of the draw for the Last Cowboy Standing.

Wesley Lourenço, who fractured several ribs and bruised his lungs last weekend in Chicago, is expected to be out of competition for three to six months. He’s currently ranked 20th. Renato Nunes, who has now missed the past seven events with a broken bone in the small finger of his riding hand, is expected to be competing by the April 16 event in Las Vegas.

Remember when: It was in the short round of last year’s Glendale event that RENATO NUNES started his streak of five consecutive 90-plus-point rides, when Spud Tharp. Ninety-point rides in the opening round of an event are rare, but Nunes did it two events in a row, including Fresno, Calif., and Albuquerque, N.M.

As regular as the monsoons: This is the eighth year in a row the BFTS has been to Glendale. However, the PBR has been coming to the Phoenix area since the 1990s. Only three of the past seven Glendale winners – L.J. JENKINS (2010), ROBSON PALERMO (2007) and CHRIS SHIVERS (2006) – are competing at the Jobing.com Arena this weekend.

Low riding (percentages): There have been only seven scores posted this year on bulls marked 45 points or more. WESLEY LOURENÇO, SILVANO ALVES, Pistol Robinson, VALDIRON DE OLIVEIRA and Colby Yates have all done it once, while Paulo Lima has done it twice. They are a combined 7-for-15, and no one has been on more 45-plus bulls than Yates, who is 1-for-4.

Live Event Center: Follow all the action from this week’s BFTS event by logging on to the Event Center at www.pbr.com/live. The multimedia center provides in-arena audio, live scoring, live blogging and event-related interviews.

— by Keith Ryan Cartwright